The Time Machine Mechanic (T2M2) version 2 for APFS backups on Sonoma

Do you use Time Machine (TM) to back up hourly to an APFS volume in Sonoma? If so, I have version 2 of my free utility The Time Machine Mechanic, T2M2, that should be just right for checking whether it’s making those backups correctly. This is the long-promised update that should also work better for those doing the same thing from Big Sur or later macOS. If you’re still backing up to HFS+, or are running Catalina or earlier, then you should find version 1.19 is still preferable.

T2M2 version 2 has been extensively rewritten, with new features and changes that cope much better with recent versions of TM.

Its main window offers four buttons, to run its checks on the last 1-48 hours of TM backups, as seen here, to assess the speed of longer backups, browse TM entries in the log, and to perform a backup now.

T2M2 now provides estimates of free space available on backup storage, shows file copying performance measurements made by TM, and detailed reports on each backup completed within the selected period, as well as listing any error messages.

Its speed measurements help you discover which folders, apps and other items are slowing your backups down, so you can add them to TM’s exclusion list.

When there are errors or other problems reported, the ability to browse the log in detail can be invaluable. This is essentially the same as the feature provided in Mints.

Its 18-page Help book, also provided separately with the app, walks you through the contents and interpretation of each of the findings it reports.

Like version 1, T2M2 version 2 extracts its information from the Mac’s Unified log. This process has been tailored to the current log entries made in Sonoma, but should be good for Ventura, and probably for older versions back as far as Big Sur. The app requires at least macOS 11 Big Sur, and runs natively on both Intel and Apple silicon Macs.

As this version has such extensive changes, it’s likely that it will need further improvements to cater for all the different circumstances in which TM is used. If you discover errors or shortcomings in its reports, please provide a log excerpt so that I can see what I need to do to improve it. The best way to do this is using T2M2 itself: open a log browser window, capture the section of log involved, and turn off the three coloured entries leaving just those from TM, shown in black/white. Save that as an RTF file and send that to me, please, so that I can see the original log entries causing the problem, and can adapt the way that T2M2 analyses them.

Because T2M2 version 2 is only suitable for some who currently use version 1, I’m separating their updates, to spare those who are using T2M2 with older versions of macOS. Version 1 will therefore not inform you of the update to version 2: if you want this new version, please download it now, from here. Then future updates to T2M2 2.x will be notified to those already using version 2.x, but not version 1.x.

T2M2 version 2.00 is now available from here: t2m2200
from Downloads above, and from its Product Page.

I hope you find it useful, and apologise for the delay in producing this new version.