A major update for Timeshift is now available (v17.1). Changes are summarized below.

What's New

BTRFS Snapshots

Features of Timeshift BTRFS have been merged with Timeshift. There's a new tab in Settings Window to select the snapshot type as BTRFS or RSYNC.

• Timeshift will default to BTRFS snapshots on supported systems (BTRFS filesystems with @ and @home subvolumes).
• All snapshots created with Timeshift BTRFS are compatible with this version of Timeshift. Timeshift BTRFS will no longer be maintained.
• Since Timeshift now includes all features from Timeshift BTRFS, installing Timeshift v17.1 will remove the package timeshift-btrfs if installed.
• The total and unshared data size will be displayed in snapshot list for BTRFS snapshots. The "Unshared" column displays the disk space that can be recovered by deleting the snapshot.

Console Options

• Option --backup has been replaced with option --check. This works exactly the same as before. Only the option is being renamed. Running timeshift --check will check if any snapshot needs to be created for the selected backup levels. It also performs housekeeping tasks such as deleting snapshots marked for deletion.
• Option --backup-now has been replaced with option --create. This works exactly the same as before. Only the option is being renamed.
• Option --tags {O,B,H,D,W,M} has been added to specify backup level while creating snapshots. Together with --create it can be used to set up custom cron jobs for creating snapshots at a specific time. For example, timeshift --create --tags W will create a new "weekly" snapshot. Users can add this command to the crontab to create weekly snapshots at 12:00 AM on Sundays (for example). Refer to the user manual for more details.
• Options --btrfs and --rsync have been added to specify snapshot type. By default, the snapshot type selected in application settings will be used. The new options override the snapshot type selected by user in application settings.

Scheduled tasks

• Scripts will be created in /etc/cron.*/ instead of adding entries to root user's crontab. This allows the user to create custom jobs for timeshift without creating conflicts with jobs created by Timeshift.
• The cron service usually sends the output of scheduled tasks as an email to the current user. So if you have an email client configured on your system, you will receive hourly emails when the cron job runs. An option has been added to the Settings window to stop the cron daemon from sending emails, for tasks created by Timeshift.
  
  

Other Changes

• /var/lib/docker will be excluded by default. This prevents recursive backups which can cause the disk to run out of space.
  
• /timeshift-btrfs and /var/log/timeshift will be excluded by default.
  
• Use expanded ButtonBox if GTK+ version >= 3.18

User Manual

The user manual has been updated with details for BTRFS snapshots. There's a new section on creating custom cron jobs for creating scheduled snapshots with Timeshift.

The updated user manual is available at the following link for people who have donated to this project: Download Timeshift User Manual
Please use the password that was sent to you in the last email for extracting the zip file.

If you have donated to this project in the past or contributed in any way (translations, troubleshooting, etc) but not received the user manual, please send me an email at teejeetech at gmail dot com. If you are a student or cannot afford to donate but still wish to get the user manual, please send me an email and I will send you a copy.

Installation

Ubuntu and derivatives (Ubuntu, Linux Mint, etc)

Packages are available in the Launchpad PPA for supported Ubuntu releases. Run the following commands in a terminal window:

sudo apt-add-repository -y ppa:teejee2008/ppa
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install timeshift

You do not wish to add the PPA, you can download and install from the DEB files linked below:
timeshift-latest-i386.deb (32-bit)
timeshift-latest-amd64.deb (64-bit)

These DEBs are built for Xenial and may fail to install on older releases of Ubuntu. Try downloading the debs for Trusty from the Launchpad PPA in case of issues with the Xenial DEB files.

Other Linux Distributions

An installer is available from following links:
timeshift-latest-i386.run (32-bit)
timeshift-latest-amd64.run (64-bit)

Removal

Run the following commands in a terminal window:

sudo apt-get purge timeshift

Donate

If you want to buy me a coffee or send some donations my way, you can use Google wallet or Paypal to send a donation to teejeetech at gmail dot com. People who donate will receive a complementary User Manual by email.

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