Review: SuperDuper! 4 gets a stem-to-stern revamp, but is just as seaworthy as ever

Backups, as any computer user knows, are worth their weight in gold. If it isn’t backed up, it might as well might not exist. That’s why I have for years trusted ShirtPocket’s SuperDuper! to ensure that all my data is safe and sound. And now, for the first time in a very long time, the venerable backup utility has gotten a top-to-bottom update that brings it into the modern era without sacrificing any of the features—and, most importantly, the reliability—that its users have come to depend on.

While SuperDuper! 4 may look like an entirely new beast, its history has stuck around. It still explains what it’s doing in plain English. It still allows you to make complete, bootable backups. It still has its excellent Smart Update option to optimize the copying process.

But it’s gotten some significant updates too. There’s a new interface, for starters, which conforms to Apple’s current Liquid Glass aesthetic, love it or hate it. It’s a bit of a shock to the system after so long without a change, but it’s hard to deny that the old look had grown somewhat antiquated. The result is an app that makes backups as simple and straightforward as they should be, so that anyone can figure it out: click here to set your destination, choose what method, and click Go.

The changes to SuperDuper! 4 also run more than just skin deep. For example, it’s considerably faster than the previous version—up to an order magnitude faster using the new Turbo implementation of Smart Update, according to Shirt Pocket. That’s borne out in my real-world usage. For example, my last nightly backup of 20.55GB took less than 4 minutes.

Just get a load of all those Shortcuts actions.

There are new capabilities here, too. A new Preview feature lets you perform a dry run of your copy job, letting you see every file that will be changed without actually doing any of it. With a new background helper app, copies won’t interrupt whatever you’re doing. And there’s Shortcuts support, so you can run a workflow when your copy job is completed—or even have one of your shortcuts kick off a copy job.

I’ve been using betas of SuperDuper! 4 for a month or so now, and what’s impressed me most is how much it maintains that set-it-and-forget-it strength of the previous versions. The most important thing for a backup is that element of reliability, so when I open up the app and see “31 successful in a row” note, I know that my data is right where it should be. And if something goes wrong, it’s easier than ever to see what happened: click on a failed job and you’ll get the details, including an Apple Intelligence-powered summary of the job. (You can get that for completed jobs too.)

There are way more features here too, ones that I just don’t have much reason to use for my purposes, but might just well be what you’re looking for. For example, copy rules that let you handle certain files and folders in granular ways, such as excluding certain ones from backups; support for any file system that macOS understands; and there’s support for multiple copy jobs at the same time, even for those that are scheduled.

Backup apps may not be the most exciting software category, but I dare you to find one that’s more crucial. For me, SuperDuper! has done the job for years and I’ve never had any reason to complain about it. Nothing about that seems poised to change with version 4.

You can see the details of any copy job, including a quick summary.

SuperDuper! 4 requires macOS 14 (Sonoma) or later. A free trial version lets you make unlimited full erase backups, but to unlock the rest of the features requires a one-time payment of $43.95. There’s also an upgrade discount for owners of SuperDuper 3 of up to 30 percent. (And, if you bought version 3 very recently, you may be able to get version 4 for free.) And good news: if you need to run backups on older systems, SuperDuper 3 is sticking around.

For everybody who’s already backing up their Macs, SuperDuper! 4 may offer some new features and speed increases that will make the process even smoother. For those of you who aren’t yet…what are you waiting for?