Development journal
Deep technical diaries, visual progress, and release decisions from active FG Labs projects. Read the archive here, then take questions and field reports to Reddit.
VaultSync
Hi everyone! I've been wanting to do this for a while, and I've finally put together an official VaultSync Discord server . Until now, most of the community interaction has happened here on Reddit or through GitHub issues and pull requests. Both are staying. R…
Read the diaryArchive
90 earlier entries
A complete installed Linux recovery run, twelve real screenshots, progress since 1.8.9, and what remains before beta 1. Join our official Discord.
Read on site →Hi everyone! I've published another development update on VaultSync 1.9.0 , the upcoming release that introduces disk imaging, cloning, and system recovery. This has become a much larger undertaking than a typical VaultSync update. I'm trying to build a recove…
Read on site →Inside offline recovery, verified image copies, privacy-conscious diagnostics and the Linux, Windows and macOS disk-beta milestones.
Read on site →It's been a while since VaultSync 1.8.9, and I wanted to explain what's actually happening with 1.9.0, why development is taking significantly longer than previous updates, and what this means for future releases. The short version: 1.9.0 isn't just another fe…
Read on site →Hi everyone! I've been working on VaultSync 1.9.0 for a while now, and I wanted to share a more detailed development update. The first beta isn't available yet. I'm currently bringing the different parts of 1.9 together and working through the remaining qualif…
Read on site →A pre-beta look at imported projects, Unity exclusions, navigation, compression, and the recovery checks that caught a real bug before release.
Read on site →This update started with a pretty ordinary problem: one of my mostly-code Unity projects produced a backup that was much larger than I expected. My first thought was compression. It turned out that was only part of the story. Looking through what VaultSync was…
Read on site →Imported projects become easier to recognize, Unity exclusions get corrected, and measured ZIP tuning leads to an isolated compression experiment.
Read on site →A smaller and much more visible VaultSync 1.9.0 update this time. Most of the recent work has been buried pretty deep in recovery foundations, qualification gates and disk-recovery planning. This week I worked on something considerably less dramatic: Back and…
Read on site →Back and Forward reach the development UI, while real navigation checks uncover lost drafts, startup redirects, stale saved pages and cramped project names.
Read on site →One of the things I really do not want VaultSync to do is show a green checkmark for something that has never actually been proven to recover. That matters a lot more now because 1.9.0 is starting to lay the groundwork for disk imaging. A disk image can valida…
Read on site →Four candidate disk profiles, zero qualified. The executable evidence gate, a chronology fix, and what still has to happen before recovery claims are earned.
Read on site →Hi everyone, One thing I’ve been trying to tighten up in VaultSync 1.9 is what words like “protected” actually mean. Because that word can hide a lot of very different states. A destination can be configured. A backup record can exist. A mirror can have run. A…
Read on site →Configured is not the same as reachable. A closer look at what the 1.9 CLI can report, when its watcher stops, and what still needs proof before release.
Read on site →Hi everyone, I’ve been spending quite a bit of time on the VaultSync 1.9 CLI rework , and it’s finally reached the point where I can show an actual end-to-end workflow instead of just talking about commands that are being added. The goal is pretty simple: the…
Read on site →A real look at the 1.9 development CLI: a useful starting screen, recorded backup workflows, honest verification, restore previews, and machine-readable results.
Read on site →Hey everyone, I finally published the first proper development diary for VaultSync 1.9 — Recovery Horizon . And I think the biggest change since I first started talking about 1.9 is this: it is no longer just “the disk cloning update.” The original idea was mu…
Read on site →The 1.9 branch is open, the first CLI rework is already real, and the Recovery Horizon roadmap now connects disk recovery, portable restore, offsite protection, a staged UI migration, and later binary source control.
Read on site →VaultSync 1.8.9 is now available. This release is called “Keep your place. Work with clarity.” 1.8.9 isn't about adding another huge feature. After the much larger changes in the last few releases, this one is about fixing the things you notice when you actual…
Read on site →Hey everyone, This is a longer post than usual because I wanted to properly explain where 1.8.9 is, why it has taken longer, and what I'm actually aiming for with 1.9. If you don't want the wall of text, here's the short version. TL;DR VaultSync 1.8.9 has grow…
Read on site →Hey everyone, I wanted to give an update on VaultSync 1.8.9 , because this release has ended up taking a bit longer than one of my usual 1.8.x updates. There is a reason for that. 1.8.9 itself isn't really a “here's one huge new feature” release. A lot of it h…
Read on site →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 cros…
Read on site →Hey everyone, 1.8.8 is underway, and this one is a little different. There isn't really a big shiny feature I'm trying to sell here. After 1.8.5, 1.8.6 and especially 1.8.7 added quite a lot, I think VaultSync needs a release where the main goal is basically:…
Read on site →Hey everyone, VaultSync 1.8.7 is ready. This release is less about adding another big backup mode and more about making the things VaultSync already does provable, portable, and safer to trust . Over the last few releases, a lot of work went into recovery conf…
Read on site →Hi everyone, In the last 1.8.7 development update I talked about the foundations of Trust & Portability : installation identities repository writer leases canonical release manifests safer shared-storage behavior the direction toward portable recovery evidence…
Read on site →Hi everyone, Work on VaultSync 1.8.7 is underway. 1.8.5 was largely about recovery confidence . 1.8.6 focused on everyday clarity — making it easier to understand what VaultSync is doing, what needs attention, and what happens next. For 1.8.7, the focus is shi…
Read on site →Hey everyone, VaultSync 1.8.6 is now available. This release has been a bit different from 1.8.4 and 1.8.5. Those updates did a lot of work around recovery: better evidence, recovery drills, clearer readiness states, and making the distinction between having a…
Read on site →Hi everyone, I’ve been working on VaultSync 1.8.6. After 1.8.5 focused heavily on recovery confidence, I wanted this update to be less about adding more features and more about making the features already there easier to understand. The question I kept coming…
Read on site →Hey everyone, VaultSync 1.8.5 is now available. This release started as a follow-up to the recovery work introduced in 1.8.4. The original plan was mostly to make recovery information clearer, improve the existing drills, and give each project a better explana…
Read on site →VaultSync 1.8.5 Beta 1 is being released today, so this feels like the right time to share a clearer picture of what I am working toward beyond this first beta. The recent feedback around VaultSync has been remarkably consistent: A backup completing is not the…
Read on site →VaultSync 1.8.4 became a much broader release than originally expected. It introduced recovery drills, restore-plan simulation, local byte-level recovery proofs, exportable evidence, protected recovery-point recommendations, clearer 3-2-1 guidance, privacy-foc…
Read on site →Hey everyone! VaultSync 1.8.4 is now available. This update started as the next step in the Disaster Recovery work introduced throughout the 1.8 cycle, but it gradually became something much more important: a rethink of what VaultSync should consider a trustwo…
Read on site →Hey everyone! It has been a little while since the last proper development update, and VaultSync 1.8.4 has grown into a much more important release than I originally expected . What started as another update to the Disaster Recovery work introduced throughout…
Read on site →Hi everyone! 👋 While I'm still actively working on the 1.8.x series (with 1.8.4 currently in development ), I've started planning what comes next. The roadmap for VaultSync 1.9 is still in its very early stages, which makes this the perfect time to ask for yo…
Read on site →Hey everyone, VaultSync 1.8.3 is now available. This release continues the work started with Chronicle and introduces one of the features I've wanted to build for a long time. When I first started working on VaultSync, creating backups was never really the dif…
Read on site →Hey everyone, I’ve spent the last couple of weeks working on VaultSync 1.8.3, and it’s becoming one of my favorite updates in the Chronicle series. This update isn’t primarily about creating backups or browsing them. It’s about understanding them. While using…
Read on site →Hi everyone, VaultSync 1.8.2 is now available. Following the Chronicle release and the Recovery improvements in 1.8.1, this update focuses on something a little different: making VaultSync easier to use. The biggest addition is Snapshot Explorer , a feature th…
Read on site →Hey everyone, Work on VaultSync 1.8.2 is well underway, so I thought I’d share what I’ve been building over the last week. Unlike Chronicle (1.8.0), which introduced History and Recovery, or 1.8.1, which focused on polishing those systems, 1.8.2 is mostly abou…
Read on site →Hi everyone, VaultSync 1.8.1 is now available. This is a smaller follow-up to the 1.8 "Chronicle" release, focusing on Recovery Intelligence, encrypted backup improvements, Linux reliability, and a number of quality-of-life fixes. For anyone new here, VaultSyn…
Read on site →Hi everyone, We've identified an issue affecting VaultSync 1.8.0 installations made using the Linux .deb package. The update downloads successfully and correctly requests elevation, but in some environments the updater may close immediately without applying th…
Read on site →Hey everyone, VaultSync 1.8: Chronicle is now available. For anyone new here, VaultSync is an open-source desktop app for creating local, external-drive, and network/NAS backups with more visibility into what changed, what can be restored, and how recoverable…
Read on site →One of the biggest goals for VaultSync 1.8 is making backups easier to understand once projects start accumulating months or years of history. When I first started working on the History page, I thought it would mostly be a timeline. Load backup events. Show t…
Read on site →One of the things I've learned while working on VaultSync 1.8 is that the simplest ideas tend to become the most complicated once real data gets involved. History is probably the best example. When I first started planning the History page, I thought it would…
Read on site →A few weeks ago I shared the roadmap and some very early mockups for what I was calling Project History & Recovery . At the time it was mostly ideas, planning documents, rough UI concepts and a lot of notes. Since then I've started building it. These are still…
Read on site →Hey everyone, I wanted to share something a little different today. Over the last few months, most of the visible VaultSync work has been focused on things like bug fixes, metadata handling, Linux support, database reliability, refactoring, dependency upgrades…
Read on site →Hey everyone, VaultSync 1.7.5 is now available. For anyone new here: VaultSync is an open-source desktop app for creating local, external-drive, and network/NAS backups with more visibility into what changed and what can be restored. This release is a little d…
Read on site →This beta is mostly focused on stability, diagnostics, infrastructure cleanup, and reducing a lot of the internal friction that had built up over time. There are not many flashy user-facing features in this release, but internally this ended up becoming one of…
Read on site →Hey everyone, I have been working a lot on VaultSync lately, but most of it has been the kind of work that happens under the surface. Cleaning things up, fixing rough edges, testing Linux builds, improving packaging, touching old parts of the code, and finding…
Read on site →Hey everyone, VaultSync v1.7.4 is now available. For anyone new here: VaultSync is an open-source desktop app for creating local, external-drive, and network/NAS backups with more visibility into what changed and what can be restored. This release focuses on b…
Read on site →Hey everyone, Small warning: this is a bit of a long one. I wanted to give a proper update on VaultSync 1.7.4, because this patch has taken much longer than I expected, and from the outside I know it probably looks a little messy. Right now, we are on VaultSyn…
Read on site →Hey everyone, VaultSync v1.7.4 beta is now available. For anyone new here: VaultSync is an open-source desktop app for creating local, external-drive, and network/NAS backups with more visibility into what changed and what can be restored. This is still a beta…
Read on site →Hey everyone, Quick progress update on VaultSync v1.7.4 . This is not the final release post yet, but the release branch is getting close enough that I wanted to share what changed, what has been hardened, and what still needs testing before I cut the release.…
Read on site →Woke up to a pretty nice number today. VaultSync has now passed 800 downloads . I know it isn’t huge in the grand scheme of things, but for me it’s one of those small moments where the project feels a bit more real. This started as something I was building mos…
Read on site →Hi everyone, Quick warning: there are reports that the latest Windows security update is breaking or disrupting several third-party backup applications. VaultSync is currently being tested against this. I do not yet have enough information to say that VaultSyn…
Read on site →Downloads now explain Store-managed updates, direct GitHub releases, and platform-specific choices.
Archive noteVaultSync 1.7.3 is out. This is a pretty important one because it also marks the first proper Linux launch for VaultSync. For this release, Linux builds are now shipped as actual release assets: linux-x64.tar.gz linux-arm64.tar.gz linux-x64.AppImage So Linux i…
Read on site →Big milestone on this one. VaultSync 1.7.3 beta is out , and with it comes the first proper Linux beta launch . This is something that has been requested for a long time, and it feels really good to finally have Linux builds going out as actual release assets…
Read on site →Figured it was probably time for a proper update on where VaultSync is at right now, because a lot has happened recently, even if not all of it looked like big flashy feature work from the outside. Over the last stretch, a lot of time went into things that wer…
Read on site →Woke up to this today. VaultSync is now officially live on the Microsoft Store . This has been something I’ve been working towards in the background for a while, and seeing it actually go through certification and show up live is… a bit surreal. For anyone won…
Read on site →Quick update — and a pretty big one this time. VaultSync has officially entered Microsoft Store certification . This has been something I’ve been working on in the background for a while, and it’s finally at the point where it’s going through the actual submis…
Read on site →I think it’s time to give a bit more insight into where VaultSync is at. You’ve probably noticed updates have slowed down a bit after 1.6 — and that’s going to continue for a while. It’s not because development stopped. It’s actually the opposite. Right now mo…
Read on site →1.7.1 is out. This one isn’t a big feature release like Sentinel was — it’s mostly focused on fixing the rough edges that showed up after 1.7 and making the app feel faster and more consistent overall. Performance & responsiveness A lot of work here was removi…
Read on site →VaultSync 1.7 (Sentinel) has been out for a few days now. There will most likely still be a few 1.7.x follow-up releases (fixes, small improvements, polish), but I’ve started planning ahead for 1.8. Before locking in the roadmap, I want to build this one with…
Read on site →VaultSync 1.7 ( Sentinel ) is now officially released. This update focuses on one thing: If you’re backing up to NAS, external drives, or across machines, this release is for you. What Sentinel actually changes Backups don’t usually fail instantly — they drift…
Read on site →The VaultSync 1.7 Beta — Sentinel — is now available . After the organization and visibility improvements introduced in 1.6 (Compass) , this release focuses more on reliability, backup integrity, and resilience when dealing with real-world storage setups . As…
Read on site →VaultSync 1.6 (Compass) shipped recently, and development has already moved on to what comes next. Compass ended up being a fairly large release internally. A lot of the work in that cycle focused on organization and visibility — things like project tags, smar…
Read on site →VaultSync 1.6 — Compass is now available. This release focuses on three areas that kept coming up while using the app with larger vaults and mixed storage setups: safer restore workflows better project organization clearer visibility into backup health and sto…
Read on site →The first dev diary talked about the direction for VaultSync 1.6. Now that the release is nearly ready (planned for March 9 ), I wanted to go through what actually ended up landing and why these changes matter for real backup workflows. 1.6 turned out to be a…
Read on site →With VaultSync 1.6.0 planned for March 9 , I wanted to start something I’ve been meaning to do for a while: a small dev diary series documenting how the project evolves. VaultSync has reached the point where the interesting work is no longer just adding featur…
Read on site →VaultSync 1.5.1 focuses on internal robustness, async correctness, UI polish, and smarter archive handling — without changing backup formats or restore compatibility. This release continues the 1.5.x push toward reliability under real-world NAS and mixed-stora…
Read on site →VaultSync already supports multiple languages, but I’d really value help from native speakers to improve accuracy, clarity, and natural wording. This is not a hiring post — it’s an open-source collaboration effort to refine and strengthen localization quality.…
Read on site →Ironclad (1.5.0) was probably the biggest update to date. 1.5.1 is the cleanup pass. No new headline feature — this update is about tightening things, smoothing rough edges, and improving performance in places that aren’t noticable but absolutely matter long-t…
Read on site →For the past few weeks, things have been quieter around VaultSync . That wasn’t accidental. Version 1.5 — Ironclad — is the biggest structural update this project has had so far. It’s not just a set of new features. It changes how VaultSync protects your data…
Read on site →Yeah — I know it’s been some time since the last proper update post. So first things first: VaultSync is not dead. I’m still here. I’m still building it. Updates are just slower than they used to be. When VaultSync started, it was a small experiment. I could p…
Read on site →After the structural changes in v1.4 (per-project backup destinations), I’ve shifted focus to the next major step for VaultSync: security, control, and clarity. VaultSync 1.5 is less about flashy features and more about strengthening the foundation in ways tha…
Read on site →VaultSync v1.4.1 is a performance and stability-focused release aimed at making the app feel smoother, calmer, and more responsive in day-to-day use — especially after the larger architectural changes introduced in v1.4. This update doesn’t introduce new user-…
Read on site →Quick development update on VaultSync , a desktop backup and snapshot manager focused on local disks, external drives, and NAS setups. v1.4.1 is a performance and stability update following the larger v1.4 release, which introduced per-project backup destinati…
Read on site →VaultSync v1.4 is the release where you can finally choose where each project backs up . Until now, VaultSync assumed backups should run on all active destinations . That worked for simple setups, but it quickly broke down once you started mixing local disks,…
Read on site →VaultSync v1.3.5 is out 🎉 This release is mostly about making backup activity easier to read and reason about, especially if you have a lot of history or work across multiple machines. No new workflows, but a lot of refinement to dashboards, charts, and summa…
Read on site →Hey everyone Quick dev update on what I’m working on next for VaultSync and what’s planned for v1.4 . This next version is less about UI and more about control, speed, and confidence , especially if you’re running multiple destinations or very large projects.…
Read on site →VaultSync v1.3.4 is out 🎉 This release is all about polish, performance, and reliability , especially for users with multiple destinations, NAS shares, and long backup histories. There are no new features — instead, this update makes VaultSync feel faster, cl…
Read on site →Download Changelog [1.3.3] 22.01.2026 Changed Dashboard refresh now uses aggregated queries for counts and totals to avoid loading full history. UI view refreshes no longer re-run database schema setup; initialization now happens once at startup. Archive and f…
Read on site →This is a short update on what’s going on internally for the upcoming v1.3.3 release. This version does not introduce new features or major UI changes. The focus is on internal cleanup, performance improvements, and laying stronger foundations for future work.…
Read on site →Download Changelog [1.3.2] 18.01.2026 Added Cross-machine metadata store ( .vaultsync/meta/ ) with portable project/snapshot/backup records and external IDs. Metadata sync controls (global + per-destination), manual refresh, and review dialog. Metadata backfil…
Read on site →Changelog [1.3.1] BETA 16.01.2026 Added Cross-machine metadata store (`.vaultsync/meta/`) with portable project/snapshot/backup records and external IDs. Metadata sync controls (global + per-destination), manual refresh, and review dialog. Metadata backfill op…
Read on site →This update was mostly about making VaultSync usable across multiple machines without losing history, and about getting macOS support to a real-world, everyday-usable level. Metadata sync across machines The biggest change in v1.3.0 is the new .vaultsync/meta/…
Read on site →Hi everyone Here’s a quick development update and overview of what’s coming in VaultSync v1.3.0. The beta phase is almost complete, and I’m currently targeting a release early to mid next week. As of now, the beta already includes roughly 90% of what the final…
Read on site →Welcome to r/VaultSync VaultSync is an open-source desktop backup utility for Windows, Linux, and macOS, built around a simple idea: A backup is only useful if you understand what was protected and can actually recover it. VaultSync is designed for people who…
Read on site →GitHub Added Cross-machine backup history metadata store ( .vaultsync/meta/ ) with portable project/snapshot/backup records. External IDs for projects/snapshots/backups to support cross-machine merging. Metadata sync toggles (global + per-destination) and manu…
Read on site →Why VaultSync exists VaultSync started out of frustration. Most backup tools I tried had one or more of these problems: transfers slowing down or stalling on network mounts very little visibility into folder growth or changes automatic jobs that failed silentl…
Read on site →