Time Machine will no longer support Time Capsule formatted with AFP Apple Filing Protocol

Will macOS future versions allow me to format my Time Capsule disk on my WiFi network using one of the new file formats or protocols the new versions will support?

No

If not, why not?

Apple decision to no longer support Time Machine backups over a "network" with future Mac operating systems.

Isn't a disk just a disk and can Apple simply not tell me my old disk format is no longer supported and then display the new formatting options and allow me to select one so my old disk device will be formatted with the new protocol?

No. The Time Capsule disk and any disks attached to an AirPort Extreme can only be formatted in Mac OS Extended (Journaled).....aka HFS+ for Time Machine backups. The same would be true if you were backing up to a Network Attached Storage device (NAS).

And then Apple could simply allow me to backup my MacBook just like I have always backed it up, using Time Machine, which I love and my Time Capsule WiFi router and backup system that are all rolled into one, simple and elegant and easy for customers like me to use like Apple is supposed to be. Am I missing something here?

We just explained why backups to a Time Capsule using future operating systems will not be supported.

When Apple makes things "official", the only way that you will be able to back up your Mac(s) using Time Machine will require that the backup disk be attached directly to your Mac. When you back up this way, the disk will be formatted in APFS, which is the same format that your Mac's internal drive is using.

The Time Capsule disk cannot be formatted in APFS. Even it could.....(it can't).....backups would not be supported over a network.

The era of AirPort Time Capsule NAS is ending, because the era of AFP is ending, and the era of SMBv1 has already ended.

You’ll get a warning akin to this: “Disk Not Recommended for Backups Future versions of macOS will no longer

support Time Capsule disks for Time Machine backups.”

If you want Time Machine backups to a NAS, you will need a NAS with Time Machine server support via recent SMB, and mDNS / Bonjour / ZeroConf. (You can probably work around a lack of mDNS, too.)

Options include Ubiquiti, Synology, TrueNAS, and various other choices, all of which support SMBv3 and mDNS.

macOS can serve storage, as well.

The storage file system used on the NAS storage isn’t particularly relevant here, so long as the NAS supports capabilities sufficient for Time Machine server, which again includes SMBv3 access, and mDNS.

Supported configuration details: Types of disks you can use with Time Machine on Mac - Apple Support

Archived details: Time Machine Over SMB Specification

TL;DR: Retrofitting SMBv3 support onto AirPort Time Capsule isn’t happening.

Note that Apple Filing Protocol (formerly AppleTalk Filing Protocol) is not a filesystem format. It's a network file sharing protocol that dates back to 1985, the year after Apple introduced the first Macintosh.

AppleInsider – Apple Filing Protocol will soon disappear completely from macOS

It looks as though Time Machine can now do network backups using the (Windows) SMB file sharing protocol. Although the Time Capsule supports SMB v1, I suspect that will not be good enough to allow continued Time Machine use once Apple pulls the plug on the deprecated Apple Filing Protocol. You would need a newer NAS, running a current version of SMB, that supports the current version of Time Machine.

Apple no longer sells Wi-Fi routers or NAS appliances under their own brand name, so this would mean going with some device from a third party.

Backup disks you can use with Time Machine - Apple Support

SMBv2 support airport time capsule - Apple Community

AppleCustomer9 wrote:

Too bad Apple designers and developers choose not to provide a new network protocol that is faster and more secure to replace this old network protocol from 1985

They did, in a fashion. In the old days, everyone had their own proprietary network file system protocol. What happened is that, basically, the ones from the Windows world (SMB), and the Unix world (NFS), "won".

Amazon Web Services – What’s the Difference Between NFS and SMB?

macOS can connect to SMB and NFS servers, and supports sharing files from a Mac to another computer using SMB.

Servers and shared computers you can connect to on Mac - Apple Support

Set up SMB file sharing on Mac - Apple Support

and too bad they do not have the MacOS that deprecates support for the old protocol to trigger a firmware update to the old Apple Time Capsules so that they would use the new network protocol. That could be a solution if the old Apple Time Capsules have the capacity to store and use a new network protocol.

Even if you had the most recent Time Capsule – the 802.11ac one – that's a device that Apple introduced in 2013 and discontinued in 2018. It's past the point where you're going to get new features. Earlier Time Capsules were discontinued anywhere between 2009 and 2013.

Perhaps however, Apple's marketing people really want to steer customers away from local in home or business backups to backing everything up to their cloud servers.

Apple sells iCloud as being mainly a synchronization service, and as a sort of "backup" for iPhones and iPads. As far as I know, they are not selling it as a cloud backup service for Macs. If you are interested in that, you may want to take a look at BackBlaze. (I've heard of them, although I've never used them.)

Hopefully these things go in cycles and we will get back to a more generous corporate culture at Apple who would prefer to keep their customers happy with wireless incremental backups via Time Machine than to have to be retro and go back to hard wired backups connected to their Apple devices. So 20th century.

Apple is not preventing you from backing up your computer over the network. Time Machine "can back up to a third-party NAS device that supports Time Machine over the SMB network protocol."

Backup disks you can use with Time Machine - Apple Support

However, Apple is no longer in the Wi-Fi access point and lightweight home NAS businesses. They got out of those when they discontinued the final AirPort Extreme and final Time Capsule in April 2018. If it's time to replace your old Time Capsule, you will need to buy a replacement from someone other than Apple.

Apple could and should do better than this but perhaps I have gotten spoiled to the old seamless technology and having the option as a capitalist to pay up front for an asset instead of signing up for a monthly service. From a financial perspective, I have always preferred to buy an asset and use it up to and beyond its useful life in order to reduce my monthly costs to operate and use that asset.

So, buy a third-party NAS that supports Time Machine, and a modern version of SMB (NOT the insecure SMB v1), and use it. If we're going to throw the "capitalist" word around, then why would Apple, as a company operating in a "capitalist" economy, be required to remain in the Wi-Fi NAS business forever just because it once was in it?

The iCloud backups may be one option for customers to backup their MacBooks

Apple's not selling iCloud as a backup service for Macs. You can use it, to a certain extent, as a backup … but they are not trying to position it as an alternative to directly-attached drives, to third-party NAS units, or to actual cloud backup services like Backblaze.

but it would also be nice to have the other option to buy an asset and use it wirelessly to store incremental backups and be able to restore from them.

That's called "buying a modern third-party NAS that supports Time Machine."

Retrofitting substantial new work into a roughly fifteen year old integrated design with (minimally) roughly seven year old hard disks, and with BCM4360 that can’t manage Wi-Fi 6, or Wi-Fi 6E, or the current Wi-Fi 7, and all this in a product segment that Apple exited in 2016, seems very much a substantial investment in the creation of support headaches and missed opportunities.

Those old hard disks are already failing, before any upgrades, too.

As for implementing and maintaining network storage protocols, Apple had many choices — including AFP, NFS, and SMB — and SMB is the easy choice there. More recently, AFP is gone, and NFS is fading.

The most Apple-like of the network vendors is probably Ubiquiti, with a massive selection of wired and Wi-Fi and other networking hardware available, and they’ve been just starting to offer network-attached storage. The first-generation dedicated UNAS Pro product includes Time Machine server support.

As for other available NAS options, Synology has a much wider selection of NAS boxes. Most (all?) of the Synology NAS boxes have time Machine server support.

Similar to exiting Wi-Fi, Apple also exited the server market at macOS 10.14, and Synology NAS and macOS itself can replace most of what the macOS server product had provided.

Most any NAS can allow local backups using Time Machine, or using add-on apps.

Some NAS products, including Synology, can then mirror those backups elsewhere. UNAS Pro has ”support for Dropbox, OneDrive, and Google Drive” and with “S3, BackBlaze, and Wasabi integrations launching soon”.

Where such both server and data redundancy is appropriate, I’m aware of one vendor offering 800 km spans for their distributed disaster-tolerant shared-write server and storage clustering products, but you’re not likely willing to pay those prices.

As for the “the customer is always right”, I’m skeptical. "If we adopt the policy of admitting whatever claims the customer makes to be proper, and if we always settle them at face value, we shall be subjected to inevitable losses." Put differently, some customers can be just too expensive to service, and most businesses have effectively “fired” certain customers, and that separation for a variety of reasons.

TL;DR: The market and the competitive product offerings have changed immensely since 1999, and the era of AirPort and AirPort Time Capsule is ending.

When you place you backups on a not-locally-attached Server/Host, Time Machine itself does not care what the server-to-server protocol is. But your current Mac does not want to be talking SMB-1 or AFP any longer, because it is not secure.

Time Machine itself does not care what the NATIVE File format used by the Server is. Time Machine just needs to be able to create its own Virtual Volume inside a Server File -- an expandable sparse bundle disk image file. When you open one of those, 'regular' Mac files are seen inside.

Most of the replies have [appropriately] suggested a third-party NAS as a really good solution for network backups.

I continue to use an old Mac as my network backup destination. (Requires MacOS X 10.13 High Sierra or later on the old Mac.) The other criterion is that it be almost-always available.

This job is not taxing in terms of compute power or I/O power, so many current or older Macs could be pressed into service for this job. Having many drives connected is superior in that it allows for creating multiple backup destinations for each Mac to be backed up. And these can be spread across different drives for improved availability on case of drive failure.

Do I need to buy something new? Will these devices still allow me to connect to the internet, or is this just backup?

When the next new Mac operating system is introduced, you will be able to connect to the Internet using the AirPorts, but you won't be able to back up your Mac(s) using Time Machine.

Now....if you don't update your Mac(s) and keep them on the current Sequoia system.....I assume that you will be able to continue backing up. I have no way to test that, since the new upcoming Mac operating system is not yet available.

On your Mac, tap on the Apple icon in the upper left corner of the screen....then tap on About This Mac....and look to see the name of the operating system that you are using.

If I still want the backup, what do I need to get to continue that?

Assuming that you update your Mac(s) to the new operating system, you have 2 options:

1. Connect a new hard drive directly to each Mac when you want to back up. Upside....simplicity. Downside....you have to connect the hard drive directly to the Mac when you want to back up.
2. Invest in a new Network Attached Storage (NAS) device and connect it to your current router. Upside.....you won't have to connect a hard drive directly to a Mac to back up. Downside.....significant expense for a NAS, and Apple does not offer this type of product.

Patricia Podolec wrote:

I'm not very techy, so I need some translation. I use an old but still works airport at my office to connect to the interneat and a time capsule at home to connet and use the backup at home. Do I need to buy something new?

The AirPort and AirPort Time Capsule Wi-Fi feature will continue to work.

The AirPort Time Capsule storage feature will not be accessible to a Mac running macOS 26 or later.

Will these devices still allow me to connect to the internet, or is this just backup?

This is “just backup”.

macOS 26 is dropping support for accessing the storage within AirPort Time Capsule.

The Wi-Fi and related features will continue to work.

I'm not even sure what to ask! If I still want the backup, what do I need to get to continue that?

You will need a locally-connected disk, or a network-connected storage device with Time Machine server support.

Please keep this in very much lay terms. Thank you. P.S. I do not know what AFB is or NS, or whatever the initials mean.

AFP is Apple Filing Protocol, NFS is Network File System, and SMB is Server Message Block, and all of these are mechanisms that allow access into remote storage.

Apple is consolidating support onto SMB, which is the most common choice across most vendors.

I just want to know what I need to get to continue connecting to the internet and to continue backing up my computer. Again, Thank You!!

This is not an issue prior to upgrading to macOS 26, arriving later this year.

One of the closest available equivalents to an AirPort Time Capsule is a Synology Wi-Fi or mesh router, with an external hard disk added. synology has several different routing and mesh products available, and add-on external hard disks can be acquired from many sources.

https://www.synology.com/en-us/products/compare/routers

If you want separate components for each function, you can continue to use the AirPort for Wi-Fi, and add a Synology network-attached storage device, and can then replace the AirPort Wi-Fi when that becomes necessary.

In addition to Synology, there are other vendors offering network-attached storage with Time Machine server support, as well.

A local computer shop will probably be willing to help set some or all of this up.

I wonder why Apple does not want customers to be able to have backups run in the background over a network. I selected the option to have encrypted backups and use file vault to encrypt the Mac storage so I would think that between the two plus the firewall that this might address any security concerns Apple may have for customers but apparently not.

Perhaps Apple wants people to backup everything to their cloud servers. I am not sure how safe that really is compared to the supposedly older technology and insofar as customers having to plug in a drive to backup, it sure feels like we are going back in time. I remember having to connect laptops to hard drives for backups way back in the 1990s and 2000s some 15 years ago now.

Perhaps the marketing and finance and accounting people in Apple had more to do with this decision than the technical hardware and software people. Sure does not seem in line with what Steve Jobs vision once was. Perhaps Apple and Mr. Cook are showing their age. C'est la vie. Wireless incremental backups were nice while they lasted. Much like federal social benefits that some people derogatorily refer to as entitlements, once you get used to something and then someone takes it away, it feels like a real loss. Such is life. Thanks for the detail reply.

camulligan wrote:

I wonder why Apple does not want customers to be able to have backups run in the background over a network.

NAS with Time Machine server is supported for remote backups.

AFP and SMBv1 (and devices limited to same) are not, in an upcoming macOS release.

What to look for? A NAS with Time Machine server support.

I’ve listed two commercial NAS vendors, and an open source NAS project, above.

More generally, running SMBv1 is an invitation for a Very Bad Day.

The issues with SMBv1 are not new, either:

• https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/blog/filecab/stop-using-smb1/425858

MrHoffman wrote:

More generally, running SMBv1 is an invitation for a Very Bad Day.

A quick search suggests that the flaws of SMB version 1 include

• No encryption at all, even for authentication credentials. This could be really bad if combined with a really old version of Wi-Fi where Wi-Fi-level encryption is either absent, or too weak to pose any real barriers to the Bad Guys. (I think I read once that WEP can sometimes be cracked in under a minute.)
• Susceptible to replay attacks
• Susceptible to denial of service attacks

Using SMB version 1 to transfer data you care about would thus be somewhat like leaving the door to your house unlocked, and hoping that no thieves discovered how very easy it was to get in.

Grant Bennet-Alder wrote:

…

I continue to use an old Mac as my network backup destination. (Requires MacOS X 10.13 High Sierra or later on the old Mac.) The other criterion is that it be almost-always available.

As an alternative, TrueNAS works with x86-64 hardware, too.

This job is not taxing in terms of compute power or I/O power, so many current or older Macs could be pressed into service for this job.

Definitely. Network bottlenecks are probably going to be a factor earlier than processing too, whether that’s due to a slow Wi-Fi connection, or contention at the NAS, or Fast Ethernet gear as can be found in older configurations.

Having many drives connected is superior in that it allows for creating multiple backup destinations for each Mac to be backed up. And these can be spread across different drives for improved availability on case of drive failure.

Apropos of nothing, best pick RAID 6 over RAID 5.

RAID 5 can have a nasty habit of imploding during a rebuild, due to a second error.