The best Mac backup software in 2026

The best backup for a Mac is the one that gets your Mac back, not just your files, after the worst kind of day: a stolen laptop, a flooded office, ransomware, or a Mac that won’t start. Judged that way, our pick for 2026 is Yester. Below we explain why, and what each of the other well-known options leaves out.

We make Yester. Every fact about the other six products links to that company’s own pricing or support pages, checked on 24 September 2026, and prices are shown in the currency each company publishes.

What should a Mac backup do?

We judged every product on six things that decide whether you get your Mac back:

1. Back up the whole Mac: apps, settings and every user’s files, hidden folders included, not just documents.
2. Run by itself, at least every hour, with no routine to remember.
3. Keep history long enough to undo a mistake you only notice weeks later.
4. Keep a copy off-site, out of reach of anything that happens to your home or office.
5. Encrypt with a key only you hold, so nobody else can read your files.
6. Put everything back onto a new Mac, not just individual files.

How do they compare?

The first table covers what each product backs up and where the copy lives; the second covers history, keys and restores. Each fact is sourced in the section on that product below.

What’s backed up, and where

History, keys and restores

Why is Yester our pick?

Yester passes all six tests. It backs up the whole Mac every hour from APFS snapshots: every user’s home folder, apps, mail, messages, photos, app data and settings. That includes the hidden folders where Claude Code and Codex keep your conversations, which Claude Code itself deletes after 30 days by default; Yester keeps them for your plan’s whole history window. It runs by itself, pauses on battery power, and on day one sends your documents first, so a Mac that fails early still has its work saved.

Finding something is visual. Browse & Restore shows your Mac as it was at any moment, the timeline marks when a file changed, and a preview shows each version with what differs from today highlighted. Undoing a change is just as direct: Restore This Version puts the older version back and keeps today’s file too, so even the restore can be undone, and Save a Copy saves any version wherever you like. Versions from the last 24 hours are still on your Mac and restore instantly.

History lasts 90 days on Yester, a year on Yester Pro and five years on Yester Max, thinned from hourly to daily to weekly as it ages. Your Mac can add to its backup but can never delete from it, so ransomware can’t reach the versions from before it struck.

Everything is encrypted on your Mac, file names and previews included, with a recovery key only you hold, so nobody at Yester can read your files. Every week Yester restores 50 random files and checks them byte for byte, so you know the backup works before you need it.

Restores run at the full speed of your connection: in our tests, a gigabyte came back in about a minute and a half. On a new Mac, you restore everything through Migration Assistant from an external drive, or straight from the cloud, with the Mac ready to use after about ten minutes while the rest arrives. External drives can be added for £6.99 per TB a month, and they stay backed up for as long as you pay, however long they’re unplugged.

Pricing is per Mac by built-in storage, whatever you keep on it: £11.99 a month for 512 GB, £16.99 for 1 TB and £24.99 for 2 TB, with 90 days of history, and a full refund within 60 days if it isn’t for you. Yester runs on Macs with Apple silicon and macOS 26 or later.

Time Machine: why isn’t a drive at home enough?

Time Machine is built into macOS and, once you connect a drive, it “automatically makes hourly backups for the past 24 hours, daily backups for the past month and weekly backups for all previous months”, deleting the oldest when the drive is full. Migration Assistant can restore everything from it onto a new Mac.

The problem is where the copy lives. Apple’s list of backup destinations covers external drives, another Mac and network storage, but no cloud service, so the backup sits near the Mac and shares its fate in a burglary, a fire or a flood. The UK’s National Cyber Security Centre has seen ransomware encrypt “the connected USB and network storage drives holding data backups”. And a laptop only backs up while the drive is connected; in between, local snapshots cover the last 24 hours, on the same Mac they’re protecting.

If you have a drive, keep Time Machine running as a second copy at home. It just can’t be your only one.

Backblaze: why doesn’t it bring your whole Mac back?

Backblaze Personal Backup backs up your files for $9 a month or $99 a year per computer, continuously, which Backblaze says typically means once an hour. By its own documentation, it doesn’t back up the operating system or application files, so a new Mac means reinstalling your apps and restoring your files. Its Inherit Backup State option lets a new computer take over the old backup, but it “does not transfer any data to your computer itself”.

Old versions and deleted files are kept for 30 days by default, or a year if you switch that on; Forever history costs $0.006 per GB a month for versions older than a year. External drives must be reconnected at least every 30 days on the default setting, or their backed-up data may be removed. And by default the key that unlocks your backup is stored in Backblaze’s data centre, protected by your password, unless you set an optional private key.

We compare the two point by point in Yester vs Backblaze.

Arq: what does bringing your own storage involve?

Arq is backup software rather than a backup service. Arq 7 costs $59.99 per computer, and you set up and pay for the storage yourself, choosing from cloud storage accounts, an SFTP server, a NAS or an external disk. Arq Premium is $69.99 a year for up to five computers with 1 TB of storage included.

You decide what to back up, including whether to back up all drives, how often, such as every hour, and how long to keep it. Backups are encrypted with a password that, in Arq’s words, “will never leave your computer”. Restores work by picking a backup record by date and time, then the files and folders you want; Arq’s restore documentation doesn’t describe putting a whole Mac back onto a new machine.

Carbon Copy Cloner: why does a local copy need an off-site partner?

Carbon Copy Cloner (CCC) copies your Mac to a disk you keep, on a schedule you set: “hourly, daily, weekly, monthly, or when changes are detected”. Snapshots on the backup disk hold earlier versions, and Bombich says CCC can “recover your whole Mac, or migrate data to a new Mac”. CCC 7 needs macOS Ventura 13.1 or later, and a Personal & Household licence was £38.75 plus VAT on Bombich’s store when we checked.

Like Time Machine, though, CCC is a local backup. The disk sits near the Mac unless you carry a second one somewhere else and swap them regularly, and a disk kept elsewhere is only as current as your last swap.

IDrive: what does it back up on a Mac?

IDrive Personal is priced by storage rather than by computer: $11.99 a month for 5 TB, or $9.99 a month billed yearly, and one account can back up several computers, phones and tablets. Going over your plan may cost $0.25 per GB a month.

On a Mac, IDrive backs up files rather than the whole system: its entire machine backup is only available for Windows. It keeps up to 30 previous versions of each file, holds files you delete from your computer until you delete them or run Archive Cleanup, and encrypts with a default key unless you choose a private key that IDrive doesn’t store.

iCloud Drive: why doesn’t sync count as a backup?

Because a sync service copies your mistakes too. iCloud Drive keeps the same files on all your devices, so “when you delete a file on one device, it will be deleted on every device you’ve signed in to with the same Apple Account”. Deleted files can be recovered on iCloud.com for 30 days, and some apps keep versions, but there’s no separate record of your Mac as it was.

With Optimise Mac Storage on, older files may live only in iCloud, where a backup on the Mac can’t see them. And with standard data protection, Apple holds the keys to iCloud Drive; Advanced Data Protection changes that, but Apple no longer offers it to new users in the UK. We go further in iCloud is not a backup.

What’s the best setup for most Mac users?

Yester for the off-site copy, and Time Machine as well if you have a spare drive. The UK’s National Cyber Security Centre puts the 3-2-1 rule as “at least 3 copies, on 2 devices, and 1 offsite”, and your Mac, a Time Machine drive and Yester meet it with nothing to remember.

1. Install Yester and let the first backup run overnight, with the Mac plugged in.
2. Save your recovery key in a password manager, or let Yester keep a copy in your iCloud Keychain.
3. Check your AI coding conversations are covered. Claude Code and Codex keep them in hidden folders, ~/.claude and ~/.codex, and it isn’t always clear whether a backup includes them. Yester does.
4. Keep important iCloud files downloaded. Control-click folders you can’t lose and choose Keep Downloaded, so your backup can see them.
5. Add a Time Machine drive if you have one, and turn on Encrypt Backup when you set it up.
6. Test a restore. Open Browse & Restore, go back a week and bring one file back, so you know where to click on the day you need it.