Set up a backup on day one. It takes one cable and one click.

Most people coming from Windows never had a real backup running. File History was easy to ignore, so you ignored it. On a Mac, backing up is so simple there is no reason to skip it, and it is the safety net that makes everything else feel low-risk.

The tool is called Time Machine, and it is already on your Mac.

What it does

Plug in an external drive and Time Machine backs up your whole Mac automatically: your apps, files, photos, email, and settings. Not just a copy of one folder, the whole machine. If a file gets deleted or a drive fails, you can go back in time and pull it back, or restore everything onto a brand-new Mac in one go.

Setting it up

Connect an external USB or Thunderbolt drive. Aim for one with at least twice the storage of your Mac, and use it only for backups. Then:

• Open System Settings, click General, then Time Machine.
• Click Add Backup Disk, choose your drive, and click Set Up Disk.
• Turn on encryption if you want the backup protected by a password.

That is it. From then on the Mac backs itself up on its own: hourly for the last day, daily for the last month, and weekly before that, clearing the oldest backups when the drive fills up. The first backup is slow because it copies everything. After that it only saves what changed, so it is quick, and you can keep working straight through it.

For the full setup steps and how to restore, see Apple's guide: Back up your Mac with Time Machine.

Why this is the first thing to do

A backup turns your biggest fear, losing everything, into a non-issue. Once Time Machine is running, you can experiment, install things, and learn your new Mac without worrying that a mistake is permanent. Set it up on day one, plug the drive in whenever you are at your desk, and then forget about it. That is the whole point.