macOS
You can add new Mac computers to Active Backup for Business, create backup tasks for the computers, restore backup data, and manage these computers on this page. You need to install Active Backup for Business Agent on your computers to perform backups for them.
Create Backup Tasks
Before you create a backup task, install Active Backup for Business Agent on your computer and connect the computer to your Synology NAS via the agent. Your computer will be listed at Personal Computer > macOS, where you can manage it.
To add a Mac to the device list:
Install Active Backup for Business Agent on the Mac you want to protect. Go to the Download Center, select your product model, and download the Active Backup for Business Agent for macOS installer.
Note:
- Templates of backup tasks help you to apply the same backup settings to several Mac computers at a time. You can go to Settings > Template to configure the templates.
To create a backup task:
Once the agent is installed on the Mac that is connected to Synology NAS, a backup task will be created according to the matched template. You can also create more than one backup task for each device.
- Do either of the following to start the backup creation wizard:
- Go to Personal Computer > macOS, select a device you want to back up, and click Create Task.
- Go to Personal Computer > Task List and click Create.
- Select Target Device:
This step only appears if no device is selected before you click Create. A list of computers already connected to the server will be displayed in this step.
- Configure Task Settings:
- Task name: Configure the name of the task. It is suggested to have a naming pattern for faster filter/search for the task.
- Source type: The following types of sources are supported.
- Entire device: The entire Mac, including the device settings, applications, and all the files, will be backed up.
- Backup external hard drive: You can choose to back up external hard drives as well.
- System volume: The system volumes, Macintosh HD and Macintosh HD - Data, will be backed up.
- Customized volume: Click Select then choose the target volume you wish to protect. Floppy drives, thumb drives, and external hard drives formatted as APFS are supported. Flash card readers are not supported.
- Data transfer settings: The following task settings can be configured in this step.
- Enable Data Transfer Compression: Compress data during transmission to reduce transferred data size.
- Enable Data Transfer Encryption: Encrypt data during transmission to enhance data security.
- Enable bandwidth consumption limit: Limit the data transfer rate from your computer.
- Backup Destination:
Select a shared folder in Btrfs file system as the backup destination. During the package installation, the Btrfs shared folder "ActiveBackupforBusiness" will be created automatically.
- Backup Destination Settings:
When creating the first task in a backup destination, you can configure compression and encryption settings of the backup destination in this step.
- Enable compression at backup destination: Compress data to save more storage at the backup destination.
- Enable encryption at backup destination: Encrypt data to enhance data security at the backup destination.
Note:
- If you have also configured traffic throttling on the Settings page, the actual data transmission rate will depend on distributed bandwidth.
- If you want to back up external drives, make sure to format them as APFS and enable Full Disk Access on your Mac and that the external drives are not encrypted.
- The compression and encryption settings of a backup destination are not changeable after the first backup task is created. If you wish to use different settings for future tasks, please create a task in a new destination.
- Schedule Backup Task:
- Manual backup: Manual Backup means one-time-only backup. After creating a backup task, you can run the task by choosing to back up immediately in the last step or selecting the task and then clicking Back up in the Task List tab.
- Scheduled backup:
- Backup by time: Define the desired backup schedule to daily or only on specific days. The task can run once a day or once an hour according to the settings. The backup task will be started when it is the set point of time on the defined days. For example, when the schedule is set as Run on: Wednesday and Saturday, Repeat type: Hourly, and Start at: 03:00, the task will start from 03:00 on Wednesday and Saturday each week and repeat running every hour until the end of these two days.
- Backup by event: Once the defined events, such as Screen locked, Signing out, Startup happens on the protected device, the backup task will be run automatically.
- Screen locked: The screen of the protected device is locked.
- Signing out: The user logs out from the protected device.
- Startup: The protected device is started up.
- Backup interval: You can define the frequency of backing up the device. Within the configured time, the backup task will only be run once even when the defined events happened more than once. For example, the backup interval is set as 1 hour. Due to the backup by event settings, if the screen of the device had been locked which triggered the backup task, the backup task will not be run again when the device was started up ten minutes later.
Note:
- When Backup by time and Backup by event are both enabled, the configured backup frequency will be applied to both of them.
- Only run backup tasks within the allowed backup windows: Click Configure Backup Window to specify the time when the backup task is allowed or forbidden to be run in order to maintain the operational efficiency of the backup source device. Only the restore points scheduled by time will be displayed on the time slot since the restore points of manual backup and backup by events are not predictable.
- Select Retention Policy:
In this step, you can choose either one of the following retention policy to apply to the created task:
- Keep all versions: All the backed-up versions will be preserved.
- Apply the following methods:
You need to set at least one policy if you check Apply the following methods.
Keep only the latest versions means the maximum number of the recent versions you may keep. The exceeding versions will be rotated based on the Grandfather-Father-Son (GFS) retention policy or will be deleted when no other retention policy is configured.
Synology employs the Grandfather-Father-Son (GFS) retention policy. You can configure the time ranges of backup versions to be retained for the following time ranges respectively: daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly. If more than one backup version exists within a time range, only the latest one will be kept. For example, if you set a policy as Keep the latest version of the day for 1 day for the backup task which will be run every hour per day, only the version backed up at 23:00 will be kept.
Please note that every configured policy overlaps with each other. For example, if you would like to set the policy as keeping daily backup versions in the first three months, weekly backup versions in the second three months, and monthly backup versions in the third three months. Please tick the checkboxes and insert the numbers as the below picture displays.

The duration of 24 weeks includes the previous daily backup versions of 90 days, and the first weekly backup will be equal to the seventh daily backup. The duration of 9 months also includes the previous weekly backup versions of 24 weeks and daily backup versions of 90 days, and the first monthly backup will be equal to the fourth weekly backup.

- Backup now:
The wizard allows an immediate backup regardless of the schedule.
Note:
- To streamline the backup process, the Changed Block Tracking (CBT) technology is adopted for Mac backups by default.
- Changed Block Tracking leverages Apple Software Restore (asr) to take snapshots and identifies blocks that have changed. Your Mac records the image blocks with its built-in snapshot feature and uses CBT to back up only changed blocks to your Synology NAS. This helps to save bandwidth usage and accelerate the backup process.
- The first backup of each task is a full backup, after which the system will perform incremental backups with the CBT technology.
Restore Personal Computers
You can restore individual files and folders after your Mac computers are backed up.
To restore individual files and folders:
Personal computer backup supports granular (file- and folder-level) restore through Active Backup for Business Portal. Package managers can delegate the restore permission to users through DSM Control Panel. For more information, please refer to the help article: Active Backup for Business Portal.
Note:
- Only package managers, operators with the restoration privilege, and owners of backup data can access the backup versions of devices from Active Backup for Business Portal or restore the device with the recovery media.
- Entire device restoration is not supported for now.
Manage Devices
To delete a device:
- On Personal Computer > macOS, select the device you want to delete and click Delete.
- Keep in mind that the selected Mac's backups will also be deleted. Click Confirm Deletion to remove the Mac from the device list.
To update the agent on the computer:
When there is a newer version of the agent, you can update the agents on source computers by installing the new version. Package managers can update the agents on multiple computers at once from the admin console.
The installation depends on whether the computers are connected to the internet or on LAN.
- When your Synology NAS is connected to the internet:
- Go to Active Backup for Business > Personal Computer.
- Select the computer whose agent needs an update and click More > Update Agent.
- When your Synology NAS is on a private network:
- Download the Active Backup for Business Agent installer from Download Center, and upload it to any folder of your Synology NAS with File Station. Please keep a note of the location of the installer.
- Log in to DSM with root permission on your computer. Please refer to this article for detailed instructions.
- Execute the below command to install the agent on your target devices.
cp /[volume_where_you_uploaded_the_installer_to]/[name_of_the_folder_where_you_uploaded_installer_to]/[installer_name] /[volume_where_you_install_Active_Backup_for_Business]/\@tmp/
For example, the location of the installer is "/volume1/Files/Synology Active Backup for Business Agent-2.5.0-2448.dmg" and Active Backup for Business is installed on "volume1". The command would be:
cp /[volume1]/[Files]/[Synology Active Backup for Business Agent-2.5.0-2448.dmg] /[volume1]/\@tmp/
- Make the agent file readable by running the command below.
chmod 444 Synology Active Backup for Business Agent-2.5.0-2448.dmg
- After setting up, the agent will be successfully updated.