Where Does Time Machine Store Backups?
Where Time Machine keeps backups: Backups.backupdb on older drives, date-stamped snapshots on APFS disks, and local snapshots on your Mac.
Last updated
Time Machine stores backups differently depending on the drive format, which is the first thing to know before you go looking. A traditional HFS+ backup disk gets a Backups.backupdb folder at its top level, while an APFS backup disk has no such folder: the volume itself is the store, filled with date-stamped snapshots.
Your Mac also keeps a few local snapshots of its own between runs. They appear in the same restore window, but they live on the startup disk and get thinned automatically, so treat them as a short-term safety net rather than the backup.
Where Time Machine stores this, by platform
/Volumes/[BackupDisk]/Backups.backupdb/[MacName]
That is the layout on an HFS+ backup disk: one folder per Mac inside Backups.backupdb. APFS backup disks skip the store folder and keep date-stamped .backup entries at the volume root instead. Network shares hold a .sparsebundle image named after your Mac. Terminal's tmutil destinationinfo prints the current destination so you do not have to guess.
Frequently asked questions
where are time machine backups stored on my external drive
On an HFS+ drive, look for Backups.backupdb at the top level, with one folder per Mac inside. On an APFS drive there is no such folder; the volume root holds date-stamped .backup entries. Run tmutil destinationinfo in Terminal to see which layout you have.
what are com.apple.TimeMachine.local snapshots
They are backups of recent changes kept on your startup disk between runs of Time Machine. tmutil listlocalsnapshots / lists them by date. Time Machine removes them automatically after one to two days, so they cannot replace a real backup disk.
time machine network backup sparsebundle location
Time Machine writes a disk image named after your Mac and ending in .sparsebundle to the share you selected. Confirm it any time with tmutil destinationinfo, which prints the destination name, kind, URL and mount point.
Notice an outdated path? Let us know.