Time Machine in the "Cleaning Up..." state forever My Time Machine is in the cleanup state for a long time (several days). The backup is to an external drive and the disk on the mac laptop is less than 500 GB. It usaually takes much less time to clean up.
Is there a way to inspect what the Time Machine actually is doing during the cleanup?
The following log is not helpful.
$ log show --debug --predicate 'subsystem == &quot;com.apple.TimeMachine&quot;' --info --last 4h
Filtering the log data using &quot;subsystem == &quot;com.apple.TimeMachine&quot;&quot;
Timestamp                       Thread     Type        Activity             PID    TTL  
2020-02-21 13:36:41.329729-0600 0xb4acfa   Info        0x0                  98     0    backupd-helper: (TimeMachine) [com.apple.TimeMachine:TMLogInfo] Not starting scheduled Time Machine backup: Backup already running
2020-02-21 14:36:55.424274-0600 0xb60241   Info        0x0                  98     0    backupd-helper: (TimeMachine) [com.apple.TimeMachine:TMLogInfo] Not starting scheduled Time Machine backup: Backup already running
2020-02-21 15:42:20.848345-0600 0xb64cb9   Info        0x0                  98     0    backupd-helper: (TimeMachine) [com.apple.TimeMachine:TMLogInfo] Not starting scheduled Time Machine backup: Backup already running
2020-02-21 16:36:27.614466-0600 0xb8060d   Info        0x0                  98     0    backupd-helper: (TimeMachine) [com.apple.TimeMachine:TMLogInfo] Not starting scheduled Time Machine backup: Backup already running
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Log      - Default:          0, Info:                4, Debug:             0, Error:          0, Fault:          0
Activity - Create:           0, Transition:          0, Actions:           0
I noticed that cleaning up old backups can be very slow. In my case, I can hear my external backup drive rattling along, so I know it's doing something.
You can check on progress by opening the latest backup log. Look for the directory with a name ending in .inProgress on your backup drive. Within it, open the log file with the most recent timestamp:
$ sudo less +F &quot;/Volumes/MacBackup/Backups.backupdb/MacBook Pro/2020-08-05-163227.inProgress/.Backup.618330747.626060.log&quot;

Substitute MacBackup, MacBook Pro and the backup/log path. If you're not familiar with less, press Ctrl-C, followed by q to exit.
The log file will tell you how much space needs to be cleared and which of the backups it's (very slowly) deleting. Looking at the amount of free space on your backup disk should give you an idea of how far along it is.