Restore system to point in time

Solution 1:

i guess you are looking for something like this: https://maclovin.org/blog-native/2017/restoring-from-a-snapshot-with-apfs. It can alternatively be done from command line as tmutil restore. See man tmutil for more information.

Solution 2:

In order to restore from “a point in time,” you have to have a backup from that point in time.

• APFS (since High Sierra) allows you to create snapshots of the startup volume
• Time Machine is a time-tested backup and restore utility that allows you to recover from data loss

There is an inherent requirement, however, to use either of these tools to fix whatever has caused your data loss/corruption: you have to take the snapshot or create the backup in order to restore from them.

Since you stated you have a Time Machine Backup from “this morning,” you just need to restore it. Apple Support has excellent step-by-step instructions on how to restore from a a TM backup (includes instructions on how to restore from a local snapshot as well).

You can quickly create a snapshot before you attempt something like installing questionable software or performing an update. I do this all the time (never had to restore, thankfully). Simply issue the command

% tmutil snapshot

You will get a confirmation message that your snapshot was created. To list the snapshots taken, just issue the command

% tmutil listsnspshots /

Finally, you can use Time Machine to restore from one of thise snapshots even if you didn't use Time Machine to create regular backups.