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On World Backup Day, Mirror Mirror Macro Released
31 March 2021
To celebrate World Backup Day today, we're releasing our free Keyboard Maestro macro Mirror Mirror to make it easy to back up your valuables on any device, including cloud servers.
Mirror Mirror. Safely harness rsync to copy and restore your data.
The macro uses the built-in backup utility rsync to mirror any directory or single file in a Target location. Changes made to the Source will be reflected in the Target location, effectively making an archive of the Source.
After the initial backup, which takes as long as any copy, only the changes are executed, which is much faster than a fresh copy. New files are copied, deleted files are deleted.
A log shows what was done and how long it took.
You can save and delete commands. You can also restore a Target to its Source from any saved command.
DOWNLOADS
There are two downloads to the package:
- Mirror Mirror: This 6K download is the macro itself, which you double click to install into Keyboard Maestro.
- Documentation: You can read the five-page 162K PDF online (just click the link).
The macro does require Keyboard Maestro, the indispensable macOS utility. You can buy it at a discount from Stairways Software for $28.80 (regularly $36.00) and help support this site at the same time.
Update (2 April 2021): Just a minor update to recognize the Return key for OK in all windows and Control-Option-H for Help and Control-Option-C for Cancel in the main window.
Update (6 April 2021): No longer recognizes Control-Option-H for Help and Control-Option-C for Cancel in the main window because the key chords may conflict with other macros. Instead, the main window now has a keyboard shortcut for each button (indicated by an orange underline). Also cleaned up the code that recognizes the
Returnkey for OK.Update (3 May 2021): Backups that travel over the network are, of course, noticeably slower than those that don't. So in v1.3a I've added an indeterminate progress bar to the three folder copying operations that might take longer. Inspired by Dan Thomas's Progress Bar v1.1 1, it's a simple Custom HTML Prompt running asynchronously with a Window ID that can subsequently be closed by another action after the rsync has completed. Rsync itself doesn't know where it is in its process, so an indeterminate progress bar at least lets you know it's running. (No change was made to the documentation.)