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

AirPort Extreme Base Station or Time Capsule

These solutions are no longer recommended, because they use Apple Filing Protocol (AFP), which won't be supported in a future version of macOS.

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? If not, why not? 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? 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?

Posted on Aug 9, 2025 10:38 AM

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Bob Timmons

Community+ 2025

Level 10

182,930 points

Posted on Aug 9, 2025 11:09 AM

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?

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.

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55 replies

Aug 9, 2025 3:10 PM in response to Bob Timmons

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.

Aug 9, 2025 3:17 PM in response to MrHoffman

Wow, I need a recent Systems Engineering class to follow this technical jargon and I am not up to date. Sounds like I will need a fair amount of technical support in person or online FaceTime to try to understand what my options will be going forward. I wonder if the local Apple stores have options and can explain them to me. I wonder how much all of this will cost and I suspect at some point this old WiFi router will be phased out as well in terms of its ability to work with the new software. Onward, upwards and forward I hope though it does sound like I will be going back to wired backups. How 20th century and I thought we were 25 years into the 21st century. My bad.

Aug 11, 2025 5:39 AM in response to Servant of Cats

Thank you for this reply. Now I understand my misunderstanding.

Too bad Apple does not do what my father taught me when I was young, namely never to complain about a problem without offering one or more solutions.

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 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.

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. The profit incentive of capitalists to maximize profits does not always result in logical or rational behavior by people who work for these huge corporations. I much prefer the old Total Quality Management and Continuous Process Improvement approaches of the past to improve the quality of products and services over time to deliver a quality product and service at a fair price while paying fair wages to earn fair profits. Sadly, instead of our economy operating with this type of live and let live culture, we seem to be moving more and more to the economics of greed. The people with the most capital game the economic system against the people with the least capital and down the rabbit hole of history we go. 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. We are in 2025, 25 years into the 21st century. 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. The iCloud backups may be one option for customers to backup their MacBooks 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. Though the UNIX based cloud server encryption and security along with the internet network security via the cell phone network security has improved a lot, until each customers information is uniquely encrypted per customer like tuta (formerly tutanota) does with their web based email service, I will prefer to use local physical security and rely on that because I think it is safer. I may be naive about that but I am entitled. I remember learning a long time ago that the customer is always right and I continue to think so because even if a customer like me is wrong, from my perspective, I am not. C'est la vie, such is life. I cannot control what Apple does though I wish I had more input into the process and yes I use the Apple Feedback to the MacOS team about this old network protocol being deprecated now that I understand more about what the root cause of this message and problem Apple is going to created for me will be.

Thank you to everyone on this chain who has replied and helped me understand what is going to happen and why. I hope you are all healthy, happy and prosperous this year and for the rest of your lives. Thanks again.

Aug 11, 2025 1:34 PM in response to MrHoffman

RAID sounds so romantic and wonderful -- until you live with it through a drive failure and learn ALL about it. RAID can be really useful for "always-available" processing. But it comes with some serious compromises. As you know, RAID is NOT backup.

[in my opinion] most users would be far better served by dedicating multiple drives to multiple independent backups. That is what I have implemented as well.

Aug 11, 2025 2:48 PM in response to Grant Bennet-Alder

Grant Bennet-Alder wrote:

RAID sounds so romantic and wonderful -- until you live with it through a drive failure and learn ALL about it. RAID can be really useful for "always-available" processing. But it comes with some serious compromises. As you know, RAID is NOT backup.

I’ve been using RAID for $NUMERIC_OVERFLOW years, including many recoveries.

RAID is handy when the disk fails though, and disks can fail a sector or a spindle at a time, or an entire array. Under nothing, or under an important file.

Yep. RAID is not (usually) a backup. But it can be. I’ve used RAID-1 as a backup, by rotating disks out of the array for local or off-site backup, and re-merging the returning disks, or re-merging new “empty” disks. That usually with three or more volumes in the RAID-1, and a RAID controller that’s not, um, untalented.

[in my opinion] most users would be far better served by dedicating multiple drives to multiple independent backups. That is what I have implemented as well.

Just a Box Of Disks. JBOD.

But I’m not a big fan of a nest of USB devices and cables which can result from that.

Time Machine backups to a few JBOD disks works well as an alternative, though. Or Time Machine to two RAID pools, if there are enough Macs and enough of a budget.

Aug 11, 2025 2:51 PM in response to Grant Bennet-Alder

Grant Bennet-Alder wrote:

RAID sounds so romantic and wonderful -- until you live with it through a drive failure and learn ALL about it. RAID can be really useful for "always-available" processing.

With really large drives, a rebuild could take a while. You can get 3.5" mechanical hard drives with capacities as high as 24 TB (each). 150 MB/s is a good transfer rate for a mechanical hard drive. I believe I calculated that it would take over 44 hours to transfer 24 TB of data, running continuously flat out at that rate.

One thing you absolutely don't want to do is to put a hard drive which uses Shingled Magnetic Recording into a RAID. These drives store data in such a way that when you rewrite one sector, you may destroy data next to it, forcing the system to save and rewrite the data in that area, and so forth, and so on. This absolutely tanks the speed of doing a RAID rebuild and makes it much more likely that the RAID will suffer another failure before the rebuild can complete – if it completes at all.

Aug 11, 2025 10:10 PM in response to Servant of Cats

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? Will these devices still allow me to connect to the internet, or is this just backup? I'm not even sure what to ask! If I still want the backup, what do I need to get to continue that? 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. 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!!

Aug 12, 2025 10:53 AM in response to Patricia Podolec

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

This just affects using a disk drive that is part of, or attached to, a Time Capsule or an AirPort base station. You will still be able to use Time Capsule or Airport base station as a Wi-Fi router.

Note that Wi-Fi radio and security standards have evolved over time.

The earliest AirPort base station only had an 802.11b ("up to 11 Mbps") radio, and only supported WEP security. WEP is basically no security; people discovered ways to crack it in less than a minute. A quick browse through MacTracker suggests that all other AirPort base stations, and all Time Capsules, support WPA2. WPA2 isn't the latest security standard (that would be WPA3), but it is better than WPA and much better than WEP.

ideoplex

Level 1

0 points

Aug 21, 2025 5:42 AM in response to MrHoffman

I’ve got data on my Time Capsule that I don’t want to lose. Does this mean that i need to do one or more of:

copy all data off the Time Capsule to something more modern.
remove the Time Capsule hard drive and put it into an external drive case. Will TC still function as a router/AP without a hard drive?
keep the capability of running an older version of MacOS

before upgrading MacOS.

ideoplex

Level 1

0 points

Aug 21, 2025 6:39 AM in response to Bob Timmons

Thanks for the follow up. I put a 4TB IronWolf drive in mine 4 years ago and I’m pretty sure I can get it back out - especially if I’m not really concerned about the cosmetics of something that is probably going to recycling.

Aug 22, 2025 12:04 PM in response to AppleCustomer9

Please be advised that this human being will no longer support the apple corporation and its shareholders- I won’t be updating my OS and will continue to use time capsule and after decades of using these products my next computer will be a PC

Aug 22, 2025 2:43 PM in response to Grant Bennet-Alder

Annoyedmacuser196 wrote:

Please be advised that this human being will no longer support the apple corporation and its shareholders- I won’t be updating my OS and will continue to use time capsule and after decades of using these products my next computer will be a PC

You should always buy what you want.

We don't care what you buy.

Aug 22, 2025 3:45 PM in response to Annoyedmacuser196

Re: “Please be advised that this human being will no longer support the apple corporation and its shareholders”

And this matters to your fellow users how? Enjoy the Windows world, where Microsoft cut off a lot of PCs that could run Windows 10 from getting a Windows 11 upgrade simply because those PCs did not have a “Trusted Program Module.”

Aug 23, 2025 5:57 AM in response to AppleCustomer9

I bought a new NETGEAR modem and am very glad I did from both the performance perspective and the WPA3 security option that supports devices still using WPA2 when needed. Very fast and very reliable though a little difficult for an amateur like me to configure, I think I figured it out with help from their community because I got it working for all of our devices. So far, so good.

I gave our old Time Capsule WiFi Router Time Machine to Goodwill with notes types up how to setup the WiFi Router and a warning not to try to use the device for Time Machine backups with new releases of MacOS. All's well that ends well.

Having slept on the local backup idea, we no longer need it for personal reasons. There was a need for it in the past and it served it's purpose for many years but now upon reflection we simply do not need this type of backup as we are not using our devices for business anymore.

Sep 7, 2025 4:23 PM in response to AppleCustomer9

Before investing in a NAS, would a LAN-to-USB device exist for which, if connected to a router/switch, the USB would support SMB v3, so a backup HDD would work with Time Machine?

If yes, this would solve, at least temporarily, my Time Machine wireless backup situation - i.e. Mac -> Wi-Fi AP -> Router/Switch -> LAN-to-USB -> HDD - after I decommission the Time Capsule.

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