Backing data up is important.

When you’re making lots of incremental changes over the course of a day, Apple’s Time Machine software can be a life saver. If at any moment you accidentally delete a file, need to roll back a file, or otherwise review a previous change, you’re able to do so via an … interesting … interface. Regardless, it has saved me on numerous occasions.

Well, something I noticed after a short while is that the Time Capsule backups tend to kill your network connection when in use along with taking a long time when using apps that update frequently (iTunes library xml files, for example, are backed up nearly hourly as I listen to a lot of music while working). Also, once an hour might be too much for a lot of people. Unfortunately, Apple does not provide an interface to make any changes other than ON & OFF. This makes it rather difficult to find a good setup that works for each person’s individual needs.

That’s until I found an app called Time Machine Editor. It’s quite simple, and does exactly what it sounds like – it lets you edit the frequency in which Time Machine makes its backups. It can be set to back up only when you manually fire it up, or it can be set to back up at whatever interval you wish. For my current setup, I’ve chosen to back up every 3 hours, which seems to be a sweet spot for me.

If you use Time Machine and haven’t heard of this app, check it out – it’s free.