You can make a difference in the Apple Support Community!

When you sign up with your Apple Account, you can provide valuable feedback to other community members by upvoting helpful replies and User Tips.

Looks like no one’s replied in a while. To start the conversation again, simply ask a new question.

how do I delete a file from time machine backups?

I'm using an IMac (Big Sur 11.6.8) and I have my time machine backup on an external SATA hard drive.  I would like to be able to delete a single file from my internal hard drive (easy - I just dump it in the trash) and from every instance of my time machine backups.  


But when I enter time machine and select the file in the backups, the trash can in the Finder menu title bar is greyed out.  Right-clicking on the file, and selecting the action icon do not present a usable delete option. I've also tried this on another IMac (Monterrey 12.5.1) and had the same limitation.  I've also seen instructional videos on youtube showing how it is done - but I do not have access to the delete/trash option when in time machine.  Can someone tell me if this should be possible?  If so, what might the problem be and how to fix it?  Thanks!

Posted on Aug 28, 2022 5:41 PM

Reply
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on Aug 28, 2022 7:28 PM

Feel free to send feedback:

Product Feedback - Apple


But, again, deleting files out of Time Machine defeats the purpose.


You could, of course, wipe the Time machine drive and start over, but that is the H-Bomb to kill an ant solution.

Similar questions

7 replies

Aug 28, 2022 6:04 PM in response to rkaufmann87

Thanks for your reply. So I guess the file remains in Time Machine backups until the space allocated for those backups gets filled up and new backups overwrite them? Either that or you have to just reformat the external drive (or sector on that drive where the backups are store) and start your backups all over? Doesn't seem like they give you good options if you have a file you want to delete everywhere.

Aug 29, 2022 8:28 AM in response to chrigb

I really appreciate your feedback. In my ignorance, I would have thought the purpose of time machine would be to faithfully backup your desired contents to allow later access at various points in time. Since it allows you to exclude items from backup, it would seem they would also allow you to delete those items from the backup if later determined you did not want to retain them there. Anyway, I get your point, and thanks again.

how do I delete a file from time machine backups?

Welcome to Apple Support Community
A forum where Apple customers help each other with their products. Get started with your Apple Account.