BackDown v1.0.0-beta.8

The eighth beta of BackDown 1.0: the date and place tags from beta.6 come to the app — an offline map of where your photos were taken, search by place, and tagging in bulk, in a new Places view — and backdown tag find finds them from the command line. It also carries beta.7's seconds-fast search by name across every machine.

Install

Platform	Installer	Command line
Linux x86-64	backdown-io_1.0.0-beta.8_amd64.deb (Debian, Ubuntu) or .AppImage	backdown-v1.0.0-beta.8-linux-x86_64.tar.gz (static)
Linux ARM64	backdown-io_1.0.0-beta.8_arm64.deb or .AppImage	backdown-v1.0.0-beta.8-linux-arm64.tar.gz (static)
macOS (Apple silicon + Intel)	BackDown-1.0.0-beta.8.dmg	backdown-v1.0.0-beta.8-macos-universal.tar.gz

Windows builds are paused for this beta while the port is finished; follow it at BuenGenio/BackDown#94.

This release is signed. SHA256SUMS.txt.sig is an Ed25519 signature of SHA256SUMS.txt by BackDown's release key, and backdown update checks it before installing anything. To check by hand, see Air-gapped computers.

The installers and apps themselves still aren't signed by Apple. On macOS, right-click the app and choose Open the first time (for the command-line binary: xattr -d com.apple.quarantine backdown).

What's new since beta.6

Find your photos by place — now in the app

beta.6 taught BackDown to read a photo's date and GPS position and turn the position into a country, a region, a city and the nearest airport, all offline (tag exif, tag geo). beta.8 brings that to the browser and the app, and makes it something you search.

• A new Places view: a search box that suggests places, tags and years; an offline map drawn from the place data built into BackDown — no tiles, nothing fetched — with your photos clustered on it and the search circle drawn; tag counts to narrow by; and a grid grouped by distance or month where you can tag, untag, or set keep/drop/reviewed in bulk.
• Reading a drive's photos is now a stoppable background job you watch in Places and Activity; each photo is read once, and reading a drive again only reads what's new.
• Rename, merge or delete your own tags from All tags.

Find them from the command line

• backdown tag find: everything within a distance of an airport, a town or a position (--near HKG, --near "Paris, Texas", --near 22.31,113.91), filtered by --tag and a --from/--to date range, newest or nearest first — with --paths and --json for scripts.
• backdown tag exif now takes folders, not just single files, and --geo names the country, city and airport in the same pass:

backdown tag exif /media/photos --geo

Search answers in seconds, across every machine

Carried over from beta.7, which was never released on its own: a name index finds matches in a fraction of a second however big the index, and the search box's Everywhere covers your other machines too — this computer's matches first, then each machine's. After upgrading, the service builds the index once as its own job (about 8 minutes for 27 million files); search works as before until it's done.

Known limitations

• Reverse-geocoding is to the nearest populated place of 1,000+ people; a photo far from any town takes the nearest one, with lower confidence. The named-place and airport matches are within a set distance.
• The name index takes some room: on 8.5 million distinct names, about 1.2 GB.
• Searching another machine at its fastest needs beta.8 there too.
• The installers aren't signed or notarised by Apple.
• Windows builds are paused this beta while the port is finished (#94); Linux and macOS are unaffected.
• Pro, Team and Forensic features are free during the beta; pricing may change before 1.0.

Documentation: https://backdown.io/docs/. Provided as-is, without warranty, for evaluation.

BackDown v1.0.0-beta.6

The sixth beta of BackDown 1.0: tags that follow a file's content across every copy of it, a photo's date and place read from the photo itself and turned into country, region, city and nearest airport without going online, and scans that refuse to run against the wrong drive.

Install

Platform	Installer	Command line
Linux x86-64	backdown-io_1.0.0-beta.6_amd64.deb (Debian, Ubuntu) or .AppImage	backdown-v1.0.0-beta.6-linux-x86_64.tar.gz (static)
Linux ARM64	backdown-io_1.0.0-beta.6_arm64.deb or .AppImage	backdown-v1.0.0-beta.6-linux-arm64.tar.gz (static)
macOS (Apple silicon + Intel)	BackDown-1.0.0-beta.6.dmg	backdown-v1.0.0-beta.6-macos-universal.tar.gz
Windows x86-64	BackDown-1.0.0-beta.6-x64.msi (no administrator rights needed)	backdown-v1.0.0-beta.6-windows-x86_64.zip

This release is signed. SHA256SUMS.txt.sig is an Ed25519 signature of SHA256SUMS.txt by BackDown's release key, and backdown update checks it before installing anything. To check by hand, see Air-gapped computers.

The installers and apps themselves still aren't signed by Apple or Microsoft. On macOS, right-click the app and choose Open the first time (for the command-line binary: xattr -d com.apple.quarantine backdown). On Windows, SmartScreen may ask you to confirm once.

What's new since beta.5

Tags, flags and links

• Tags say what something is about: its owner, kind, place, country, city, airport, event, date. backdown tag add --kind city --value "Hong Kong" --to TARGET, tag rm, tag list, tag of TARGET. Tags can nest (a city under its country).
• A tag on a file's content (content:<sha256>) is on every copy of that file, on any drive, and stays when copies are moved or deduplicated. Tags can also go on a person or database (subject:, entity:) or a path (path:).
• Flags record decisions: canonical, duplicate (of which copy), keep, drop, reviewed, mine, not-mine and others. backdown flag set|clear|of.
• Links between any two things: backdown edge add SRC REL DST, edge from, edge to.
• --json on everything that reads. Each tag and flag remembers where it came from and when.

A photo's date and place

• backdown tag exif FILES reads the date and GPS position a photo or video recorded (JPEG, HEIC, TIFF, MOV, MP4) and tags its content with the year, the date under it, and the location. The files need to be indexed; one BackDown hasn't hashed yet (a file no other file matches in size never is) is hashed there and then.
• backdown tag geo turns those locations into country, region, city and nearest airport (within 120 km), offline, from place data built into BackDown. Nothing is sent anywhere. The further a photo is from the nearest town, the lower the confidence recorded with the tag.
• backdown tag geo --about shows the data it uses and where it comes from: GeoNames (CC BY 4.0) and OurAirports (public domain).

Scans refuse the wrong drive

After a reboot on a user's server, a drive came up at a different mount point, and other software had already made a few folders at its usual one. BackDown's next scan saw those folders instead of the drive and marked almost 16 million files as gone; getting them back would have meant hashing terabytes again. Scans now stop before recording anything when:

• another drive is where the scanned one was: the folder is now on a different disk (by serial or file system UUID) from the last scan. The message names both and says what to do: mount the drive there, or backdown index --allow-other-drive for a new drive in the old one's place, or backdown forget and index it afresh.
• no files are found where the last scan found some (--allow-empty overrides, as before);
• the folder itself can't be read, even with --allow-empty.

A folder lower down that can't be read keeps its files as they were, rather than counting them as deleted. A refused scan leaves no trace in the history.

Under the hood

• The licence list shipped with every download covers the new components, and credits the place data.

Known limitations

• Built locally, not by CI. Every test passed on Linux; the macOS and Windows builds are checked but haven't yet run on those systems. Please report anything that doesn't work: https://github.com/BuenGenio/backdown-releases/issues
• Tags, flags and links are command-line only for now; the browser and the app don't show them yet.
• tag exif and tag geo run when you ask, not after each scan.
• Places are matched to the nearest town of 1,000 people or more, so a photo taken in remote country gets the nearest such town.
• The installers aren't signed or notarised by Apple or Microsoft.
• Pro, Team and Forensic features are free during the beta; pricing may change before 1.0.
• A machine running Windows can't be the other end of backdown remote yet.

Documentation: https://backdown.io/docs/. Provided as-is, without warranty, for evaluation.

BackDown v1.0.0-beta.5

The fifth beta of BackDown 1.0: the swarm (every machine you run BackDown on as one, with a shared pool to file drives into), people and databases gathered across drives, search inside mail and databases that reuses the indexes already there, files fetched from whichever machine holds them, a phone app, and a long list of fixes and tidying.

Install

Platform	Installer	Command line
Linux x86-64	backdown-io_1.0.0-beta.5_amd64.deb (Debian, Ubuntu) or .AppImage	backdown-v1.0.0-beta.5-linux-x86_64.tar.gz (static)
Linux ARM64	backdown-io_1.0.0-beta.5_arm64.deb or .AppImage	backdown-v1.0.0-beta.5-linux-arm64.tar.gz (static)
macOS (Apple silicon + Intel)	BackDown-1.0.0-beta.5.dmg	backdown-v1.0.0-beta.5-macos-universal.tar.gz
Windows x86-64	BackDown-1.0.0-beta.5-x64.msi (no administrator rights needed)	backdown-v1.0.0-beta.5-windows-x86_64.zip

This release is signed. SHA256SUMS.txt.sig is an Ed25519 signature of SHA256SUMS.txt by BackDown's release key, and backdown update checks it before installing anything. To check by hand, see Air-gapped computers.

The installers and apps themselves still aren't signed by Apple or Microsoft. On macOS, right-click the app and choose Open the first time (for the command-line binary: xattr -d com.apple.quarantine backdown). On Windows, SmartScreen may ask you to confirm once.

What's new since beta.4

The swarm, and the pool

• Every machine as one. The machines backdown remote reaches, plus this one, show up together: each machine's drives as bars of used and free space, what's indexed on them, their health, drives that aren't connected and the machine they were last scanned on, and the totals. backdown swarm, and the browser's Swarm view. A drive is known by its serial and volume UUID, so one that moves between machines is the same drive.
• Where is it. backdown swarm where NAME and the Swarm view's search ask every machine at once, live where it can be reached and from what was synced where it can't: machine, drive, path.
• The pool. backdown pool add FOLDER [--reserve 50G] [--takes Mail,Media] makes a folder on one of a machine's drives part of a shared, filed archive; the other machines learn of it at their next sync. The pool keeps one copy of each file.
• A drive into the pool. backdown pool plan DRIVE says, thing by thing, what's in the pool already (by SHA-256, on any machine), what's new, and which pool folder each thing goes into and why; you move or leave out what you like; backdown pool send copies it, verified by the hash read back there, resumable, and then offers to free the drive. It works for a drive plugged into another machine too, from here: the plan is made and carried out there, by that machine's own BackDown. Copies between machines stream over ssh to backdown swarm-stdio, which writes only inside that machine's own pool folders.
• Several machines is free now, as the swarm is built on it.
• Syncing a big drive from another machine no longer times out; what to ask it to read is found in seconds rather than a minute a batch.

Files from whichever machine holds them

• A file on another machine's page has Preview, Download a copy and Open, and backdown remote fetch nas PATH -o DIR saves one here from the terminal, checked against the hash that machine has. The other machine reads a file only if it's still exactly as its index scanned it. Files up to 256 MB come through a small cache here so a second look costs nothing; bigger ones stream the part asked for. Indexing stays each machine's own business: this brings one file you asked for, never a drive.

People and databases

• More kinds of thing recognised: mongodump folders, SQLite files, and the data directories of MySQL/MariaDB, PostgreSQL and MongoDB servers; dump headers from phpMyAdmin, pg_dump, pg_dumpall and SQLite's .dump; and what a website's or Nextcloud server's configuration says (wp-config.php, Joomla, Laravel .env, Nextcloud config.php): the database behind it, where it was served, who to contact.
• People (backdown people, What's here > People): everyone with a mailbox in a mail store, a Nextcloud account, a home folder, a Thunderbird identity or named as a site's contact, gathered across drives into one person with what there is of them. The same address, or the same login on the same host, is one person; a name alone never merges two.
• Databases (backdown databases, What's here > Databases): each database with every dump of it, its live data, its SQLite file, and the sites and servers configured to use it, under one name per engine family.

Search inside mail and databases

• backdown search WORDS and the search box's Inside scope find messages by subject, sender and recipient, and dumps and SQLite files by table, column and (at full depth) the text in their rows.
• Indexes already on the drives are reused: Dovecot's own dovecot.index.cache is read for the headers of a whole mailbox without opening a message; SQLite full-text tables (FTS3/4/5) are searched in place through SQLite itself; a dump's FULLTEXT KEY columns are listed with the table.
• Depth is a setting (off, headers, full); the service indexes after each recognition, only drives scanned since. The index keeps no copy of the text, only where each hit is.

The app and the browser

• BackDown for Android and iOS (Flutter): the browser's views on a phone, over the same connection. backdown token --qr shows the link for other devices as a QR code.
• Remove a drive from the index, from its page or backdown forget, scans and all; and a scan in progress can be stopped.
• Settings has real tabs, one section at a time.
• backdown open, token and app say whose daemon is on the port instead of "none is running".
• The Machines page keeps each drive's cached and hashed counts across syncs.
• A live UI preview for development (scripts/preview-ui.py).

The store

• Pro, Team and Forensic pre-orders, each with its own licence; licences name their edition and count Forensic seats as sites. Nothing is switched on in this release: everything stays unlocked during the beta.

Fixes and under the hood

• Hashing: a file no longer inherits another file's SHA-256 through a reused inode number.
• The spreadsheet viewer moved off a zip release with a known vulnerability (zip 9, calamine 0.37).
• One transaction type that rolls back when dropped, so a failed job can't leave one open; one clock, one hex decoder, one mount-table reader, one mbox rule instead of several copies.
• The viewers (archives, disk images, mail, spreadsheets, slides, SQL dumps) are a crate of their own, and the recogniser, rescue carving, update, mailbox and mail-merge modules are split into files by stage.
• The pre-Rust scripts moved to legacy/, with a README.

Known limitations

• Built locally, not by CI. Every test passed on Linux; the macOS and Windows builds are checked but haven't yet run on those systems. Please report anything that doesn't work: https://github.com/BuenGenio/backdown-releases/issues
• The installers aren't signed or notarised by Apple or Microsoft.
• Pro, Team and Forensic features are free during the beta; pricing may change before 1.0.
• Reading Dovecot's own index cache has been checked against Dovecot's file format and a synthetic cache, not yet against a large real server's; anything odd falls back to reading the messages.
• A machine running Windows can't be the other end of backdown remote yet.

Documentation: https://backdown.io/docs/. Provided as-is, without warranty, for evaluation.

BackDown v1.0.0-beta.4

The fourth beta of BackDown 1.0 and the first signed one: signed manifests of what your drives hold, a chain of custody for everything BackDown copies or deletes, updates for computers without a network, drive health from your other machines, and a new Duplicates view.

Install

Platform	Installer	Command line
Linux x86-64	backdown-io_1.0.0-beta.4_amd64.deb (Debian, Ubuntu) or .AppImage	backdown-v1.0.0-beta.4-linux-x86_64.tar.gz (static)
Linux ARM64	backdown-io_1.0.0-beta.4_arm64.deb or .AppImage	backdown-v1.0.0-beta.4-linux-arm64.tar.gz (static)
macOS (Apple silicon + Intel)	BackDown-1.0.0-beta.4.dmg	backdown-v1.0.0-beta.4-macos-universal.tar.gz
Windows x86-64	BackDown-1.0.0-beta.4-x64.msi (no administrator rights needed)	backdown-v1.0.0-beta.4-windows-x86_64.zip

This release is signed. SHA256SUMS.txt.sig is an Ed25519 signature of SHA256SUMS.txt by BackDown's release key, and backdown update checks it before installing anything; from this release on, an update without a valid signature is refused. To check by hand, see Air-gapped computers.

The installers and apps themselves still aren't signed by Apple or Microsoft. On macOS, right-click the app and choose Open the first time (for the command-line binary: xattr -d com.apple.quarantine backdown). On Windows, SmartScreen may ask you to confirm once.

What's new since beta.3

• Signed manifests (Forensic): backdown manifest create signs a statement of exactly what a drive held at a scan, every file's path, size and SHA-256 combined into one Merkle root, each chained to the drive's previous one. Anyone can check one with backdown manifest verify, or without BackDown from the algorithm in the guide.
• Scheduled attestations (Team): Settings > Attestations has the service sign a manifest of each drive after every scan, daily or weekly.
• Chain of custody (Forensic): every copy, move, deletion, link and merge BackDown makes goes into a hash-chained log, sealed with this installation's key. backdown custody export exports it, whole or for one job (other events are elided, the chain still verifies), verify checks a bundle anywhere, and check finds edits made to the index directly. The log is kept in every edition; it starts with this release.
• Air-gapped computers (Forensic): backdown update --from FOLDER installs a release carried over on a drive, its signature checked first and no network used. Checking such a folder (--from … --check) is free.
• Drive health from your other machines (Team): the machines you've added report their drives' health with each sync, shown in Activity and backdown health --machines, with a notification when one gets worse.
• Duplicates, reworked: one entry per set of identical files that opens to its copies, or grouped by the folders they're in, with the filter bar applied, thumbnails, and ticks that hand copies to Free up.
• Safer git history: the browser's git view no longer lets a repository found on a drive fetch from the network or run programs its own configuration names.

Known limitations

• Built locally, not by CI. Every test passed on Linux; the macOS and Windows builds are checked but haven't yet run on those systems. Please report anything that doesn't work: https://github.com/BuenGenio/backdown-releases/issues
• The installers aren't signed or notarised by Apple or Microsoft.
• Pro, Team and Forensic features are free during the beta; pricing may change before 1.0.

Documentation: https://backdown.io/docs/. Provided as-is, without warranty, for evaluation.

BackDown v1.0.0-beta.3

The third beta of BackDown 1.0: folders open in a moment on very large indexes, and the app shows when it's waiting.

Install

Platform	Installer	Command line
Linux x86-64	backdown-io_1.0.0-beta.3_amd64.deb (Debian, Ubuntu) or .AppImage	backdown-v1.0.0-beta.3-linux-x86_64.tar.gz (static)
Linux ARM64	backdown-io_1.0.0-beta.3_arm64.deb or .AppImage	backdown-v1.0.0-beta.3-linux-arm64.tar.gz (static)
macOS (Apple silicon + Intel)	BackDown-1.0.0-beta.3.dmg	backdown-v1.0.0-beta.3-macos-universal.tar.gz
Windows x86-64	BackDown-1.0.0-beta.3-x64.msi (no administrator rights needed)	backdown-v1.0.0-beta.3-windows-x86_64.zip

The Linux package is called backdown-io (since beta.2): Debian and Ubuntu's backdown is an unrelated duplicate remover, which ours replaces.

These builds aren't signed yet. On macOS, right-click the app and choose Open the first time (for the command-line binary: xattr -d com.apple.quarantine backdown). On Windows, SmartScreen may ask you to confirm once. Verify any download against SHA256SUMS.txt.

What's new since beta.2

• Folders open in a moment on very large indexes. On 17 million files and 4 million folders a folder took from half a minute to nearly five minutes to open; now it's a fraction of a second. The background service builds the index that makes this possible once after the upgrade (about a minute there; "Prepare the index for speed" in Activity). Until it's built, folders open as before.
• The app shows when it's waiting: anything that takes more than a moment shows a bar along the top of the window, and a note if it's still working after a few seconds.
• Download names: the .deb files are named with the release's version (backdown-io_1.0.0-beta.3_amd64.deb). GitHub had renamed the ~ in earlier names, which broke their download links and their lines in SHA256SUMS.txt; both are fixed for beta.1 and beta.2 too.

Known limitations

• Built locally, not by CI. Every test passed on Linux; the macOS and Windows builds are checked but haven't yet run on those systems. Please report anything that doesn't work: https://github.com/BuenGenio/backdown-releases/issues
• The builds aren't signed or notarised.
• Pro features are free during the beta; pricing may change before 1.0.

Documentation: https://backdown.io/docs/. Provided as-is, without warranty, for evaluation.

BackDown v1.0.0-beta.2

The second beta of BackDown 1.0: faster on very large indexes, easier to reach from your other devices, and Tab completion in the terminal.

Install

Platform	Installer	Command line
Linux x86-64	backdown-io_1.0.0-beta.2_amd64.deb (Debian, Ubuntu) or .AppImage	backdown-v1.0.0-beta.2-linux-x86_64.tar.gz (static)
Linux ARM64	backdown-io_1.0.0-beta.2_arm64.deb or .AppImage	backdown-v1.0.0-beta.2-linux-arm64.tar.gz (static)
macOS (Apple silicon + Intel)	BackDown-1.0.0-beta.2.dmg	backdown-v1.0.0-beta.2-macos-universal.tar.gz
Windows x86-64	BackDown-1.0.0-beta.2-x64.msi (no administrator rights needed)	backdown-v1.0.0-beta.2-windows-x86_64.zip

The Linux package is now called backdown-io. Debian and Ubuntu have an unrelated duplicate remover called backdown, and apt could have offered it as an "upgrade" of ours. sudo apt install ./backdown-io_*.deb replaces the backdown package of beta.1 (and that other program, since both install /usr/bin/backdown). If a terminal ever suggests sudo apt install backdown, that's the other one.

These builds aren't signed yet. On macOS, right-click the app and choose Open the first time (for the command-line binary: xattr -d com.apple.quarantine backdown). On Windows, SmartScreen may ask you to confirm once. Verify any download against SHA256SUMS.txt.

What's new since beta.1

• Large indexes: the duplicates report answers in seconds rather than minutes on an index of 17 million files, from a covering index the background service builds once after the upgrade ("Prepare the duplicates index" in Activity). The app's first screen no longer waits for the index's totals, which are now counted in one pass and kept, and backdown service status answers at once.
• Look from your other devices: --host now answers to the computer's full Tailscale name (name.tailnet-….ts.net) as well as its address and short name; BACKDOWN_HOST_NAMES allows others. From other devices BackDown still only shows what's there.
• backdown token: the background service's browser token, and with --links the links with it in, for this computer and for your other devices.
• Tab completion: backdown completions --install for bash, zsh or fish; the .deb sets it up for everyone.
• Servers: backdown service install explains what to do instead of half-installing when it's run with sudo or without a login session.

Known limitations

• Built locally, not by CI. Every test passed on Linux; the macOS and Windows builds are checked but haven't yet run on those systems. Please report anything that doesn't work: https://github.com/BuenGenio/backdown-releases/issues
• The builds aren't signed or notarised.
• Pro features are free during the beta; pricing may change before 1.0.

Documentation: https://backdown.io/docs/. Provided as-is, without warranty, for evaluation.

BackDown v1.0.0-beta.1

The first beta of BackDown 1.0: every feature planned for 1.0 is in. It finds out what's on your drives, what's duplicated, where it came from and which drives are safe to free, then helps you file everything into one archive, free the old drives and rescue failing ones. It runs locally and makes no network requests unless you ask.

Install

Platform	Installer	Command line
Linux x86-64	.deb (Debian, Ubuntu) or .AppImage	backdown-v1.0.0-beta.1-linux-x86_64.tar.gz (static)
Linux ARM64	.deb or .AppImage	backdown-v1.0.0-beta.1-linux-arm64.tar.gz (static)
macOS (Apple silicon + Intel)	BackDown-1.0.0-beta.1.dmg	backdown-v1.0.0-beta.1-macos-universal.tar.gz
Windows x86-64	BackDown-1.0.0-beta.1-x64.msi (no administrator rights needed)	backdown-v1.0.0-beta.1-windows-x86_64.zip

Open BackDown from your applications menu, or run backdown app: it starts BackDown in the background and opens it in its own window.

These builds aren't signed yet. On macOS, right-click the app and choose Open the first time (for the command-line binary: xattr -d com.apple.quarantine backdown). On Windows, SmartScreen may ask you to confirm once. Verify any download against SHA256SUMS.txt.

What's new since v0.2.0-alpha.4

• The app: backdown app in its own window, desktop integration, installers for all three systems, a Settings view, and backdown update (checksum-verified, with rollback). Update checks are off unless you turn them on.
• Drive health: SMART readings without administrator rights, trends, warnings before a drive dies, desktop notifications, and "Copy it now" into Rescue.
• Rescans in seconds: from the drive's own change log (the USN journal on Windows, FSEvents on macOS) and by reading NTFS's file table directly, with a full scan whenever anything can't be vouched for. Free in every edition.
• Free up drives: tick what to wipe; a file is deleted only when an identical copy elsewhere is read back first; what exists only there is moved to a folder you choose.
• Rescue: copy a failing drive ddrescue-style, find deleted photos and documents by their content, find lost partitions, browse a found partition, and undelete files with their original names on FAT, exFAT and NTFS.
• Browse without restoring: mailboxes as threaded conversations, SQL dumps as schemas, the files inside disk images (FAT, exFAT, ext, NTFS), and search across every drive at once.
• Where things came from, and when: iPhone backups, Time Machine (including APFS), SQL dumps and backup scripts.
• Several machines (Pro, free during the beta): add a NAS or another computer over SSH; copies there count, carefully, as proof.
• Look from your other devices: backdown serve --host ADDRESS (and daemon, service install) also listens on, say, your Tailscale address. From there BackDown only shows what's there; freeing up, copying, rescue and settings stay with the computer it runs on.
• The archive: fast verified copies, merging mailbox snapshots by Message-ID, and opt-in dedup inside the archive.
• macOS and Windows: case- and Unicode-safe names, long paths, NTFS alternate data streams, extended attributes, reading as a backup operator when elevated, and online-only files (OneDrive, iCloud) left alone rather than downloaded.

Known limitations

• This is the first release built without CI. Every test passed on Linux, and the macOS and Windows builds were checked but not yet run on those systems. Please report anything that doesn't work.
• The builds aren't signed or notarised.
• Pro features are free during the beta; pricing may change before 1.0.

Documentation: https://backdown.io/docs/. Provided as-is, without warranty, for evaluation.

BackDown v0.2.0-alpha.4

Command-line preview of BackDown: find out what's on your drives, what's duplicated, and which drives are safe to wipe.

Platform	Download
Linux x86-64 (static)	backdown-v0.2.0-alpha.4-linux-x86_64.tar.gz
Linux ARM64 (static)	backdown-v0.2.0-alpha.4-linux-arm64.tar.gz
macOS, Apple silicon + Intel	backdown-v0.2.0-alpha.4-macos-universal.tar.gz
Windows x86-64	backdown-v0.2.0-alpha.4-windows-x86_64.zip

backdown index /media/old-drive /media/archive
backdown check /media/old-drive        # exit 0 = safe to wipe, 2 = copy first
backdown dupes --min-size 10M

Verify downloads against SHA256SUMS.txt. Builds aren't signed yet: see the README for the one-time macOS and Windows steps. Provided as-is, without warranty, for evaluation.

BackDown v0.2.0-alpha.3

Command-line preview of BackDown: find out what's on your drives, what's duplicated, and which drives are safe to wipe.

Platform	Download
Linux x86-64 (static)	backdown-v0.2.0-alpha.3-linux-x86_64.tar.gz
Linux ARM64 (static)	backdown-v0.2.0-alpha.3-linux-arm64.tar.gz
macOS, Apple silicon + Intel	backdown-v0.2.0-alpha.3-macos-universal.tar.gz
Windows x86-64	backdown-v0.2.0-alpha.3-windows-x86_64.zip

backdown index /media/old-drive /media/archive
backdown check /media/old-drive        # exit 0 = safe to wipe, 2 = copy first
backdown dupes --min-size 10M

Verify downloads against SHA256SUMS.txt. Builds aren't signed yet: see the README for the one-time macOS and Windows steps. Provided as-is, without warranty, for evaluation.

BackDown v0.2.0-alpha.2

Command-line preview of BackDown: find out what's on your drives, what's duplicated, and which drives are safe to wipe.

Platform	Download
Linux x86-64 (static)	backdown-v0.2.0-alpha.2-linux-x86_64.tar.gz
Linux ARM64 (static)	backdown-v0.2.0-alpha.2-linux-arm64.tar.gz
macOS, Apple silicon + Intel	backdown-v0.2.0-alpha.2-macos-universal.tar.gz
Windows x86-64	backdown-v0.2.0-alpha.2-windows-x86_64.zip

backdown index /media/old-drive /media/archive
backdown check /media/old-drive        # exit 0 = safe to wipe, 2 = copy first
backdown dupes --min-size 10M

Verify downloads against SHA256SUMS.txt. Builds aren't signed yet: see the README for the one-time macOS and Windows steps. Provided as-is, without warranty, for evaluation.