Tell HN: macOS supports instant snapshot rollbacks

I discovered this today and was quite surprised, so I thought I'd share.

You can obviously do a full reset and then use Migration Assistant on a backup. This might take a half hour and it's a hassle.

But you can also boot into recovery, go in "Restore from Time Machine", pick a recent snapshot (including hourly "local snapshots"), and roll back to it. It takes seconds (and a reboot) and your Mac is now rolled back to its previous state.

2 points | by concinds 1 hour ago

1 comments

  • LatencyKills 1 hour ago
    Ex-Apple dev here. Just for clarity: you can't use local snapshot restore in macOS Recovery to downgrade to an entirely earlier macOS version (e.g., stable to beta or major version back). It rolls back data and user state within the same OS version due to Signed System Volume (SSV) protections.

    I've seen people get pretty confused when trying to roll back this way.