Back In Time
Back In Time is a comfortable and well-configurable graphical frontend for
incremental backups using rsync, with a
command-line version also available. Modified files are transferred, while
unchanged files are linked to the new directory using rsync's hard link feature,
saving storage space. Restoring is straightforward via file manager, command
line or Back In Time itself.
It is written in Python3 and available for all major GNU/Linux distributions
as command line tool backintime and GUI backintime-qt. Backups can be
scheduled and stored locally or remotely through SSH.
More background info in CONTRIBUTING and
HISTORY.
Maintenance status
The project is in active development since the current team joined
in summer 2022, continuing the work of the previous maintainer, Germar.
Development is done voluntarily in spare time so things need to be
prioritized. Stick with us, we all ♥️ Back In Time. 😁
Current development focuses on stabilizing and modernizing the codebase and
fixing bugs.
Existing features
and the GUI are being simplified and modernized.
These efforts are ongoing and affect all areas of the project.
See the strategy outline for details.
Please see
how to support the project or contributing
to it.
The team
Since around 2024, @buhtz, part of the projects
third generation of maintainers, has been the sole maintainer. He handles all
core tasks, from code analysis and documentation to issue resolution and
feature implementation. The work is carried out voluntarily during spare
time. The project continues to benefit from an active and engaged community
that provides advice, expertise, and contributions, ensuring it thrives and
evolves.
The project was reactivated in
2022 and thanks in large
part to Michael Büker (@emtiu) and Jürgen
(@aryoda), who helped relaunch and shape its
direction. See HISTORY for more details.
Index
Documentation
Contact & Social
Installation
Back In Time is included in
many GNU/Linux distributions.
Use their repositories to install it. If you want to contribute or using the
latest development version of Back In Time please see section
Build & Install in
CONTRIBUTING.md. Also the dependencies are described there.
Known Problems and Workarounds
In the latest stable release:
More problems described in
this FAQ section.
Files View widget not displaying files or directories
The main window's
files view widget
doesn't show files or directories if a backup is selected in the timeline
widget. It shows anything but / (root directory).
To workaround it, toggle the Show hidden files button in the files view
own toolbar. This might help.
Problem might be introduced in version 1.5.* or 1.6.*. There is no clear
solution to the problem. Also the real cause is still unknown. The plan is to
re-write that widget from scratch. See
#2567 for further details
and screenshots.
File permissions handling and therefore possible non-differential backups
- In version 1.2.0, the handling of file permissions changed.
- In versions <= 1.1.24 (until 2017) all file permissions were set to
-rw-r--r-- in the backup target.
- In versions >= 1.2.0 (since 2019)
rsync is executed with --perms option
which tells rsync to preserve the source file permission.
Therefore backups can be larger and slower, especially the first backup after
upgrading to a version >= 1.2.0.
If you don't like the new behavior, you can use Expert Options ->
Paste additional options to rsync to add --no-perms --no-group --no-owner
to it. Note that the exact file permissions can still be found in
fileinfo.bz2 and are also considered when restoring files.
Contributing and other ways to support the project
See CONTRIBUTING file for an overview about the project's
workflow and strategy.
Support the maintainer: The project is maintained in spare time and without
financial compensation. One way to support the project is
donations
to the maintainer (buhtz) via
Liberapay and
Ko-fi.
Please note that donations are made to the maintainer personally,
not to Back In Time or any other specific
project. They support the
maintainer's work, including work on Back In Time.
Licenses
Please keep in mind that code, documentation and other material
submitted to the project are considered licensed under the same terms (see
LICENSES) as the rest of the work. The project does use the
specifications from REUSE Software and
SPDX to store license and copyright
information. See the projects
REUSE compliance status.
September 2026
