SuperDuper! 4
The backup app Mac users have sworn by for over 22 years—brand new from tip to tail. Easier to use, 2x+ faster copies, incredible capabilities, and much more flexible. It's everything you've ever wished SuperDuper could do, and even better than you've heard.
If you thought Smart Update was fast before, it's been turbocharged in version 4. Now, subsequent backups can take less than a minute!
We'll set things up for boot success, Apple willing.
SSD drives (not thumb drives or cards) work best. Your backup does not have to be bootable to be restorable.
Schedule copies to happen when it's convenient for you, as many as you'd like. They'll run whether SuperDuper is open or not...even if you're not logged in!
Read it. Click it. Choose it. Done.
Every copy starts with a plain-English sentence. Underlined words are the settings—change one and the sentence updates to reflect your selection.
Everything you loved, but better.
It's the same SuperDuper you know, rebuilt on the latest Apple technologies—with a modern, blazingly fast copy engine shaped by more than 20 years of experience.
Configure copies by clicking words in a sentence—all in one place. Drag and drop folders for the source or destination!
Your copy status updates in real time, even as you do other things. Run several copies at once—the sky's the limit!
Smart Update is faster than ever, and when it's Turbocharged...watch out! Your backup may finish before you're done clicking the Copy Now button!
Copies run and report whether the application is open or not. A convenient menu extra shows how many are in progress, and clicking it shows a summary.
An on-device Apple Intelligence summary tells you what happened—and the new What happened? section tells you what to do if it failed.
SuperDuper 4 will tell you how much time it will take for your copy to finish and when all current copies will be done.
Pick the drives, pick the time, and forget about it. SuperDuper wakes the Mac if it needs to.
When a copy is done, the results are summarized so it's easy to see what was copied—and how fast it went!
What's new
Live from the Sparkle appcastSuperDuper! 4.0.9 (October 1, 2026)
Welcome to October!
SuperDuper 4 has been out for two months, with no major problems found, which is great.
But it does leave me with time to chase down incredibly obscure ones, and so…SuperDuper 4.0.9 fixes a few more network destination problems (so many worms in that particular can), improves copy status, and adds a new example logging Shortcut for your shortcutting pleasure.
Network destinations
Also, welcome to 1982. Legacy Humans, such as I, will feel some pangs of nostalgia about this one. Turns out, some NAS devices (like Synology) will write a file or folder named AUX, CON, NUL, PRN, COM1, but when you try to read it, it has been changed to a crazy name like AHY9U3~9.
Needless to say, this was inconvenient, and caused copies to fail (GarageBand actually has a folder called Aux in its app bundle).
SuperDuper now checks which of those names the destination can actually store and logs how many it skipped. (Which should be few-to-none.)
Hopefully this will make someone’s life a little less confusing.
Copies stop faster on error. After an error ended a copy, SuperDuper could still go on to the cleanup work at the end before reporting it. No longer.
Saved share passwords found! A password saved for a specific share (e.g. smb://server.local/share) could be missed, giving an error on connect if a password was needed.
Read-only folders on NAS devices. Welcome to Obscure Valley. To the left, note another SMB problem, where some Samba-based NAS devices exactly enforce a folder’s permissions, so removing something from inside a read-only folder could fail with “Permission denied”.
SuperDuper already unlocks those folders for the copy and puts them back afterwards, but immediately after reading a folder, macOS misreports its permissions, causing errors.
We’ll continue now to the right, on Workaround Lane.
macOS 27 vs. accented names. Further along the way, note that after updating to macOS 27, accented names (like Übersicht) written to NASen could fail with “No such file or directory”. We’ll once again take a trip further down Workaround Lane to avoid additional weird macOS regressions…at least until I find another one.
Permissions, measured. Rather than assume worst-case behavior on NAS devices, SuperDuper now checks the destination’s behavior at the start of a copy, which can speed up copies of lots of small files.
Progress and status
Cleanup at the end of a copy…cleaned up. After a copy, on a slow destination (like a NAS), the end-of-copy cleanup could say it was still scanning, when it wasn’t. It now shows “Removing N items…” while cleaning.
Interface
Phases, like elephants, no longer forget. Expanding a phase in a job to see its details now sticks. Each job remembers which phases you opened, even after you quit and relaunch SuperDuper.
You’re welcome, mjt!
Shortcuts
SuperDuper Backup Dashboard Shortcut available. There’s a new Log SuperDuper Backup to Dashboard Shortcut you can pick as a Run a Shortcut action. Once picked, it’ll ask you for various permissions, and to choose a folder for the dashboard. From then on, that job (and any other you select it for) adds a row to a Numbers spreadsheet in that folder when it runs.
If you pick an iCloud location for the document (the default), you can share this between Macs and they can all log to the same spreadsheet. You can even review it from an iPad, iPhone or browser.
At the top of the dashboard spreadsheet you’ll see one row per copy job: its name, how long since it last succeeded, its last result, how many times it has run and failed, and its average and most recent run time, with a chart comparing them. You can uncheck a job’s Show box to drop its runs from the table and charts below: that way, you can focus on one job, or compare a few.
Requirements
The same as before: macOS 14 or later, including macOS 27 (Golden Gate), on Apple silicon or Intel.
Apple silicon or Intel
An external drive for the copy (SSD recommended for bootability)
Full Disk Access (guided setup)
The SuperDuper 4 FAQ covers bootability, APFS, snapshots, scheduling, and the move from Copy Scripts to Copy Rules.
Read the SuperDuper 4 FAQ → Open the User's Guide →Back up like a hero tonight.
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