Where is the standard Time Machine exclusion list in Big Sur?

Before Big Sur, there was a property list at

/System/Library/CoreServices/backupd.bundle/Contents/Resources/StdExclusions.plist

that contained a list of all of the standard files/locations that Time Machine would exclude from a backup.

That file seems to have disappeared and I have been unable to find an equivalent.

Furthermore, the tmutil isexcluded (i.e. NSURLIsExcludedFromBackupKey/CSBackupIsItemExcluded) does not reliably report these locations as excluded.

So is there still a publicly accessible way of discovering the standard locations excluded by Time Machine?


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dawn2dusk
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It seems that it's now placed right in the directory of the backup on a time machine volume e.g.

/Volumes/Time machine/2021-07-04-040007.inprogress/.exclusions.plist
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daniyars
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  • @daniyars Is there a way to determine the total size of the files excluded? Time machine is showing me 52GB when I am expecting 96GB. This would mean 44GB was excluded....is there a way to confirm this? and how would this affect my the restore of all my data to a new internal SSD drive?

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    MichaelEnn
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As reported above, on Monterey 12.5 I am seeing a copy within each backup. Eg ..

/Volumes/.timemachine/NNNNNNN-414B-47C7-A804-NNNNNNNNN/2022-08-11-094049.backup/2022-08-11-094049.backup/.exclusions.plist

(The N's are obscuring my UUID on this post just to be safe).

Looks like a comprehensive list of standard system exclusions - lots of caches, backups, transient looking stuff.

Hope that helps someone, ciao.

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GregE2
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