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How do I delete old backups from time machine drive (on Mac OS ventura)? (self.macos)

submitted 1 year ago by first_ad4972 to c/macos

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I want to backup my Mac onto my ssd drive so that I can safely upgrade to Mac OS sonoma beta, but time machine gives the error message that the disk doesn't have enough free space. I always thought that time machine automatically deletes older backups when it runs out of space, but it appears that it doesn't. I searched for tutorials on how to delete backups but none of them seem to work for the time machine interface on Mac OS ventura (most of them involve clicking a gear on the finder window in time machine but on my mac there's no gear icon). Any ideas how should I do that?

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[–] ctmnz 2 points 1 year ago

I found this link. It says that even though TM deletes old backups, you might run out of space on the drive.

https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/if-the-time-machine-backup-disk-is-full-mh15137/mac

I too thought I would never run out, but be asked that I might have to delete some information from older backups.