You just need to make sure you have adequate space in iCloud, which may involve a monthly subscription charge. If you have a large photo library, sign up for iCloud Photo Library, that way the photos on your Mac will be backed up to the cloud.Then it will be backed up in Apple’s iCloud, and you will be able to access it from any account. If you have a large music library don’t back it up, instead sign up for iTunes Match.If you are struggling with the size of your backup, here are some tips. Click on the + and navigate to file or folder you want to leave out of the backup.You’ll see a window showing the items already excluded from the backup.Click on Open Time Machine Preferences (you can also access Time Machine from within System Preferences).Click the Time Machine icon in your menu.If you want to exclude items from your backup, follow these steps: If you want to keep your backups on the slim side, it’s possible to tell Time Machine what to back up and what to ignore. Click on the gear icon and choose ‘Delete Backup”.Navigate to the point in time that you want to delete.Click on the Time Machine icon in the menu bar.Open the Finder and locate the item you wish to delete from the back up, for example, a movie download or a folder with images in it that you don’t need to back up.You may see the warning, Are you sure you want to permanently delete all backups of the selected item, click OK.ĭeleting a whole backup may save you some space, but what if there is a particular file or folder that’s is backed up unnecessarily? Here’s how to delete that:.Click on the gear icon and click on Delete All Backups of “folder name”.

Click on the backup you want to delete.

Now, click on the Time Machine icon in the menu bar.

Click on your backup drive so that the contents opens in the Finder.

You can also delete a backup following these instructions: Just click on skip and continue deleting. You may see a couple of warnings that you can’t delete something because it’s in use.

Confirm that you want to delete and enter your password again.

To ensure it is deleted from the hard drive, go to the Trash and right click and choose Delete Immediately.

Do you want to move the backup to the Trash anyway?”

You will see a warning that ‘You can’t undo this action.

Right-click/control-click on it and choose Move to Trash.

Find a folder you want to delete – you could probably delete one of the older folders, after all it’s unlikely you need Time Machine to go back that far.

Scroll through the various folders that will appear in date order, oldest first.

Click on the drive and view the contents in the Finder.

The drive should mount on your Desktop.

If you do run out of space, and you don’t have a new storage device handy with which to start a new backup, deleting some files from the backup is the place to start.

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