MacOS – Where does System Preferences store the name of the Time Machine Destination

macossnow leopardsystem-prefstime-machine

I am trying to create a script to determine the destination of time machine on a number of computers I manage. It shows very clearly via Time Machine Settings in System Prefs. I need to be able to find that info via command line.

Best Answer

The tmutil utility does exactly that, but I think it was only added in Lion.

As an added bonus, Apple doesn't document the tmutil argument you'll need, but I dug through the output of "strings /usr/bin/tmutil" and found this, which is what you're looking for:

tmutil destinationinfo

Also, "tmutil status" will tell you if a backup is currently running. It's another undocumented command.