People whose computer is an essential part of their life, are aware of the fact that it’s required to always have their data backed up to prevent losing all data and files on their computer. And if you’re a Mac user and want to restore your Mac to the previous date, you should keep on reading.

How to restore Mac to previous date

There could be many causes that may guide you to restore your Mac to a previous date. For example, the slowness of your device, so you want to get it back to the previous condition, or you want to locate some lost data from the previous file system. 

It doesn’t depend on the reason, your Mac can be restored to a previous date with the Time Machine backup. This macOS function gives its users an opportunity to cancel changes that have been made to the system that caused those issues, return the settings back, and then recover the Mac’s lost user data and files. 

Is it possible to restore Mac to earlier date without Time Machine

Surely, there is a way to restore Mac to an earlier date except for the Time Machine software that would allow you to keep an up-to-date backup of your Mac. One more way is to create a whole copy of your storage drive on an external hard drive. The external hard drive stores a copy of the macOS setting and all the files at the time when they have been copied. In case you have faced any issues with your computer along the line, it’s possible to back up your Mac to that previous date you copied the files with the external storage device. 

How to back up Mac to previous date

Time Machine keeps hourly backups of your data for the past day, daily backups of the past month’s data, and weekly backups for all the past months. If you want to have a detailed and frequent backup, it would be better to use a large external hard drive. The time machine clears the older backups when the storage device is full. So if you have a Time Machine backup, backing up Mac to the previous date would be literally straightforward.

Configure a Time Capsule

If you want to restore your Mac to the previous date, it’s required to first configure a Time Capsule before doing anything else. Creating the Time Capsule means that your Mac will be restored to the state when you created the backup. It can be set in 2 ways: manually and automatically. Keep in mind that an external hard drive with enough storage to hold the data on your Mac is required for this process. 

So, if you want to configure a Time Capsule, you should follow the steps which would be mentioned in the section below:

• First of all, the external drive should be conncted to your Mac using a USB cable. After it has been connected, there would be a confirmation window “Do you want to use the drive to back up with the Time Machine?” displayed.
• After that, you should click on Use a Backup Disk. By doing this, the procedure would be started. Then, you should wait for a while to let the Time Capsule be configured, and you can then restore your Mac. 

Sometimes, the confirmation window doesn’t display, so it won’t be able to do it automatically. If you have faced this issue, you should set the Time Capsule manually. To do that, you should follow the steps which would be mentioned in the section below:

• First of all, you should open the Apple menu and then you should head to System preferences and there you should click on Time Machine.

• After that, you should tap on the option Select Backup Disk.

• To complete the process, you should select the external hard drive from the list of disks and then you should tap on Use Disk.

Backup your data with Time Machine 

After you have set up the Time Capsule, you should head to the Time Machine menu and there, you should tap on Back Up Now. After that, you should select the disk that you want to completely back your Mac up. 

Restore your Mac to the previous date

After you have finished with the processes above, you should move to restore your Mac to the previous date. To do that, you should follow the steps which would be mentioned in the section below:

• Restart Mac, and press the Command + R keys simultaneously to open the OS X Recovery Tool.
• Click on the option that says Restore from Time Machine Backup.
• If there are several backups, select the one created before your Mac started having issues with working. Then you should wait till the process would be accomplished.

So, as you can see, there is nothing to worry about. The processes are quite straightforward and you won’t need some special efforts to achieve the goal.