Restic backups
made friendly.

A desktop GUI for Restic, powered by Backrest. Encrypted, deduplicated backups to the cloud or your own drive. One .exe, one config folder, zero shell scripting.

Windows 11 Encrypted (AES-256) Dropbox · OneDrive · Google Drive · S3 BSD-2 licensed
Note: Backspace covers the everyday backup loop end-to-end and mostly works for what matters, but it needs more real-world mileage before calling itself stable. Tested on Windows 11. Zero testing on macOS and Linux so far — the code targets both via Avalonia and there's no architectural reason it shouldn't run there. Try it and please file an issue if anything surprises you.

Get started

Here's the whole flow from clicking the download to recovering a file. Skim it once — it's short.

The philosophy: setting up a backup is three steps. Restoring a file is three steps. If you can count to three, you can use Backspace.

Set up your first backup

1

Tell it what to back up

Drop in your Documents folder, your Pictures, the whole C: drive — anything that matters. Live size estimation while you choose, so you'll know up front if it fits.

Onboarding step 1 — pick the folders to back up
2

Tell it where the safe copy lives

Backups can go anywhere: an external drive plugged into the same machine, a folder on your NAS, or a cloud account you already pay for. The wizard shows the destinations you already set up; if you haven't yet, click "Or set up a new destination…" and we'll walk you through it.

Adding a local destination external drive / NAS folder

The simple path. Pick "External drive" or "Local folder" from the Type dropdown, point us at the path, decide whether to encrypt — no OAuth, no API keys, no tokens. If it's a USB drive that's sometimes unplugged, give us the expected drive letter and volume label so we skip the run cleanly on days it's not connected.

Destination editor configured for an external drive

Adding a cloud destination Dropbox · OneDrive · Google Drive · S3

Same starting point — click "Or set up a new destination…" and pick your cloud. We open the provider's sign-in page; you copy back a token; we verify it works before anything writes. For Dropbox we use the app-scoped OAuth flow — the app only ever sees its own sub-folder inside your Dropbox, never the rest of your files. Tokens stay on your machine, encrypted at rest; the cloud provider never sees your data in the clear.

Destination editor configured for Dropbox
3

Tell it when to run

Sensible defaults: nightly at 8 PM, with a retention pyramid (keep daily snapshots for 7 days, weekly for 30, monthly for 90, yearly for 365). Customize freely. One more click and your first backup is running.

Onboarding step 3 — pick the schedule

That's it. Watch it work.

Live progress bar while the first run uploads. After that, the schedule takes over — your machine runs backups when you told it to, and nothing else.

Main backups view with a backup in progress

Day-to-day, this is what you see

All your backups, one screen. Healthy runs get a quiet green dot; anything that needs attention surfaces at the top of the list.

Backups overview with three configured backups

When you need a file back

1

Pick a backup and a moment in time

Click Restore files on any backup, or go to the Restore tab. Choose which backup, then which revision — yesterday's, last week's, a year ago.

Restore wizard — pick a backup
2

Tick the files you want back

Browse the snapshot. Filter by filename if it's a big repository. Tick checkboxes. The bottom strip shows the file count and total size as you select, so you know how big the restore will be before it starts.

Restore wizard — file picker
3

Choose where they land. Click Restore.

Default is back to where the files originally came from. Or pick a different folder if you'd rather not overwrite anything. Parallel downloads with per-file retry — one slow file doesn't block the rest. Done.

Advanced mode

The easy-mode wizard covers the 95% case. When you need more — multiple destinations per backup, exclusion filters, monitoring integration, the full Restic surface — every dial is one click away.

Destinations view with three configured destinations

Manage every destination in one place

Add, edit, remove. Each backup can write to several destinations — local + cloud for the 3-2-1 rule — and each will only run when its destination is reachable.

Advanced backup editor

Backup editor — the full surface

Multiple sources, multiple destinations, exclude patterns with live preview, per-target threads, retention policy, prune / check toggles. Anything Restic supports, with a name to it.

Settings view

Settings — monitoring, email, theme

Healthchecks.io auto-setup (paste your API key, we create and name the checks). Failure notifications via Resend or Mailgun SMTP. Theme + accent. Custom OAuth client_id per provider if you want your own rate-limit quota.

Activity and logs view

Activity log you can audit

Every run records its files, bytes, duration, exit status. The raw Restic output is captured next to each run, so when something looks wrong you can see exactly what.

What it does

Everything Restic on the CLI does, plus the things you'd otherwise cobble together from scheduled-task XML, batch scripts, and a watchdog process you wrote at 2 AM.

Encrypted & deduplicated

AES-256 client-side encryption with content-defined chunking. The same file across two backups uploads once. Nothing readable hits the cloud.

Native scheduling

Windows Task Scheduler. macOS launchd. Linux systemd. No always-on process — your machine runs backups when you tell it to, and only when you tell it to.

Filter preview

Edit your exclude patterns with a live simulation pane. See exactly which files would be included or excluded before the first byte hits the cloud.

Portable config

Everything lives in Backspace.config/ next to the binary. Back up the folder, drop it on a new machine, you're done.

Healthchecks.io built in

Paste your API key, we create and name the checks for you. Local toast + bypassed-Focus-Assist alert with sound on failure. Optional email via Resend or Mailgun SMTP.

Metered-network guard

On Windows, the only OS that exposes a first-class metered signal: a backup that starts on Wi-Fi and detects a tether mid-run aborts cleanly. No data-plan surprises.

How it works

Backspace is the friendly face. The bytes move through Restic — the proven, BSD-2 open-source engine — driven by Backrest's scheduler and operation log. Everything's bundled; you don't install anything separately.

Cloud destinations go through rclone for the wire format, so Dropbox, OneDrive, Google Drive and anything-S3-compatible all look the same from Backspace's side. Bring your own OAuth client_id if you want your own rate-limit quota.