Timeshift v17.10

Tony George
4 min readOct 1, 2017

Timeshift v17.10 is now available. https://github.com/teejee2008/timeshift/releases

What’s New

Main Window

Home Directories Excluded by Default

Previous versions of Timeshift would backup and restore hidden files and directories in user’s home. These directories sometimes contain large amounts of data (such as in ~/.steam) and waste space on the snapshot device.

Starting with this release, the entire contents of home directories will be excluded by default. Any data to be included from home directories must be explicitly selected from the Settings window.

A new tab named Users was added to Settings window. It displays the list of users on the system and provides an option to Include hidden items or Include everything from the home directory. Both options are unchecked by default for all users.

Users tab

Selecting an option on this tab adds/removes filters on the Filters tab. You can edit filters directly from the Filters tab if you need more control.

Filters tab

In BTRFS mode, the @home subvolume will be skipped by default during backup. If required, it should be included explicitly from Settings > Users.

Wayland Support

Timeshift can now be used in a Wayland session on Fedora and other distributions. A work-around was added to the timeshift-launcher script to enable the application to work.

Encrypted Home

Previous versions of Timeshift would copy the decrypted contents of home directory to the backup location. This was a security risk since it made the decrypted contents available outside the user’s home directory.

Starting with this release, only the encrypted files in /home/.ecryptfs/$USER will be saved to the backup location. This ensures that files remain encrypted and cannot be decrypted by anyone who has access to the snapshot data.

Since home directories are excluded by default, the encrypted files need to be included for each user (if desired) by selecting the Include everything option from Settings > Users.

Other Changes

  • [Added] Support for BTRFS systems with @ on BTRFS volume and /home mounted on non-BTRFS partition
  • [Added] Support for window progress in Cinnamon 3.6 using libxapp
  • [Added] Install a default configuration file in /etc/default/timeshift.json
  • [Fixed] Message dialog was unreadable when timeshift-gtk was started without admin access on a system with newer version of GTK+
  • [Fixed] Snapshots were saved to root device if the selected backup device was not available
  • [Fixed] App does not start under Wayland session on Fedora
  • [Fixed] Inverted mouse cursor was displayed for some cursor themes on KDE and GTK
  • [Fixed] Build error with valac-0.36
  • [Fixed] Build error with libvte-2.91 on Debian 9
  • [Fixed] Scheduled tasks will be added only after user clicks Next on Schedule page. Tasks will not be added if user quits the setup wizard without clicking Next on the Schedule page.
  • [Fixed] Use symbolic icons in toolbar for better contrast with light and dark GTK themes
  • [Removed] Removed the Exclude Apps page in restore wizard
  • [Removed] Unnecessary dependency on libxml2 and libsoup
  • [Updated] Improved installer; More robust and supports more systems
  • [Updated] Added new translations by Linux Mint translation teams

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