Browsing (and deleting) old Time Machine Backups from another Mac

In general, most things on the Mac are pretty intuitive and easy to find/use/work out. Now and then though I come across some feature that seems to have been buried and only find it via someone else talking about it online. for example, how to browse Time Machine backups on an external drive from an older Mac.

I have an external drive that I use for my Time Machine backups, and used it from my older MacBook Pro, and also use it for my newer MBP. The drive filled up, so I was trying to work out a) how to browse my older backups, because by default they weren’t browsable via the Time Machine UI, and b) how to delete some of them.

Turns out, thanks to these tips, if you hold Option while the Time Machine dropdown menu is displayed from your toolbar, the option ‘Browse other backup disks…’ appears – from there you can select the Time Machine backup from another Mac.

While in the Time Machine UI, to delete a whole backup from a prior date, click the ‘cog’ icon and you have the option to delete backup.