Backspace

Set-and-forget encrypted backups for Windows.
Back up in three steps. Restore any file from any day. Know that your backups actually work.

Download for Windows  ·  Website  ·  User guide

Backspace is a friendly desktop app for restic, the proven open-source backup engine. Pick your folders, pick where the backups go, pick a schedule, and forget about it. Your files are encrypted on your computer before they leave it, and only what changed is uploaded.

It's one portable Backspace.exe with its settings in a folder beside it: no installer, no account, no subscription.

Why Backspace

🔒 Encrypted and private Everything is encrypted with your password before it leaves your computer. Your cloud provider stores data it can't read.	☁️ Your storage, your choice Dropbox, OneDrive, Google Drive, S3-compatible storage, a network share, an external drive or a local folder. Sign in to cloud accounts with one click.	⚡ Small and fast Deduplication stores each piece of data once, across every version, so each new backup only uploads what changed.
🕰️ Every file, every day Restore one file or a whole folder from any snapshot, or open a snapshot as a read-only drive in File Explorer.	✅ Backups you can trust Test restores recover your files for real, on demand or on a schedule, so a broken backup doesn't wait for the day you need it.	🪶 Quiet in the background Lives in the tray like Dropbox and uses no CPU between backups. With administrator access it includes open files and runs before you sign in.

Set up a backup in three steps

1. Choose what to protect	2. Choose where it goes	3. Choose when it runs

The default schedule runs daily at 8 PM and keeps daily versions for a week, weekly for a month, monthly for three months and yearly for a year. Change any of it in the wizard or later.

Restore exactly what you need

Choose a moment in time	Tick the files you want back

Choose where the files land, whether to replace what's there and whether to keep the original folders. Pause, resume or cancel at any time: cancelling puts your original files back.

Get started

1. Download Backspace.exe. The release page shows its SHA-256.
2. Put it in the folder where you want to keep Backspace, such as your Documents folder. Its settings are created beside it.
3. Open Backspace.exe. On first start it downloads its engines (restic, Backrest, rclone) from their own projects into %LOCALAPPDATA%\Backspace\bin, checked against fingerprints built into Backspace.exe. The wizard then sets up your first backup.

Backspace needs Microsoft .NET 10. If it's missing, Backspace offers to install it on first launch.

Windows shows "Unknown publisher" when Backspace asks for administrator access, because Backspace.exe isn't code-signed yet.

How it runs

• Starts with Windows and waits in the tray. Close the window and backups keep running on schedule.
• Quit from the tray stops Backspace completely, background service included, until you open it again, sign in again or restart. Nothing runs behind your back.
• Administrator access (optional, approved when you turn it on) installs a small background service that runs as Windows itself and changes no file or folder permission. Backups then include files that other programs have open (Windows snapshots, VSS) and run even before you sign in. Later changes and updates never ask again.
• Portable: your settings, history and encrypted credentials live in Backspace.config next to the app. Copy both to move to a new computer.

Read the user guide for schedules and their conditions, test restores, checks, alerts and every other detail.

Status

Version 1.1 rebuilt the background service. Before each release, the exact build passes the full test suite, a real 20,000-file backup and restore with every file compared, live backups and restores on Dropbox, OneDrive and Google Drive, and scheduled backups before sign-in in an isolated Windows 11 virtual machine.

Windows 11	Supported and tested
Windows 10	Not tested yet
macOS, Linux	Builds, never launched yet. Field reports welcome
OneDrive for Business	Not supported yet
Network shares	With administrator access and the share's user name and password saved, backed up in the background like other destinations; otherwise while you are signed in, without Windows snapshots

Warning

No warranty. Backup software is provided "as is" and may fail to run, miss schedules or fail to restore. The authors are not liable for data loss or other damage. You are responsible for verifying your backups, testing restores and keeping redundant copies of important data (the 3-2-1 rule: three copies, two media, one off-site). See LICENSE.

Coming from Duplicacy?

Settings → Import existing backups imports your Duplicacy backups' folders, destinations, filters and retention settings. Filter rules keep their meaning, including include rules. Your existing Duplicacy storage and its history are left untouched; Backspace starts a fresh restic repository beside it. Details.

Building from source

You need the .NET 10 SDK. The build downloads the restic, Backrest and rclone binaries it bundles from their official GitHub releases (pass -p:SkipBackrestDownload=true to build offline with binaries you place under src/Backspace/Assets/).

# Windows, full feature set
dotnet publish src/Backspace -c Release -r win-x64 --self-contained false -f net10.0-windows
# → bin/Release/net10.0-windows/win-x64/publish/Backspace.exe

# macOS (osx-arm64 or osx-x64) and Linux (linux-x64), untested
dotnet publish src/Backspace -c Release -r linux-x64 --self-contained -f net10.0 -p:PublishSingleFile=true

launch-debug.bat and launch-release.bat (or the .sh versions) build and open the app; add --build-only to only build. The release script publishes into dist and keeps its portable configuration. The debug launcher turns on verbose logs under Backspace.config/logs/app. If a build reports files in use, choose Quit in the app using that output and retry.

Releases follow the release checklist for the exact commit. Contributing, architecture and testing cover the rest.

License

Backspace is open source under the BSD 2-Clause License, the same license as restic. It covers Backspace's own source code; the bundled restic, Backrest and rclone binaries are distributed under their own projects' terms.

Acknowledgments

Backspace stands on excellent open-source work:

• restic by Alexander Neumann, the backup engine that does the hard part.
• Backrest by Gareth George, which wraps restic in a clean API; Backspace runs it in the background.
• rclone by Nick Craig-Wood, which connects restic to Dropbox, OneDrive and Google Drive.
• Avalonia, the cross-platform UI framework.