Default exclusions on macOS

These paths are excluded from backups by default on macOS:

System and application caches

  • /Library/Caches/
  • /System/Library/Caches/

User-specific temporary files and caches

  • /Users/*/Library/Caches/
  • /Users/*/.Trash/

Temporary directories

  • /tmp/
  • /var/tmp/
  • /var/log/
  • /private/tmp/
  • /private/var/tmp/
  • /private/var/log/

Spotlight indexes

  • */Spotlight-V100/
  • /.Spotlight-V100/

Time Machine backups

  • /Volumes/com.apple.TimeMachine.localsnapshots/
  • /.MobileBackups/

Miscellaneous

  • /.TemporaryItems/
  • /.fseventsd/

Core dumps

  • /cores/

Network mounts and shared volumes

  • /Network/

Application Support (non-essential)

  • /Users/*/Library/Application Support/CrashReporter/
  • /Users/*/Library/Application Support/Google/Chrome/Default/Cache/
  • /Users/*/Library/Application Support/Firefox/Profiles/*.default/cache2/
  • /Users/*/Library/Application Support/Slack/Service Worker/CacheStorage/

Safari

  • /Users/*/Library/Safari/LocalStorage/
  • /Users/*/Library/Safari/Favicon Cache/
  • /Users/*/Library/Containers/com.apple.Safari/Data/Library/Caches/

System folders and containers

  • /private/
  • /System/

User Library containers and groups

  • /Users/*/Library/Containers/
  • /Users/*/Library/Group Containers/
  • /Users/*/Library/Daemon Containers/

Application Support for system apps

  • /Users/*/Library/Application Support/com.apple*/