TimeMachineEditor is a software for Mac OS X Leopard, Snow Leopard and Lion that lets you change the default one-hour backup interval of Time Machine.You can change the interval or create a more sophisticated scheduling. This is useful if you don’t need to backup every hour and don’t want the performance penalty. TimeMachineEditor works by updating the Time Machine configuration file on your Mac to match these three files. There's no 'restore to defaults' option in the program but you can easily reset the.

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Editor’s note: The following review is part of Macworld’sSummer of Mac Gems series. Each business day until the middle of August 2008, the Macworld staff will use the Mac Gems blog to briefly cover a favorite free or low-cost program. Visit the Mac Gems homepage for a list of past Mac Gems.

Leopard’s Time Machine feature backs up changed items every hour. In many cases, this is a great thing, because it means that you’ll never lose more than an hour’s work.

But if you’ve ever wanted to change Time Machine’s schedule—for example, because you don’t need to back up so often—Time Software’s TimeMachineEditor 1.3.1 lets you do just that. You can tweak the interval so that Time Machine backs up every, say, four hours, or you can choose to have Time Machine back up once a day, once a week, or once a month.

Time Machine Editor

You can also choose to have Time Machine back up automatically whenever a Time Machine disk is mounted or whenever your Mac wakes from sleep.