I use Time Machine on OS X to keep backups of my hard drive. Overall it is a great program. However, restoring files can be a slow and cumbersome process.

I’ve tried using cp in Terminal.app:

cd /Volumes/Backup/Backups.backupdb/Joshua\ Priddle’s\ MacBook\ Pro/Latest/Macintosh\ HD/Users/priddle
cp secret_docs.txt ~/

It appears to work, until you try working with a restored file. The file will have incorrect permissions and you will not be able to write to it.

I finally spent 10 seconds to Google this problem, and found this solution.

In short, to restore files from Time Machine in the terminal, you should use tmutil instead of cp:

cd /Volumes/Backup/Backups.backupdb/Joshua\ Priddle’s\ MacBook\ Pro/Latest/Macintosh\ HD/Users/priddle
tmutil restore -v secret_docs.txt ~/