
If someday, the SD-card might die on me, I have an immediate working replacement that works and keeps the wife happy. This way, I can try new things, and in case it doesnt work, I can just revert to the old image quickly without having to go through the entire process of re-installing the operating system and additional packages.Īnother use case is to back up the SD-card of my production digital picture frame. I often use it to make a snapshot of an image when I am working on something new and would like to keep the basic setup of the current operating system and my other tweaks. ApplePi Baker does both, backing up and restoring.

Software like Balena Etcher offers a solution for flashing SD cards, but they dont provide a way to backup an SD card. It is not limited to work related to the Raspberry Pi, but this is where I use it most often. I believe ApplePi Baker is still by far the most versatile tool for backup and restoring an SD image if you are macOS-based. That was back in 2014, and although several software solutions have been introduced in the meantime, Hans has kept on improving ApplePi Baker with the current version 2. The software gem ApplePi Baker was born out of frustration that existing methods and tools to get an operating system on an SD-card were not great and the time was ripe for a new approach. He publishes a blog called Tweaking4ALL where he writes about all kinds of soft- and hardware tweaks ranging from 3D printing, Home Theatre, Music, and Software Development. Born out of frustrationĪpplePi Baker is the product of Hans Luitjen, a genuinely nice fellow from The Netherlands who has a passion for inventing things.


If you are working on macOS besides your Raspberry Pi, this is the software to use. In this article, I want to introduce you to ApplePi Baker, a smart Backup & Restore software for macOS, which has saved me countless hours.

The great thing when tinkering with the Raspberry Pi, be it for a digital picture frame project or anything else, is that you can quickly start with a clean slate like an Etch a Sketch.Īnd with an image that contains a snapshot of your work before you did something that you would regret later, you can save a lot of time.
