Mac User Guide
- Welcome
- What’s new in macOS 27
-
- Intro to Continuity
- Use AirDrop to send items to nearby devices
- Hand off tasks between devices
- Control your iPhone from your Mac
- Copy and paste between devices
- Stream video and audio with AirPlay
- Make and receive calls and text messages on your Mac
- Use your iPhone internet connection with your Mac
- Share your Wi-Fi password with another device
- Use iPhone as a webcam
- Insert sketches, photos, and scans from iPhone or iPad
- Unlock your Mac with Apple Watch
- Use your iPad as a second display
- Use one keyboard and mouse to control Mac and iPad
- Sync music, books, and more between devices
-
- Get started
-
- Accessibility features for vision
- Get started with VoiceOver
- Zoom in on what’s around you
- Zoom in on your Mac screen
- Increase font size and icons
- Adjust the display colors
- Hover to zoom in on text and colors
- Listen to or change how text appears in apps
- Customize onscreen motion
- Increase the size of what’s on your screen
- Make the pointer easier to see
- Have your Mac speak text that’s on the screen
- Resources for your Mac
- Copyright and trademarks
- Resources for your Apple devices
Back up your files with Time Machine on Mac
With Time Machine, you can back up files on your Mac that weren’t part of the macOS installation, such as apps, music, photos, and documents. When Time Machine is turned on, it automatically backs up your Mac and performs hourly, daily, and weekly backups of your files.
When you use Time Machine, Time Machine also saves local snapshots you can use to recover previous versions of files, even if your backup disk is not attached. These snapshots are created hourly, stored on the same disk as the original files, and saved for up to 24 hours or until space is needed on the disk. Local snapshots are only created on disks using the Apple File System (APFS).
If you accidentally delete or change a file, you can use Time Machine to recover it.
Even though Time Machine creates local snapshots on computers using APFS, it’s recommended that you back up your files to a location other than your internal disk, such as an external hard disk, a disk on your network, or a Time Capsule. That way, if anything ever happens to your internal disk or to your Mac, you can restore your entire system to another Mac.
Connect an external hard disk to your Mac and turn the disk on.
Important: If you create a backup on a Mac running macOS 12 or later, the files can only be restored to a Mac running macOS 11 or later.