Backups & restore points · Time Machine and backup strategy
Does Storage Studio delete my Time Machine backups?
Short answer: No. Your Time Machine backups are never touched. Storage Studio can clear macOS's local snapshots on your Mac when you ask, and it prefers ones already backed up to Time Machine.
No. Storage Studio never touches the Time Machine backups on your backup drive. What it can clear — only when you ask — are macOS's local snapshots on your Mac's own disk, which hold space while they wait to be backed up.
Even there it's careful: the Local Snapshots window marks which snapshots are already safely on Time Machine, Delete all backed-up skips anything that's only on this Mac, and snapshots macOS needs for a system update are never removed. See Local Snapshots.