Speed up Time Machine backups

Sometimes Time Machine backups can take a while. The backup process is getting throttled and therefore has not a very high priority.

Set process priority

But you can allow the Time Machine process to gather a higher priority and therefore speed up the backup overall with the following command:

sudo sysctl debug.lowpri_throttle_enabled=0

Reset process priority

To set the process back to it’s original priority we can just set it back to 1.

sudo sysctl debug.lowpri_throttle_enabled=1

For me this speeded up the backup process by other 100%.

See also my tutorial on how to setup a Raspberry Pi 4 as a Time Machine server:

Use a Raspberry Pi 4 for Time Machine (works with Big Sur)