TowerTall
17 hours ago
No, if you exclude a folder its children will also be excluded. You could Exclude everything else in ~/Library but that means that you have to maintain a long list of exclusions; any new folder you or macOS adds later will start getting backed up until you exclude it.
You can also mark sub‑folders with the "do not backup" xattr
xattr -w com.apple.metadata:com_apple_backup_excludeItem com.apple.backupd ~/Library/Caches (Time Machine picks this up automatically).
or you can switch to Carbon Copy Cloner. It allows you to build positive include rules