SHSelfHostIndex
BA

Back In Time

Simple backup tool inspired by Apple Time Machine

Backup & Recovery ★ 2.7k stars Easy setup GPL-2.0

Back In Time is a simple backup tool for Linux inspired by Time Machine and rsnapshot. It takes snapshots of specified folders using rsync and hard links to save disk space.

Official siteSource code

Key features

  • Time Machine-style snapshots
  • Hard-link deduplication
  • GUI and command-line modes

Strengths

  • Released under the GPL-2.0 license
  • Easy to set up — beginner-friendly
  • Active community (2.7k GitHub stars)
  • Written in Python

Is Back In Time secure?

No known vulnerabilities affect Back In Time's latest release (v1.6.1). OSV.dev lists 2 past advisories for the project; none of them applies to this release. No known vulnerabilities is not proof of security: it means none have been publicly catalogued.

  • Most recent fixed advisory CVE-2017-16667, published 2017-11-08 (3262 days ago), fixed in 1.1.24

Source: OSV.dev, checked 2026-10-14. How this is measured.

Back In Time replaces

Self-hosted Time Machine alternatives

Health badge

Maintain Back In Time? Add its health score to your README. The badge links back to this page.

SelfHostIndex: 86 · excellent

Markdown
[![SelfHostIndex health score for Back In Time](https://selfhostindex.com/badge/back-in-time.svg)](https://selfhostindex.com/app/back-in-time/)
HTML
<a href="https://selfhostindex.com/app/back-in-time/"><img src="https://selfhostindex.com/badge/back-in-time.svg" alt="SelfHostIndex health score for Back In Time"></a>
reStructuredText
.. image:: https://selfhostindex.com/badge/back-in-time.svg
   :alt: SelfHostIndex health score for Back In Time
   :target: https://selfhostindex.com/app/back-in-time/

The score is recomputed on every nightly rebuild from public repository data — see how it is calculated.

Compare Back In Time

15 head-to-head comparisons.

Similar backup & recovery apps