Home Assistant Time Machine

Home Assistant Time Machine is a web-based tool that acts as a "Time Machine" for your Home Assistant configuration. It allows you to browse your existing file-based backups and restore individual automations and scripts to your live configuration.

Screenshots

Features

• Browse Backups: Easily browse through your existing Home Assistant backups.
• View Changes: See a side-by-side diff of the changes between a backed-up item and the live version.
• Restore Individual Items: Restore individual automations or scripts without having to restore an entire backup.
• Safety first: It automatically creates a backup of your yaml files in your backups folder before restoring anything.
• Reload Home Assistant: Reload automations or scripts in Home Assistant directly from the UI after a restore.
• Scheduled Backups: Configure automatic backups of your Home Assistant configuration directly from the UI.

Installation

There are two ways to install Home Assistant Time Machine: as a Home Assistant Add-on or as a standalone Docker container.

1. Home Assistant Add-on (Recommended for most users)

1. Navigate to the Add-on store in your Home Assistant instance.
2. Click on the three dots in the top right corner and select "Repositories".
3. Paste the URL of this repository and click "Add":

   https://github.com/saihgupr/HomeAssistantTimeMachine
   

4. The "Home Assistant Time Machine" addon will now appear in the store. Click on it and then click "Install".

2. Standalone Docker Installation

This method is for users who do not have the Home Assistant Add-on store or prefer to manage their own Docker containers.

Building the image from source

1. Clone the repository:

   git clone https://github.com/saihgupr/HomeAssistantTimeMachine.git
   cd HomeAssistantTimeMachine/homeassistant-time-machine

2. Build the Docker image:

   docker build --build-arg BUILD_FROM=node:20-alpine -t ha-time-machine .

Running the Container

Once you have the image (either by pulling or building), run it with this command:

docker run -d \
  -p 3000:3000 \
  -v /path/to/your/ha/config:/config \
  -v /path/to/your/backups:/backups \
  --name ha-time-machine \
  ha-time-machine

Important:

• Replace /path/to/your/ha/config with the absolute path to your Home Assistant configuration directory.
• Replace /path/to/your/backups with the absolute path to your backup directory.
• If you pulled a named image (e.g., your-docker-username/ha-time-machine), use that name at the end of the docker run command.

After running the container, proceed to the "Usage" section to configure the application through its web UI at http://localhost:3000.

Usage

1. Configure the addon: In the addon's configuration tab, set the port for the web interface.
2. Start the addon.
3. Open the Web UI or in a browser http://homeassistant.local:3000.
4. In-app setup:
   • In the web UI, go to the settings menu.
   • Live Home Assistant Folder Path: Set the path to your Home Assistant configuration directory (e.g., /config).
   • Backup Folder Path: Set the path to the directory where your backups are stored.
   • Home Assistant URL & Token: Set the URL and a Long-Lived Access Token for your Home Assistant instance. This is needed for the feature that reloads Home Assistant after a restore.
   • Enable Scheduled Backup: Toggle this option to enable or disable automatic backups.
   • Frequency: Choose how often you want backups to run (e.g., Hourly, Daily, Weekly).
   • Time: If Daily or Weekly frequency is selected, specify the time of day for the backup to run.

Creating Backups

This addon relies on having file-based backups of your Home Assistant configuration. You can now set up a scheduled backup directly within the UI. If you prefer to manage backups externally, here is an example of a simple shell script that you can use to create timestamped backups of your YAML files:

#!/bin/bash

# The directory where your Home Assistant configuration is stored.
# Adjust this to your setup.
CONFIG_DIR="/config"

# The root directory where you want to store your backups.
# This should match the "Backup Folder Path" you set in the addon's UI.
BACKUP_DIR="/media/backups/yaml"

# Create a timestamped directory for the new backup.
DATE=$(date +%Y-%m-%d-%H%M%S)
YEAR=$(date +%Y)
MONTH=$(date +%m)
BACKUP_PATH="$BACKUP_DIR/$YEAR/$MONTH/$DATE"
mkdir -p "$BACKUP_PATH"

# Copy the YAML files to the backup directory.
cp "$CONFIG_DIR"/*.yaml "$BACKUP_PATH"

echo "Backup created at $BACKUP_PATH"

Important:

• You need to adjust the CONFIG_DIR and BACKUP_DIR variables in the script to match your Home Assistant setup.
• You should run this script at a regular interval (e.g., every 24 hours) to have up-to-date backups. You can use a cron job on your host machine or a Home Assistant automation with a shell_command integration to automate this.

Configuration

The addon can be configured through the Home Assistant UI.

• Web interface port: The port on your host machine that will be mapped to the addon's web interface.

All other configuration is done within the application's web UI.