Those seeking the middle ground between Apple's take-it-or-leave-it Time Machine and the advanced settings of Backup Scheduler might also consider the free TimeMachineEditor. However, $5 is a. TimeMachineEditor comes particularly useful for those who don’t make quite a lot of changes to their system and user data, and want to use custom backup schedule instead of Time Machine’s hourly backup interval option. It works on a Mac OS X Leopard, Snow Leopard and Lion.
At a Glance
Expert’s Rating
Time Machine Editor Mac
Cons
Our Verdict
Editor’s note: The following review is part of Macworld’sSummer of Mac Gems series. Each business day until the middle of August 2008, the Macworld staff will use the Mac Gems blog to briefly cover a favorite free or low-cost program. Visit the Mac Gems homepage for a list of past Mac Gems.
Leopard’s Time Machine feature backs up changed items every hour. In many cases, this is a great thing, because it means that you’ll never lose more than an hour’s work.
Time Machine Editor Free
But if you’ve ever wanted to change Time Machine’s schedule—for example, because you don’t need to back up so often—Time Software’s TimeMachineEditor 1.3.1 lets you do just that. You can tweak the interval so that Time Machine backs up every, say, four hours, or you can choose to have Time Machine back up once a day, once a week, or once a month.
Time Machine Editor Not Working
You can also choose to have Time Machine back up automatically whenever a Time Machine disk is mounted or whenever your Mac wakes from sleep.