• Improved

  Errors related to accessing the content of the "/private/var/protected" folder are now suppressed (because that folder is, very transparently, protected by System Integrity Protection).

• Fixed

  Fixed a crash that was occurring when choosing the option to convert a destination to APFS in the Backup Volume Setup Assistant.

• Improved

  The "Temporarily download cloud-only content" setting is now only applied if the source is a folder. We're seeing too many cases where people have this setting applied to a task that backs up the whole startup disk, and that's leading to a din of annoying (albeit usually harmless) errors, and potential space constraints for future restore activity. See this Kbase article for additional details on this change.

• Improved

  Implemented an alternate method for forcing the download of cloud-only file data in cases where macOS FileProvider claimed to download a file without error, but did not actually populate the data. This resolves a handful of reports we have received regarding the presence of 0-byte placeholder files on a backup volume despite the task being configured to download cloud-only content.

• Improved

  Made small adjustment to how the WiFi SSID is obtained on macOS Tahoe that should be a little bit more reliable (i.e. when determining if a backup task should run based on network conditions).

• Fixed

  CCC's privileged helper tool now ignores requests from older versions of CCC. This change resolves a theoretical scenario in which an older version of the CCC command-line utility could be altered and manipulated to mount a snapshot without superuser privileges (but with at least administrator privileges). macOS doesn't require superuser privileges to mount snapshots, nevertheless we prefer to impose the superuser requirement for requests coming from CCC's command-line utility to ensure that they are performed with deliberate user intent and consideration. Thanks to Csaba Fitzl (@theevilbit) of Iru for raising this esoteric scenario to our attention.

• Fixed

  Attempts to mount a snapshot of the startup disk will now only be permitted via CCC's Disk Center. The mount will also be preceded by a dialog comparable to the one presented by Disk Utility in the same scenario, explaining that some protected folders will be accessible on the snapshot.

• New

  Added support for pausing tasks to the CCC command-line utility (e.g. Carbon Copy Cloner.app/Contents/MacOS/ccc task pause "task name").

• Improved

  Improved the contrast of the text in the Action column in Task History Audits; particularly in cases where the user's macOS Theme color is Graphite.

• Fixed

  Fixed a handful of issues related to importing tasks, especially tasks that are arranged in groups.

• Fixed

  Fixed some logic that was preventing the Start button from getting disabled when you switch from a non-running task to a running task.

• Improved

  Fixed the drawing of the snapshot navigator slider cell elements for macOS Tahoe.

• Fixed

  Fixed a logic issue that was preventing CCC from creating "vacation snapshots" on the source when the destination is a NAS that is unavailable.

• Improved

  Improved CCC's responsiveness to macOS Appearance (i.e. Light vs. Dark) changes on macOS Tahoe.

• Fixed

  A Preview run will no longer create folders on the destination when the Task Filter behavior is set to "Include".

• Improved

  Fixed some file size values (and the resulting "bytes copied" math) in a "Preview" audit in cases where those files are not copied, rather only their attributes are updated.

• Improved

  Improved the contrast of the options presented in the Backup Volume Setup Assistant. The buttons in most of the option boxes now respond to the Return key press so they are colored with the accent color. This is very handy on Tahoe where buttons otherwise appear lifeless and practically fade into the background.

• Improved

  Added an exclusion for an application installation staging folder that popped up in Tahoe and was causing some unnecessary errors.

• Improved

  Improved the task audit's presentation of the quantity of data removed or replaced during an event. For Preview events, this information is now presented in red text.

• Improved

  The "current" volume is now indexed in the Snapshot Comparison window so that files that are present on the current volume but not in one of the selected snapshots will show up in the search results.

• Improved

  Made some adjustments to the calculation of checksums for extended attributes to address the errant recopying of files that have an out-of-spec "com.apple.decmpfs" extended attribute on the source despite not actually being compressed.

• Improved

  Fixed an issue where some files were repeatedly appearing in a task audit because CCC was attempting to re-apply the UF_TRACKED flag to those files. This was occurring on a MacFUSE volume that doesn't support that flag (nor complain when the flag is applied, nor retain the flag).

• Improved

  "Suspend all tasks" is now available in the Dashboard contextual menu (e.g. right-click on the "C" icon in the menubar).

• Fixed

  Addressed an issue where CCC was showing "-1 bytes" of snapshot disk usage for volumes that had no snapshots.

• Improved

  The search expression in the Task Audit table is now preserved when selecting a different task event.

• New

  In addition to holding down the Control key (and clicking the "Start" button) to apply a Backup Health Check when it otherwise would not have been applied, you can now hold down the Control key to disable Backup Health Check if a Backup Health Check is due. This behavior was also extended to the "Run Task" contextual menu item for the CCC Dashboard (i.e. the menu you see when you right-click on the "C" icon in the menubar).

• Fixed

  Fixed an issue that was causing the Save button to immediately reappear after saving a "When source files are modified" task when applying a run time limit.

• Improved

  The total snapshot disk usage presented in the Disk Center chart is now updated in a more timely manner after snapshots are deleted.

• Fixed

  Fixed an issue in which the Automation popover might hang when enabling a task runtime limit.

• Improved

  Increased the font size of the Task Notes text view.

• Fixed

  We have received a handful of reports that the mini Task Progress window won't close on macOS Tahoe (despite an apparent effort to close the window). This build of CCC adds a second, slightly different close request that should resolve that. If you're still seeing this behavior, though, please choose "Report a problem" from CCC's Help menu to let us know about it.

• New

  Added a "Comment" column to the Snapshots table to show comments associated with protected snapshots. This column is hidden by default, but can be enabled by right-clicking on the table header.

• Fixed

  Addressed the handling of vestigial, pre-Sonoma-era iCloud placeholder files. These placeholders should never exist on a post-Ventura version of macOS, but we found one case where the presence of these terds was leading to inconsistent results. These files are now treated like ordinary files and will no longer affect the copying of the "real" files that they reside next to.

• Fixed

  Addressed an issue that arose in 7.1.2 where sparse files located on a NAS volume (that claims to support sparse files) were getting recopied each time the backup task runs.

• Improved

  CCC will now more effectively dissent requests to unmount the source volume snapshot when the task is actively using that volume for the duration of a task event. Requests to unmount that snapshot are pretty rare, but that can happen if free space on the source volume is very low, or during a logout event. This change resolves the errors that would ensue in those cases when the source is unmounted while we're using it.

• Fixed

  Fixed the hotkey that is used to perform an ad hoc Backup Health Check (it should have been the Control key, not the Command key).

This is the official qualification build of CCC for macOS 26 (Tahoe). Most of the improvements in this update are not specific to Tahoe, so this update is recommended for users running Ventura, Sonoma and Sequoia as well.

• New

  CCC has a new "glass" icon that looks great on macOS Tahoe! Big thanks to our UI designer Enelia at Abacus Finch who was able to find a way to keep our beloved page curl with the new glass material.

• New

  The CCC menubar icon can now be moved around in the menubar, or removed by holding down the Command key while dragging the icon. Removing it in this manner will sync with the "Show CCC's icon in the menubar" setting in CCC Settings > Dashboard. Tahoe users: If you disable the CCC menubar icon via the new System Settings > Menu Bar > Allow in the Menu Bar interface, CCC cannot be aware of that setting. For the best experience, we recommend that you use the settings inside of CCC for controlling whether the CCC menubar icon is visible.

• Improved

  The "Find and replace corrupted files on the destination" setting is now officially named "Backup Health Check".

• Improved

  Removed the "Standard Copy" button; the name of this button was a misnomer. This button was only present when Quick Update was enabled on a task, and in those cases, running the task with the Quick Update setting is the "standard" way of running that task. The Standard Copy button was added as a way to suppress the Quick Update feature in an ad hoc manner. This button was not frequently used, and its presence with that particular name was leading to some unnecessary confusion and concern. In lieu of a separate button, you can now hold down the Option key while clicking the Start button if you would like to have CCC rescan the entire source and destination (i.e. suppress Quick Update). Additionally, you can hold down the Control key to perform an ad hoc Backup Health Check. The resulting behavior of the modifier key presses is reinforced by icons on the Start button that correspond to the Quick Update and Backup Health Check features, as well as customized tooltips that will appear when you hover your mouse over those buttons.

• New

  Added a menu item to the Volumes sidebar contextual menu that offers to delete an APFS volume (e.g. if you accidentally added an extraneous volume via the Backup Volume Setup Assistant). Select the volume in the sidebar first, then right-click on the volume to get an option to delete it.

• Improved

  Added yet another workaround for Apple's restriction on access to the current WiFi network name for the macOS Sequoia 15.6 update. CCC uses the WiFi network name only in support of the option to limit a scheduled task to running when the system is connected to a specific WiFi network.

• Improved

  Improved the repopulation of extended attributes in cases where the "Don't support extended attributes" setting was disabled after initially populating the destination while the setting was enabled. In cases where this setting was initially enabled because the destination was a NAS volume, CCC will now proactively seek out absent resource fork and FinderInfo extended attributes on files that are otherwise unmodified if the task is subsequently configured to preserve extended attributes.

• New

  Adding "/*" to the end of a search expression in a Task Audit will now show the content of a matching folder.

• Fixed

  Resolved an issue where CCC would fail to import tasks or restore the CCC application support folder if CCC's helper tool was not yet registered with macOS. CCC will now prompt to register the helper tool prior to importing tasks.

• Fixed

  Fixed a crasher that could occur if many, many tasks were started simultaneously (e.g. in response to a volume mount event).

• Improved

  Fixed a logic issue that was causing some "Folder was deleted" audit transactions to get a "circle with plus" icon rather than the "circle with minus" icon. Addressed another issue that was leading to extraneous folder entries in an audit when those folders had not actually been modified.

• Improved

  Orphaned compression attributes are dropped when transferring a file or dataless folder that does not have the associated "this file is compressed" flag (this part is not new). Addressed a logic issue that was causing files (or more commonly, no-longer-dataless folders) with these vestigial attributes to appear in the task audit every time the task is run, despite that the files were not actually getting modified.

• Improved

  Addressed an issue in which CCC was prematurely aborting a task due to an apparent stall while collecting the attributes of files in a folder that had an exceptionally high file count (e.g. >100K).

• Fixed

  Fixed an issue that affected how sparse files are copied between volumes that have different optimal buffer sizes.

• Improved

  Improved the experience of switching between Simple Mode and Standard Mode, especially when CCC's helper tool has not yet been registered with macOS.

• Improved

  CCC will avoid auditing a Quick Update task if the destination NAS filesystem URL has only a DNS-suffix difference (e.g. smb://user@host vs. smb://user@host._smb._tcp.local are now treated as the same).

• Improved

  CCC now verifies that the device ID of the "_CCC SafetyNet" folder matches the device ID of the destination volume. If that folder has been replaced with a symlink that points to some other volume (for example), CCC will abort the task. This change resolves the errors that would occur if the SafetyNet folder was on some other volume (e.g. because files cannot be moved across device boundaries, they would have to be copied, then deleted). CCC only moves content into the SafetyNet folder — copying and then deleting the content defeats the purpose of the SafetyNet feature.

• Fixed

  Fixed an issue in which the Backup Volume Setup Assistant would be unresponsive when opened via the button in the Backup Coach window.

• Fixed

  Fixed the collection of total snapshot disk usage for the source and destination popup menu charts.

• Improved

  Fixed an issue where CCC was failing to create a new folder because the parent folder was locked on the destination.

• Fixed

  Corrected an issue that was leading to "Audit failure" messages in the Task Filter window when a previously-excluded folder had been replaced by a symbolic link. CCC never follows symbolic links, so having filter rules that descend from a symlink is invalid — these obsolete rules are now removed from the filter whenever the filter window is opened.

• Improved

  Fileflags (e.g. hidden, locked) that can be preserved on the destination are now preserved by default when backing up to or from a NAS volume.

• Improved

  Removed a condition that was causing CCC to re-enable Spotlight on the destination in some cases.

• Fixed

  Fixed a localization issue that was causing notifications to be presented only in English.

• Fixed

  Fixed an issue that could lead to the wrong notes being presented for a task if you were to select another task before dismissing the Notes popover.

• Fixed

  Addressed an issue that could cause the Backup Volume Setup Assistant to be unresponsive.

• Fixed

  Corrected the handling of resource forks that are larger than 4GB.

• New

  For Sonoma and Sequoia users, CCC now offers an option to set a custom icon on locally-attached source and destination volumes. Select an image of your own, or get creative with Apple's new Image Playground. Click on CCC's Source or Destination selector to find the new "Set custom icon" options. Apple's Image Playground requires an Apple Silicon Mac that supports Apple Intelligence and macOS Sequoia 15.2 or later.

• Improved

  The Snapshot Comparison Browser search field now supports wildcard and regular expression searches.

• New

  CCC Dashboard's "Suspend all tasks" dialog now offers a date picker option for those cases where the pre-set intervals are not flexible enough.

• Improved

  In the Tasks tab of the CCC Dashboard application, the "Defer…" option is now available for any scheduled task even when that task is not running. This allows the user to proactively defer a task before its scheduled run time rather than having to wait until the task is actually running.

• Improved

  If a task is configured to restart or shut down the system "after a 60 second delay", that delay will no longer be applied when the screen is locked. In those cases macOS will not present the restart/shutdown dialog at all, so CCC proceeds directly to the request instead. This does not affect the fate of unsaved documents. If an application requires attention before it can quit, that application will cancel the restart/shutdown request even if the screen is locked.

• Fixed

  Fixed a logic issue in the Dashboard that was causing the "Shutdown if previously off" feature to not work.

• New

  Spotlight will now be disabled on the destination by default when selecting the option to use a destination volume exclusively for the CCC task in the Backup Volume Setup Assistant. Users can also select a volume in the sidebar and disable (or re-enable) Spotlight via a switch. This change will hopefully address the interference that Spotlight and its mediaanalysisd buddy are causing with regard to unmounting CCC destination volumes.

• New

  Added an option to the ccc command-line utility to perform snapshot thinning and pruning on a specified volume according to its current Snapshot Retention Policy.

• Improved

  Improved the recapturing of space savings on the destination when files have been duplicated on the source (e.g. in the Finder).

• Improved

  The macOS Installer Media Assistant now requests 20GB when "borrowing" space for installer media. This accommodates the larger requirement for macOS Sequoia 15.3.1.

• Improved

  The "Legacy Bootable Copy Assistant" functionality is now merged into the Backup Volume Setup Assistant.

• Improved

  When a task is configured to make a legacy bootable copy of the source, the task is no longer automatically converted to a "Standard Backup" configuration after the cloning procedure has completed. When you subsequently run the task again, CCC will erase the destination and repeat the legacy bootable copy procedure.

• Improved

  The "Present an alert dialog for reminders" Dashboard setting is now only applied to reminders, not to "Prompt before proceeding" task prompts.

• Improved

  The "MobileSoftwareUpdate" folder is now hidden by default on the destination. This folder is technically not hidden at the root of the startup disk, but it's not exposed via a firmlink, and it exists exclusively on the Data volume, so it effectively does not appear in the Finder.

• Improved

  Build 8132 addresses a regression around the handling of large sparse files when determining whether there is enough free space for a file. It also addresses an edge case in which CCC would request that the user grant full disk access to CCC despite that it was already granted.

This update includes a handful of proactive security and privacy enhancements

• Improved

  This version of CCC embraces new macOS functionality that allows us to avoid installing the CCC helper tool into Macintosh HD > Library > PrivilegedHelperTools. The helper tool will be "registered" with macOS, but will remain inside of the CCC application bundle. This new practice resolves a long list of complications that have arisen over the years with the legacy LaunchDaemon configuration as Apple has improved macOS platform security.

• Improved

  Full Disk Access is no longer required separately for CCC's helper tool. CCC's coaching around this procedure has been updated to reflect the new requirement. No changes are required for current CCC installations.

• Improved

  CCC offers new UI in Settings > Advanced to specify the authorization requirements for a variety of CCC activities. For example, you may wish to require an admin user for CCC task changes, but allow non-admin users to start/stop tasks. Now you can configure that with ease in Advanced Settings.

• Improved

  Build 8082 improves some 7.0.4 changes to the handling of low free space conditions on the destination.

• Improved

  The Snapshot Navigator now indexes bundle contents too, so we can search for files within, for example, a Photos library bundle file.

• Fixed

  Fixed a logic issue introduced in the 7.0.3 update that leads to an error when running "legacy bootable copy" tasks on Intel Macs running Sequoia.

• Fixed

  Fixed an issue introduced in the 7.0.3 update that would cause postflight shut down and restart requests to fail if the task was started manually.

• Improved

  Added yet another workaround for Apple's restriction on access to the current WiFi network name in macOS Sequoia. These restrictions are affecting our ability to limit task execution to when the Mac is connected to a specific WiFi network. Thanks to the assembly of WiFi network name+location databases (e.g. collected by companies that provide street-view imagery), WiFi network names can be used for location fingerprinting. As such, Apple deems this to be "private" data. Access to this information is only granted to an application that specifically requests access to location information. That's way more information than we want or need for this particular feature within CCC. Making the matter yet worse, that location service isn't even available to background "daemon" applications, like CCC's helper tool. While this update includes a workaround that will temporarily allow us to continue pulling the current WiFi SSID from the system, we anticipate that Apple will eventually "fix" these gaps as well, and the feature will have to be disabled.

• Improved

  Fixed an odd edge-case condition where CCC was failing a task in the readiness phase because a source NTFS volume lacked support for a common system call.

• Fixed

  Fixed an issue in which CCC's helper was occasionally not completely exiting on startup in cases where there were no scheduled tasks. This was leading to cases where the task history database would be closed, thus disallowing new entries to be recorded.

• Improved

  Improved the experience of editing a password in the email server settings panel.

• Fixed

  Addressed an edge case scenario where file ownership/permissions were preserved despite using the "Don't preserve permissions" advanced setting in cases where files were cloned via the APFS clonefile() method (i.e. in cases where the source and destination are folders on the same APFS volume).

• Improved

  CCC will apply a more strict 5GB minimum free space requirement when the destination is the startup disk (or a volume in the same APFS container as the startup disk).

• Improved

  Adjusted how ASR is invoked when creating a legacy bootable copy of macOS Sequoia on Apple Silicon Macs. This corrects some cases where the destination would fail to boot and the macOS Boot Recovery Assistant would indicate that macOS would need to be reinstalled. This does not resolve all of those issues, though. We have still found ASR to be a little bit inconsistent in its ability to produce bootable devices on the Apple Silicon platform, despite creating perfect byte-for-byte copies.

• Improved

  Implemented a workaround for some oddly-specific folder corruption on Lucidfs that occasionally prevents CCC from creating the write readiness cookie file, despite having no trouble creating other files in the same folder.

• Improved

  Task groups no longer get a "success" icon if they run (e.g. on a schedule) but have no tasks to run (e.g. because all tasks within it are disabled, or because the group has no tasks at all).

• Fixed

  Fixed a false-positive postflight re-verification error that was affecting filesystem-compressed files on macOS Sequoia.

• Improved

  Resolved a scenario where files that had been duplicated via the APFS clonefile() procedure were getting re-cloned on the destination during each run because macOS adds a GateKeeper extended attribute to files on the destination.

This build of CCC is qualified to run on macOS Sequoia.

• Fixed

  Build 8048 addresses a crashing issue that was introduced in 7.0.2 that could occur on Macs that lack a WiFi interface.

• Improved

  Addressed a scrolling performance issue in the "Verify files copied by this task" window that could occur when selecting multiple files.

• Improved

  Corrected the appearance of the Notes text in Dark Mode.

• Improved

  The Task Filter, Advanced Settings, and Notes icons at the bottom of the CCC window now use a badge to indicate that customizations are applied rather than relying on color alone.

• Improved

  UUID resetting is now disabled for ExFAT volumes because the exfat.util resets the UUID to all zeroes (bug filed with Apple: FB13813658).

• Improved

  When a postflight power management setting is selected that involves presenting the system's 60 second countdown dialog, CCC now wakes the screen before making the request so that this dialog is presented more consistently.

• Improved

  Fix a "missing character" font issue for a message in the Task Plan for tasks that are configured to run "When files are modified on the source".

• Fixed

  Fixed an issue where the "Delete snapshots that are older than {}" and "Limit snapshot disk usage to {}" values were getting swapped in the Snapshot Retention Policy table.

• Fixed

  "At rest" encrypted volumes (i.e. the internal storage in an Apple Silicon Mac, or an Intel Mac with a T2 chip) are no longer presented as "Encrypted" in the Disk Center unless FileVault is explicitly enabled with a password.

• Improved

  When you select a volume in CCC's sidebar and enable encryption on that volume, CCC no longer saves the user-specified password in the System keychain. The prompt for password retention is deliberately limited to cases where an encrypted volume is selected as a source or destination to a CCC task.

• Improved

  Improved the procedure of granting full disk access to CCC's helper tool.

• Improved

  Network location-based limits can also be applied to task groups.

• Fixed

  Resolved an issue with creating hardlinks in cases where the destination was low on free space.

• Improved

  The Snapshot Comparison browser now shows older versions of application bundles.

• Improved

  Navigation activity to and from task groups is now included in the history that is tracked by the Back/Next buttons in the toolbar.

• New

  A new Backup Volume Setup Assistant guides users through formatting destination volumes, and asserts that the destination is dedicated to the backup task to avoid conflicts with other backups and other purposes of disk usage. The new setup assistant should go a really long way towards getting backup tasks set up correctly the first time, and without a trip to the documentation.

• New

  Added search functionality to the Snapshot Comparison Window.

• New

  Added a snapshot disk usage limit to custom snapshot retention policies (i.e. so you can say, "I want to retain backup history, but I only want the 'history' part of my backup to consume 500GB of space").

• New

  Added support for flagging specific snapshots to not be deleted by CCC snapshot thinning and pruning, "protected snapshots".

• New

  Added support for manually creating snapshots on a volume.

• New

  Scheduled tasks can now be limited to running only when the Mac is on ethernet, on a specific WiFi network, or set to a specific location.

• New

  CCC's file copier can now detect renamed folders on APFS source volumes, and will rename the folder on the destination rather than recopying all of its content.

• New

  You can now store notes alongside each task (e.g. to indicate the purpose of a task, or some other piece of helpful context).

• New

  When snapshot support is enabled on the source, CCC will now create snapshots on the source at the scheduled task run time, even if the destination is unavailable. When you travel without a backup disk, this allows you to retain older versions of files on the source while you're traveling.

• New

  You can now enable/disable encryption on APFS volumes via a simple switch. Select a volume in the sidebar to find this setting.

• New

  We added support to the CCC command-line utility for creating, deleting, listing and mounting snapshots. Run the ccc utility without arguments to see the new options.

• New

  The CCC Dashboard offers more granular control over which CCC Activity events are shared with Notification Center and the level of attention that the notifications will request.