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

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• Requirements:

• Purchase a router that supports a newer Wi-Fi standard (e.g. 802.11be).

• If the router has a USB port, connect a backup disk to it, provided that the router supports the SMBv3 protocol.

• Alternatively, purchase an NAS with SMBv3 support and connect it to the router via LAN.

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Since we are attempting to show ALL alternatives, even ones you may not wish to consider, another alternative is using a Mac on your network as a Shared Time Machine destination. Setup requires that Mac be running High Sierra or later:

3) If you have a spare older Mac, do what I did and use it as a Time Machine backup destination using an advanced feature of Mac File Sharing over your network.

https://9to5mac.com/2023/03/16/shared-time-machine-folder-mac-backups/

Back up to a shared folder with Time Machine on Mac - Apple Support

copy all data off the Time Capsule to something more modern.

Connect a hard drive to the USB port on the Time Capsule and use the Archive function in AirPort Utility to copy all of the data on the Time Capsule drive over to the hard drive. The drive needs to be formatted in Mac OS Extended (Journaled) aka HFS+

Once you have the data copied over, you can connect the USB hard drive directly to your Mac and get at the data that way. Do not expect to keep backing up to the same file though. It might work, and might not. If you try this, Time Machine will likely start a complete new backup file and then move forward from there.

remove the Time Capsule hard drive and put it into an external drive case

That is an option, but getting into a product that was never designed to be serviced is difficult. Plus, that hard drive is probably 6-7 years old or older.

Will TC still function as a router/AP without a hard drive?

Yes, but as a router it is behind the times in terms of performance and security. There has not been a security update for 5-6 years.

keep the capability of running an older version of MacOS

That would work and allow Time Machine to keep backing up to the Time Capsule.

Grant Bennet-Alder wrote:

Having no backups at all is exceptionally inconvenient after a problem develops.

…

what model NETGEAR Router? Does it have a USB port that can support one or several external drives?

If it does, it may be able to replace your Time Capsule with a similar capability. I am sure Readers could help with configuring that if it can be done.

NETGEAR apparently used to offer Time Machine support, but apparently no longer:

https://kb.netgear.com/25387/How-do-I-backup-my-files-using-Time-Machine-to-an-external-USB-HDD-connected-to-my-NETGEAR-Nighthawk-AC-router

Within the NETGEAR network, running Time Machine to an old Mac, or to a spare PC with TrueNAS installed, or to Synology NAS or another purchased NAS, are all options. Or to local direct-attached storage. Or to a Time Capsule, with the source Mac running some macOS version prior to macOS 26 arriving later this year.

As an alternative to the NETGEAR Wi-Fi mesh or router equipment, Synology offers various Wi-Fi mesh and router devices that support Time Machine server, as do their wired NAS choices.

• https://www.synology.com/en-us/products/compare/routers
• https://kb.synology.com/en-global/DSM/tutorial/How_to_back_up_files_from_Mac_to_Synology_NAS_with_Time_Machine

I prefer to keep backups of important data, but if AppleCustomer9 doesn’t need backups, that’s their call, and that simplifies their migration to macOS 26, or to Microsoft Windows if that platform works better for them.

Bob Timmons wrote:

I enabled Time Machine support on my ASUS CT8 router by.......

The question will be whether or not this will work with the next Mac operating system. Apple is basically saying that it won't.

If your Mac is running the current up to date Mac operating system.....that supports AFP and backups to a Time Capsule or hard drive attached to a compatible router.

The next Mac operating system won't support AFP.

Be sure you are correctly reading the issue with AFP Server Protocol separately from Drive format.

The poster said they used tools to enable Time Machine support, and connect to it with Samba.

Time Machine does not care about Drive format -- Time Machine uses a sparse bundle disk image to create a drive-inside-a-file on the Server. Connecting to a Server launders out microscopic issues with Drive formats. LOTS of drive formats will work, Provided a sparse bundle disk image file can be created on the Server.

As long as there is a way to create a Sparse Bundle Disk Image file, the drive format is a "don't care". If Time Machine can see and use that sparse bundle disk image file, Samba v3 or better is the protocol Apple is using for servers going forward.

Grant Bennet-Alder wrote:

…As long as there is a way to create a Sparse Bundle Disk Image file, the drive format is a "don't care". If Time Machine can see and use that sparse bundle disk image file, Samba v3 or better is the protocol Apple is using for servers going forward.

A typo, there. It’s Server Message Block SMB 3.0 required. Samba is one of the implementations of SMB. Among other implementations, SMB 3.0 is supported by with Windows 8, Windows 2012, Samba 4.2, and later.

And yeah, the particular Time Machine server file system doesn’t matter to the Time Machine client, past basic file systems functions. I’m currently using a mix of not-Apple file systems, depending on the particular NAS server.

Time Capsule has been deprecated. I got over it. Options are to replace Time Capsule with a new high speed WiFi router and use iCloud as your backup even though it may not provide 100% of the backup protection you might wish to have or to do research on alternative backup drives that will work with the Time Machine app remotely via WiFi or hardwired via a connection that will work with your Apple device that you wish to backup. Change is constant in life. Sometimes old things are lost that are better than the new things. Other times the new things are a lot better. Manual to electric typewriters to word processing machines to personal computers to laptop, pad and phone devices come to mind. Soon no one will type as A.I. will advance the voice audio interfaces to be able to understand anyone and everyone no matter their accent or speech impediment. Life is full of change.

<< and use iCloud as your backup ... >>

"On the cloud" is great for sharing photos, but is not a viable backup solution for everything you have. The stuff is not under your control, and is subject to sloppy handling, arbitrary changes in policy, theft, accidental deletion, data loss [are they making frequent backups using best practices?], and discontinuation or throttling of the service. It can easily take three days to restore it at ordinary Internet speeds.

NOT iCloud. And Not DropBox, BackBlaze, OneDrive, or GoogleDrive, or any other Cloud backup services as your PRIMARY backup method.

You can connect a locally-attached drive. Certain third-party Routers can support a connected drive, AND support the required features for Time Machine.

As has been suggested many times on this discussion, you can use another Mac to store your backups on another device on your network, or invest in a different third-party Network-Attached Storage (NAS) device.

2dareis2do wrote:

1. Thanks.

Just checked and I have 15-inch, 2018, Mac Book Pro. Pretty sure that there is no upgrade path to Tahoe or Mac OS 26 so hopefully I am immune from this change for now.

Disappointing that Apple have dropped support for:

Airport Extreme and Time Capsule. What Mac user does not need to back up solution?

Mac users have many options available now for Time Machine too, both local direct-attached storage, and NAS options including a Mac and third-party.

This particular migration started back in 2018.

Here are the published specs on how the replacement works, directly from Apple back in 2018:

Time Machine Over SMB Specification

I migrated five years ago, and retired the then-increasingly-flaky Time Capsule gear then. Among other targets, initial prototype replacement for Time Capsule from five years ago is still in use here, too.

For options and alternatives to Time Capsule, select “sort by > oldest” for this thread, and see the previous replies to this thread. This has been explained a whole lot.

2. AFP and SMBv1. No legacy support on newer OS post >15.x.x (Sequoia) <16

SMBv1 is wildly, totally, utterly broken, and Microsoft has been trying to end it for most of a decade. The former Microsoft product manager for SMB, Ned Pyle, was very publicly trying to end it, too.

This from 2017: https://www.tuxera.com/blog/smb1-is-done/

Ransomware has been targeting longstanding vulnerabilities in SMBv1 to encrypt the served storage, and to then ransom the data. Or malware just clobbers the data.

Also confusing that Apple have switched to yearly release names.

Apple has been doing yearly releases since 2011, and is recently using the year as the release number, replacing the two previous schemes with the year. But to help maintain some confusion where needed, the use of release (project) names will continue.

PS: if you’re using AI as a technical reference, please stop.

Time Capsule supports both AFP and SMBv1.

What does that mean in practice?

maintaining data security past equipment failure and past equipment retirement

Is that another way of saying when you update Apple device to 2026 OS or later?

apologies for quoting AI but does provide some insight much quicker that I would take to investigate. In this case it seems reasonable that it might be able to apply some form of firmware update in order to support APFS on older devices.

Here:

No airport can read or write to APFS drive unless Apple makes a stupendous update to the Airport

firmware..

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/252063446?sortBy=rank

Is it not technically possible to install a third party firmware update? I have seen this done before on iMac.

As Apple discontinued AirPort devices long before Big Sur, and if in effect AirPort devices were only housebroken on HFS+ formatted devices, then no firmware update for APFS compatibility would have been issued.

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/252495903?sortBy=rank

2dareis2do wrote:

Time Capsule supports both AFP and SMBv1.

What does that mean in practice?

Old, outdated, and/or insecure.

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Filing_Protocol
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Server_Message_Block#SMB_1.0

maintaining data security past equipment failure and past equipment retirement

no, it is another way of avoiding having sensitive information potentially exposed when something fails, and all gear inevitably fails. If the data within the retired or surplussed or failed storage is encrypted, then the device data contents are better protected against exposure.

Is that another way of saying when you update Apple device to 2026 OS or later?

I followed the Apple 2018-era information and suggestions back around 2020 — as I’ve posted previously in this thread — so the end of AFP support and the end of Time Capsule access remains a non-issue around here.

apologies for quoting AI but does provide some insight much quicker that I would take to investigate. In this case it seems reasonable that it might be able to apply some form of firmware update in order to support APFS on older devices.

To anthropomorphize, Google AI lied to you. That is part of what comprises the insight here. Lies. That is the fundamental difficulty with AI as a technical reference, too. Correct and cogent information freely mixed with rubbish. Sometimes mixed with dangerous rubbish. The reader is left to spot the errors.

Here:

No airport can read or write to APFS drive unless Apple makes a stupendous update to the Airport

firmware..

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/252063446?sortBy=rank

Is it not technically possible to install a third party firmware update? I have seen this done before on iMac.

I’d hope the Apple hardware security would block unauthorized third-party firmware modifications, but the gear is old enough that it might not have robust defenses against rogue firmware.

And again, APFS is not involved with Time Capsule and with Time Machine server. AFP, yes. AFPS, no.

Time Machine server expects semi-recent SMB and mDNS, and whatever the storage server uses is up to the storage server. See the Time Machine se4ver tech specs I linked to. Not the absence of APFS.

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.

In case anyone is following along, I bought:

• UGreen DXP2800 2 bay NAS (new player in NAS, good hardware value, software shaping up).
• WD Red Pro 4TB drive (basic disk, no RAID yet).
• UGreen 2.5G 5-port switch
• UGreen 2.5G usb-c to ethernet adapter

The upgrade to 2.5G ethernet at my desk wasn't strictly necessary, but I wanted to get completely off the Time Capsule and I couldn't justify going any faster (DXP2800 has a single 2.5G ethernet port).

I originally bought the WD Red Pro to hang off my ASUS CT-8 router for Time Machine backups, but that felt a bit janky - I needed to use my admin Router password for disk access and I had some issues with the drive going to sleep. I could have probably worked through that, but went a different path.

I was able to keep the old Time Capsule sparse bundle with minimal complications (Time Machine said the backup was in use, but some restarts cleared that up). YMMV, but tmutil might help with keeping an old sparse bundle.

 sudo tmutil inheritbackup {machine_directory | sparsebundle}

An older Mac can act as a Time machine "Server" on your network as well.

It only needs to be running MacOS 10.13 High Sierra, the first version of MacOS that supports specifying multiple Shared Time Machine Destinations. Connect some drives as Shared backup destinations, and connect to your network and you are ready to back up across the network.

Use a shared folder with Time Machine on Mac - Apple Support

2dareis2do wrote:

With Airport Extreme support being dropped and no plans for another replacement Apple product, why are Apple now dropping support for Apple Filing Protocol (AFP)?

The “why?” questions are best left to Apple, but — pragmatically — SMB won.

AFP has been deprecated since macOS 10.9 (Mavericks) and its client is being removed in a future version of macOS, likely macOS 16, which is due for release in late 2025.

macOS 26 is the current version, and it’s been available for a while, and macOS 26 deprecates and removes support for AFP.

Personally I like to use Airport Extreme as a network backup solution without having to physically plug into a hard disk drive or set another mac just for file sharing. It works well.

AirPort Extreme with external USB isn’t going to work, either. That’s also AFP. And it’s just as old as the Time Capsule gear.

I have tried other solutions including Western Digital backup solutions and it was a complete disaster.

You’re replying to a post from August. Hopefully they’ve gotten their answer by now.

There are five pages of options and alternatives here for those interested in alternatives and options, too. Including Time Machine to NAS, either Apple Mac or third-party.

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.