Time Machine - Frequently Asked Questions 30. What are Local Snapshots?. Not a bad idea what Apple came up with. The first rumors about local snapshots sounded rather strange, but what has become of it - automatic snapshots for on the go, when you don't have your backup drive plugged in, are quite practical. Not for real recovery in the sense of a disk crash, but for the usual "oops, I'm stupid, I didn't want to delete that yet" situations. However, I would like it if there were a GUI in Time Machine for this, where you can turn local snapshots on and off - yes, I know, you can do it from the command line, but I'm not an Apple user for nothing, I want pretty graphical buttons to press!