ICloud Photos allows you to store all of your photos in the cloud, which is very convenient for accessing media across devices.
If plugging in a drive seems like a lot of work, you can even use another Mac on the same network as a Time Machine destination. macOS will even bark at you when you haven’t backed up for a few weeks. Remember to connect the drive now and then and you’re covered. You can take your Time Machine backup drive and store it off-site if you want to, which covers you against data loss should a fire or natural disaster put your Mac out of action.Īnd while Time Machine does require an initial setup and occasionally plugging in and safely ejecting a drive, it’s a set and forget solution. It stores multiple versions of files in incremental backups, allowing you to roll back to earlier iterations of your projects and documents should you need to do so. On top of this, Time Machine is an archival tool.
You can restore your entire Mac drive from Time Machine in a fraction of the time it would take to download that same amount of data from Apple’s servers. By archiving everything on your Mac to a removable drive ( or a network drive if you’re keen), you can rest safe knowing that if anything happens to your Mac or the solid-state drive inside, you have a local backup ready to go. Time Machine does one thing and it does it well. Not everyone sees the value in such a service, and it would be nice to have a cheaper 1TB storage tier for closer to $4.99/month. 50GB starts at $0.99/month, with 200GB and 2TB options available for $2.99 and $9.99 respectively. This means you can’t roll back a project or document to a previous version if something unfortunate happens.Īpple’s cloud storage service also requires a monthly fee to be useful. To start with, only the most recent version of any files stored there are retained.
ICloud has a few limitations that Time Machine does not. You can use this web interface to upload files that then appear on your Mac. Simply head to and log in, then click on iCloud Drive.
You can even use iCloud Drive to access files on your Mac from a Windows or Android device. The Files app on iPhone and iPad means you can access your Documents folder or screenshots that reside on your desktop, wherever you are. What iCloud Drive on the Mac is especially good at is making your files available across all of your devices, and even the web. If you want to back your Mac up to the web, you’ll have to use a service like Backblaze instead. macOS simply won’t let you do so when you first set up the backup solution under System Preferences > Time Machine. Remember that items stored in iCloud drive count against your total storage total, of which you only get 5GB for free.Įven if you pay for a hefty chunk of iCloud Drive space, you can’t use the service as a backup location using Apple’s Time Machine service.
Click on “Options” next to iCloud Drive and check any folders and apps you would like to use with the service. You can turn on iCloud Drive for your important Mac folders and other data under System Preferences > Apple ID. Apple doesn’t advertise it as a backup tool, and you shouldn’t use it as one even though it does copy a lot of your data to a remote location. ICloud Drive is not a backup tool, it’s a cloud storage service that syncs data between locations.