(What) Do you back up (from) ~/Library?

Yesterday I noticed that my Arq backup was taking longer than usual. I recently added ~/Library to the back up and apparently that folder also contains an iMazing cache folder, with 10+ GB ipsw image files…

  1. Do you back up your ~/Library folder?
  2. Which elements in that folder do you include/exclude?
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Yes. I backup my entire Library folder, with the standard Arq exclusions (see below).

Apple keeps changing things, hiding folders, moving files from one location to another, etc. So, from time to time, I create a fake backup plan and update my exclusion list with the changes Arq includes in their default list. Then I delete the fake plan.

Over the years I’ve added a few exclusions of my own, like *.eflibrary, but nothing in the Library.


.DocumentRevisions-V100
.MobileBackups
.MobileBackups.trash
.Spotlight-V100
.TemporaryItems
.Trash
.Trashes
.dbfseventsd
.dropbox
.dropbox.cache
.fseventsd
.hotfiles.btree
.vol
Backups.backupdb
Cache
Caches
DerivedData
node_modules
Logs
com.apple.milod
*/iTunes/iTunes Media/Downloads
*/iTunes/iTunes Media/Podcasts
*/iTunes/Album Artwork
*/iTunes/Previous iTunes Libraries
*/Library/Application Support/CrashReporter
*/Library/Application Support/Dropbox
*/Library/Application Support/Google
*/Library/Application Support/MobileSync/Backup
*/Library/Application Support/com.apple.LaunchServicesTemplateApp.dv
*/Library/Biome
*/Library/Caches
*/Library/Containers/com.apple.mail/Data/Library/Mail Downloads
*/Library/Containers/com.apple.mail/Data/DataVaults
*/Library/Developer
*/Library/Google/GoogleSoftwareUpdate
*/Library/Metadata/CoreSpotlight
*/Library/Mirrors
*/Library/PubSub/Database
*/Library/PubSub/Downloads
*/Library/PubSub/Feeds
*/Library/Safari/Favicon Cache
*/Library/Safari/Icons.db
*/Library/Safari/Touch Icons Cache
*/Library/Safari/WebpageIcons.db
*/Library/Safari/HistoryIndex.sk
*/Library/VoiceTrigger/SAT
*/MailData/AvailableFeeds
*/MailData/BackingStoreUpdateJournal
*/MailData/Envelope Index
*/MailData/Envelope Index-journal
*/MailData/Envelope Index-shm
*/MailData/Envelope Index-wal
/.DS_Store
/.VolumeIcon.icns
/.fseventsd
/.vol
/.file
/.nofollow
/.noresolve
/System
/bin
/cores
/dev
/etc
/home
/macOS Install Data
/mnt
/net
/private
/sbin
/tmp
/usr
/var