Timeshift

A system restore utility for Linux.

Timeshift takes incremental, scheduled snapshots of the system using rsync (or Btrfs snapshots, when the root filesystem is Btrfs) and offers a simple interface to roll back to a previous state. The default scheduling — hourly, daily, weekly, monthly — keeps a sliding window of snapshots that can be adjusted to taste.

The standard Timeshift use case is "I'm about to install something risky, take a snapshot first" or "an update broke my system, roll back". On Btrfs systems the rollback can be near instant; with rsync it takes longer but works on any filesystem.

Tony George (teejee2008) wrote Timeshift in 2013. The Linux Mint team adopted and now maintains it as the standard system backup tool on Mint. It is also the recommended snapshot tool on Manjaro and several other Arch-based distributions, and is included in many "first steps after installing Linux" guides because of its low setup overhead.

License: GPL-3.0-or-later

Category: Backup

Website: https://github.com/linuxmint/timeshift

Install

Debian/Ubuntu: sudo apt install timeshift
Fedora/RHEL:   sudo dnf install timeshift
Arch:          sudo pacman -S timeshift

Authors

Tony George (creator)
Linux Mint team

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