How to remove old Time Machine Backups on your Mac

Time Machine is the built in tool that allows you to create back up on your Mac. With this tool, you may back up all of your files and documents to an external storage device so that you can restore them when you want in future. Time Machine integrates seamlessly with the MacOS and keeps your data secured.  However, it is easy to create backup and forget about it until you want restore it but sometimes it shows your backup is too large for the backup disk , in such a case you may remove your old backups and free up storage to create new backup on your Mac. Here, we will provide you some easy steps to delete your old Time Machine backups.

How to delete old backups with Time Machine?

Time Machine app is the easiest way to create and remove backups on your Mac, if you want to remove old backups, follow the below given steps to do that:

• In the menu bar, click on the “Time Machine” icon and then select “Enter Time Machine.”
• If you unable to see Time Machine in the menu bar, go to Apple menu> System Preferences.
• Click “Time Machine” and then select “Show Time Machine in menu bar.”

• Now go through the Time Machine Backups by using the arrows and the timeline on the right side of your screen.
• Now, select the item you want to delete, then click the Action pop-up menu and select “Delete All Backups of (item name).”

 How to delete old backups with Finder?

By following the below given steps, you may move, copy or delete backups using Finder on your Mac:

• On your Mac, open “Finder.”
• Now, connect your backup disk and wait for it to appear under “Devices” in the left side panel.
• Go to “backupdb” on the backup disk.

• In “backupdb” folder, locate the subfolder with your Mac’s name.
• Here, you can see a long list of subfolders managed by date.
• Now, remove the folder associated with the Time Machine backup you want to delete.

By following above given instructions, you may remove your old backup created by Time Machine tool on your external disk and free up storage to create new or large backups.

Now read: How to use Time Machine to back up and restore your Mac