Hey everyone,
VaultSync 1.8.8 is now available.
When I started work on this release, I called it the intentionally boring one.
After the last few versions added recovery confidence, clearer everyday workflows, stronger evidence, release verification, and cross-machine coordination, I didn't want 1.8.8 to become another feature-heavy update.
The goal was simpler:
Take what is already there, stress it harder, remove edge cases, and make failures safer.
That ended up touching quite a lot of VaultSync.
Backups now handle interruption much more deliberately
A large part of 1.8.8 was spent testing what happens when an operation does not get to finish normally.
Cancellation can arrive at awkward moments.
Files can disappear while they are being scanned.
A destination can vanish halfway through an operation.
A restore can be interrupted after some files have already changed.
Those are exactly the situations where backup software needs to be conservative.
1.8.8 adds deterministic interruption and recovery qualification for both plain and encrypted archives, alongside a number of fixes across backup, verification, restore, metadata, and cleanup paths.
Some examples:
- completed backups are preserved if cancellation arrives after the backup has already committed;
- scans cancelled while processing their final entry are still treated as cancelled;
- required snapshot data disappearing during backup causes the backup to fail;
- vanished backup data is rejected before metadata is published;
- verification cancellation is no longer incorrectly reported as a data mismatch;
- interrupted restores roll back rather than leaving partial target changes;
- interrupted metadata imports and exports roll back as well;
- rollback evidence is preserved if a restore destination disappears;
- retention metadata survives unavailable backup destinations;
- deferred metadata survives destinations disappearing during replay;
- cancellation ownership is isolated between overlapping backup runs.
These are mostly cases you should never notice during normal use.
That is exactly why they matter.
Safer filesystem boundaries
There has also been a substantial pass over temporary data, filesystem links, staging areas, and cleanup.
Snapshot scans no longer follow linked source paths.
Retention and disposable cleanup are confined so filesystem links cannot lead VaultSync into unrelated directories.
Decrypted workspaces are isolated between VaultSync processes, and cleanup is restricted to the exact temporary locations VaultSync owns.
Encrypted restore staging now uses isolated locations so predictable staging collisions cannot occur.
Temporary telemetry exports are also bounded by both age and total size.
Backup software should be extremely conservative about where it walks and what it deletes.
Large repositories now have performance budgets
1.8.8 adds repeatable performance budgets for large histories and high file counts.
That means performance regressions can be tested intentionally rather than only being discovered later by someone with a particularly large project.
Snapshot creation has also been reworked around more isolated stages, deferred hashing, checkpoint telemetry, and native-copy orchestration.
Archive creation and support-package generation now reuse buffers and stream hashes to reduce memory use.
Cancellation performance checks were also made deterministic enough to remain useful on smaller CI runners.
Native Wayland on Linux
Linux gets a fairly visible improvement in this release too.
VaultSync now supports native Wayland, with automatic fallback to X11 when required.
Linux windows are explicitly opaque as well, avoiding compositor and transparency issues under native Wayland.
The updater received more Linux work too.
1.8.8 qualifies safe patch updating across multiple installed versions, while keeping the full installer as the fallback when the current installation is not an approved patch base.
It also fixes the case where VaultSync could close before privileged Linux update authentication had actually succeeded.
Patch-base inventories are now rejected if they are duplicated or do not match what the updater expects.
The UI should feel a little less in the way
There are some smaller visible changes as well.
Unintended horizontal scrolling has been removed from pages and dialogs.
Metadata-conflict reviews stay readable in narrow windows.
Registered projects are loaded into the tray menu before you need to open another page first.
Guided setup now gives more actionable next steps instead of simply describing them.
And the heavier Guide and Schedule queries have been moved away from the UI thread.
None of these are major features individually, but together they make the application feel less fragile around the edges.
Release and CI work
There was also a fair amount of work on the machinery used to build and ship VaultSync itself.
The exact 1.8.7 release state was qualified, pinned workflow security actions were updated, and duplicate or unbounded release-branch CI and Sonar runs were removed.
Remaining Sonar findings were cleared across core code, the updater, onboarding, release automation, and storage hygiene.
Failed installer downloads are now removed immediately.
Abandoned release-cache, installation-identity, credential-index, and support-bundle staging writes are also cleaned up safely.
And a lot of edge cases
The changelog for this release is unusually fix-heavy.
That is intentional.
There are fixes around:
- snapshot persistence and scan-cache publication;
- backup repair and metadata-conflict busy state;
- isolated profiles accidentally opening the normal database;
- deferred metadata replay;
- installer download cleanup;
- backup destination disappearance;
- retention state;
- restore rollback;
- cancellation timing;
- patch-base validation;
- macOS system Python compatibility;
- updater security and maintainability findings.
⚠️ Clean reinstall may be needed
If 1.8.8 does not update cleanly or behaves strangely after updating, uninstall VaultSync and install a fresh copy.
Your VaultSync database, projects, history, settings, and persistent app data are stored separately from the application and are not deleted by a normal uninstall.
Use:
- Windows Intel/AMD: Windows x64
- Apple Silicon Mac: macOS ARM64 / Apple Silicon DMG
- Intel Mac: macOS x64 / Intel DMG
- Linux Intel/AMD: Linux x64 / x86_64, preferably
.debon Debian/Ubuntu/Zorin-style systems
On Windows, uninstall from Settings → Apps.
On macOS, remove VaultSync.app from Applications.
On Linux, remove the installed package/app files, but do not manually delete VaultSync's user-data directories.
The website and GitHub release use the same release packages.
The last few releases added a lot of capability to VaultSync.
1.8.8 is mostly about making that capability harder to break.
It is not the most exciting release to screenshot.
It probably shouldn't be.
A backup application should spend some releases getting very good at the boring parts.
As always, feedback is welcome — especially around Linux/Wayland, interrupted operations, large repositories, updater behaviour, and anything that still feels unreliable around cancellation or recovery.
GitHub:
https://github.com/ATAC-Helicopter/VaultSync
Microsoft Store:
https://apps.microsoft.com/detail/9N9HRX4JCLCP
Website:
https://fglabs.dev/vaultsync