

One of the commonest uses of Apple’s bundled Preview app is to read PDF documents, which is a default set in macOS. The chain starts with security and privacy protection, which in recent versions of macOS have taken to using extended attributes a great deal. Although this is quite a complex and technical game, I promise you a reward at the end: plenty of your backups could be wasted space.

This will help you have peace of mind that your data is being backed up just in case.Let’s play unintended consequences, in this case with macOS security and privacy protection, the file system and Time Machine backups. This way, you will have a nightly backup of your Mac without the need to remember to plug it during the day. You obviously need to ensure it’s plugged into power but otherwise, plug the external hard drive you use with Time Machine for backups and you can fold down your laptop and let it backup overnight. On your laptop, choose Apple menu (the black apple on the top left corner) > System Preferences, then click Energy Saver.Ĭheck the box beside “Enable Power Nap while on battery power” and you’re done. Power Nap allows your Mac to perform useful activities while it’s asleep (there are plenty of activities that it will do but the important one we’d like to focus on today is the Time Machine backup). This is a great solution if you want to ensure you perform regular backups while avoiding being tethered to an external hard drive during the day when you may want to move your Macbook around wherever you go. If you own a Mac laptop, you may be wondering how to best back it up so you don’t lose precious files like your photos for example Did you know that your Mac can backup through Time Machine while asleep?
