One of the first Mac Mondays posts was about using Time Machine to back up your Mac. More than once since then, I’ve written about using a Time Machine backup to migrate data to a new Mac, and I wrote a more thorough backup article in early 2020 when I recovered from my own data loss.

Today, however, is the first mention of how to restore files from a Time Machine backup. Hopefully, you’ll never lose any of your important files. However, keeping a full backup of your Mac is still a good idea for most folks and knowing how to retrieve lost items is an equally valuable skill, just in case.

Navigate to Where Your File Was

Before opening Time Machine, consider the item you want to recover. Do you remember where it was previously saved? If so, I recommend navigating there first (in the Finder). This will make the next step easier.

In the screenshot above, I’ve opened my folder of documentation and manuals for applications and gadgets I use. I recently had a user guide for the lights on my bike wheels and I want to recover it.

Enter Time Machine

With your Time Machine backup drive connected to your Mac, enter Time Machine. To do so, you can click the Time Machine menu on the menu bar (if present) or you can open the Time Machine application in the Finder, on the Dock, via Spotlight, or however you prefer to open apps.

If you had first navigated in a Finder window to the former location of your desired file, that will be your starting location in Time Machine. If not, you’ll get a Finder window showing the Desktop.

(In case you don’t know, the Desktop is actually a folder on your Mac. Its representation behind all other windows is most akin to a gigantic window in Icon view with no borders or toolbars.)

Go Back In Time

Now, you can start to go back in time. You’ll see a large timeline on the right edge of the screen. You can use this to make big jumps to recent snapshots and previous backup points as far back as your data are archived.

Snapshots, if stored, are an easy way to return to an earlier state of an entire drive. They can also be used to recover individual files. Howard Oakley at Eclectic Light has a thorough explanation of Time Machine snapshots in case you’re curious.

Additionally, the Up and Down buttons just to the right of the Finder window advance roughly one backup at a time. Hold Command when clicking them to include snapshots in your time travel.

Depending on how organized you are, you might use Search to find your file, continue navigating to where you think it might be, and/or start going back in time to try to locate it.

Above, albeit a little small to the eye, I went back to a backup last night and found the missing manual. I’ll click Restore and the file will once again be in my Manuals folder.

Again, hopefully you don’t lose anything, your Mac doesn’t crash, and you’re well organized and intentional about what you delete. Yet, having a reliable backup strategy is essential to an easeful computing experience.

If you don’t have one you trust, please reach out and we’ll design a system that works for you and keeps your data safe so you don’t get caught.