I’m working on some changes for Timeshift. The UI has been re-designed to make it easier to use. The update is currently under testing and will be available by first week of October.
What’s New
Better status display
The status bar has been redesigned to display the status in a better way. It will warn you if the disk is full, if the disk is offline or if scheduled snapshots are disabled. It also displays the number of snapshots and remaining free space.
Better snapshot creation
Snapshots are now created using rsync’s --link-dest option. This is much faster and creates snapshots in a single step. Snapshot creation can be cancelled safely while it is in progress.
Creating snapshots will display detailed progress information such as the list of files being copied and estimated time remaining. Detailed statistics are displayed for the number of files which were created, deleted or modified since the last snapshot.
Better snapshot deletion
Deleting snapshots was a time consuming task in the previous version of Timeshift. Since each snapshot typically contains more than 150,000 files (for a freshly installed Ubuntu system), deleting these files can take some time to complete. Starting with v16.9, snapshots can be now be “marked” for deletion by right-clicking on them from the main window and selecting “Mark for deletion”. Marked snapshots will be deleted silently in the background during the scheduled run.
Deleting a snapshot will display detailed progress information such as the name of file being deleted and the estimated time remaining. The progress window can be closed while files are being deleted and the deletion will continue in the background.
Better performance
All disk operations such as creation and deletion of snapshots are now executed with a higher IONice value. This gives a greater priority to other applications running on the system and eliminates any lag or reduction in system performance when the disk operations are running. Overall, your system will feel smoother and more responsive while the snapshots are being created or deleted.
Better free space management
Snapshots will be created only if the snapshot device has more than 1 GB of free space. Scheduled snapshots will be disabled if there is not enough space.
Better settings
There’s a new setup wizard to guide users on the first run of the application. It selects the best options by default and guides the user through the basic setup. This is in addition to the settings window which has been re-designed with a simpler layout.
Better snapshot logs
There’s a new log viewer which displays the list of files that were created, deleted or modified since the last snapshot. The list of files can be filtered to analyze system changes. For example, you can filter the list to view all files that were created on the system since the last snapshot. This is useful for monitoring system changes.
