Monitor Apple TimeMachine Backups for Sierra (MacOS 12) and later systems since Sept 2016 Heavily tested for Mojave. Prior MacOS - please send logs if you have issues.
Apple's TimeMachine really does make backups easy. There is a flaw for those with laptops. The laptop is portable, connecting and disconnecting physical devices is annoying. Network drives for TimeMachine are great. However, they don't always properly disconnect. And here is why these 3 apps exist. I have found when TimeMachine volumes are not properly dismounted and disconnected strange things happen. The laptop may not properly restart. There may be strange application behavior over time. Ensuring TimeMachine volumes are properly dismounted has eliminated all these strange behaviors. Ultimately, Apple should fix TimeMachine so no volumes are mounted when TimeMachine isn't running - especially for Network volumes. Until then, these apps should assist with proper management of TimeMachine volumes.
Before reading any further proper credit needs to be given. These apps were created using Platypus (https://github.com/sveinbjornt/Platypus), it allows one to build wrapper applications to run shell scripts for Mac OS X.
The easiest thing to do is to download the zip files, double-click/open them and move them where you like to have your apps. To download each zip, select it in your web browser and choose "download".
A simple app to display the logs related to TimeMachine and the TimeMachineMonitor. As time goes on you will probably never use this app. In the beginning, especially for the curious, the app helps you see why these apps were created. You can open TimeMachineLog in TimeMachineStatus > Monitor Actions. The app runs the command:
/usr/bin/log stream --style syslog --info --predicate '(processImagePath contains "backupd" and subsystem beginswith "com.apple.TimeMachine") || (processImagePath contains "logger" and eventMessage contains "TimeMachineMonitor:")'You will want to make this a Login Item in System Preferences > Users & Groups. Open TimeMachineStatus and then choose Monitor Actions > Install LoginItems. You can also manually start and end the Monitor in TimeMachineStatus > Monitor Actions. It essentially runs as a background process watching the TimeMachine logs for events requiring an unmount of the TimeMachine volumes when they aren't properly unmounted.
Technical details: the app runs a very small but elegant bash script handling subshells, signals, and events to properly watch over TimeMachine and only unmount TimeMachine volumes when it is safe to do so. Just because TimeMachine indicates it is finished with a backup unfortunately doesn't mean it has actually completed. TimeMachineMonitor will unmount only when it is safe and requires no privileges to do what it does. It watches the logs and it uses Disk Utility to unmount volumes.
It provides a menu bar item you click on and it tells you if TimeMachine is active. Checking the status before you close your laptop will help you safely close after TimeMachine has fully finished doing what it needs to do.
You will also want to make this a Login Item in System Preferences > Users & Groups. Open TimeMachineStatus and then choose Monitor Actions > Install LoginItems.
No warranties are implied with using this software. Use at your own risk. You accept all responsibilities for running the software.
The apps do not require any privileges nor do they do anything nefarious. The shell code is included.