Ventura - Time machine, unable to delete a selected folder from backups

Back up your Mac with Time Machine - Apple Support (CA)

• To exclude items from backups, open Time Machine settings, click Options, then click the add (+) button to add an item to be excluded. To stop excluding an item, select the item and click the remove (–) button.

The short answer is that with an APFS backup (as used by Ventura, etc); there is no longer a way to delete files from backups once they have been created.

You can read more about that here:

• https://eclecticlight.co/2022/07/19/what-can-you-do-with-time-machine-backups-on-apfs/

What you can’t do:

Delete items within a backup: The synthetic snapshots containing your backups are read-only. As a general principle, you can never change an APFS snapshot, and Time Machine’s backups are no exception.

Regret that does not answer the question. Yes, files/folders can be excluded using your suggestion for "future" backups, but the question was how to remove a file/folder from an existing backup....as previously was available as stated by istvan60. So, the question remains unanswered.

Mucking around on the TM Backup Drive to remove individual files is a high risky adventure that may end in loosing ALL Snap Shots on the drive.

It may have worked in some Older Versions of macOS but strongly suggest against doing it now IMHO.

If Empty Space on the existing Drive is the issue - put the Drive Aside for safe keeping ( Safety Deposit Box at Bank ).

Purchase a New External Drive with at least 2 1/2 Greater Capacity than your Internal Drive and set it up as a New TM Backup

GS-JCA wrote:

Regret that does not answer the question. Yes, files/folders can be excluded using your suggestion for "future" backups, but the question was how to remove a file/folder from an existing backup....as previously was available as stated by istvan60. So, the question remains unanswered.

The user is very correct.

Then again, the user is not the Owner of this question either.

welcome

With an APFS backup, the only thing you can delete is one of the Snapshots at the top level.

I don't know what that could possibly accomplish, though.