What's happening at BackDown.

• Recognising what things are (mail stores, Time Machine sets, phone backups, systems, repositories, photo libraries) and where they came fromDone
• A generated report: every drive, what's on it, how much exists elsewhere, and which drives are safe to wipeDone
• A filing plan and verified, journaled copying into one archive, plus mirrors that keep a second copy checkedDone
• Every disk and partition on the computer, classified, and importing the original scripts' indexDone
• Freeing up drives: tick what to wipe, move what exists only there, and delete only what has a verified copyDone
• Rescue: copy a failing drive or memory card safely, then find deleted photos, documents and lost partitionsDone
• Browsing without restoring: mailboxes as threaded conversations, SQL dumps as schemas, the files inside disk images, and search across every drive at onceDone
• Where things came from, and when: iPhone backups, Time Machine sets, SQL dumps and backup scripts now say when they were made or last copiedDone
• Rescans in seconds, free for everyone: the drive's own change log (FSEvents on macOS, the USN journal on Windows) and reading NTFS's master file table directly, with a full scan whenever anything can't be vouched forDone
• Pre-orders for BackDown Pro, Team and Forensic, with licence keys that are checked offlineIn progress
• The 1.0 beta, with all of the above and installers for Linux, macOS and WindowsDone
• The swarm: every machine as one, where any file is, and a shared pool that drives are filed into from any machineDone
• People and databases gathered across drives, and search inside mail and databases that reuses the indexes already thereDone
• A phone app for Android and iOS, and files opened or fetched from whichever machine holds themDone
• Trying the beta on real Macs and Windows PCs, and fixing what turns upIn progress
• Signed and notarised installers, then 1.0Up next

1. v0.1DoneQ3 2026

   The original scripts

   Resumable indexing, SHA-256 hashing and a live dashboard, proven on 27 million files across 15 TB.

2. v0.2DoneQ3 2026

   Command-line preview

   One fast binary for Linux, macOS and Windows: index, hash, find duplicates, prove a drive is safe to wipe, browse any past scan, and run as a background service.

3. v0.3DoneQ3 2026

   Recognisers and reports

   Tell what each folder is (mail archives, Time Machine sets, phone backups, photo libraries, git repositories) and where it came from, then write a report with a verdict for every drive.

4. v0.4DoneQ3 2026

   Planner and journaled copy

   Propose a clean archive layout, copy into it with every step journaled and re-verified by hash, and only then free up the old drives.

5. v0.5DoneQ3 2026

   Desktop app

   Everything above without a terminal: plug in two drives, see what's duplicated, get a report.

6. v0.6DoneQ3 2026

   Mirrors and drive health

   Scheduled mirror checks, drive-health trends, and a warning before a drive dies.

7. v1.0In progressQ2 2027

   macOS and Windows, natively

   Native disk handling for APFS, Time Machine and NTFS, with signed installers.

1. 2 Nov 2026v1.0.0-beta.5

   The swarm: every machine you run BackDown on as one, with each machine's drives and free space, a search for where any file is, and a shared pool that drives are filed into from any machine, one verified copy of each file, then freed. People and databases gathered across drives from mail stores, Nextcloud data, home folders, site configs and dumps; search inside mail and databases (backdown search) that reuses Dovecot's own index and SQLite's full-text tables; a file opened, previewed or fetched from whichever machine holds it; a phone app for Android and iOS; removing a drive from the index; Settings in tabs. Several machines is free now.

2. 4 Oct 2026v1.0.0-beta.4

   The first signed release. Signed manifests of what each drive holds, made on a schedule if you like; a chain of custody for every copy, move and delete, exportable and verifiable anywhere; updates for computers without a network (backdown update --from); drive health from your other machines; and a reworked Duplicates view, grouped by identical files or by folder.

3. 3 Oct 2026v1.0.0-beta.3

   Folders open in a fraction of a second on very large indexes (on 17 million files they took up to five minutes), from an index the service builds once after the upgrade. Anything that takes more than a moment now shows a bar along the top of the window.

4. 1 Oct 2026v1.0.0-beta.2

   Faster on very large indexes: the duplicates report in seconds on 17 million files, and the app’s first screen no longer waits for the totals. --host answers to the computer’s Tailscale name; backdown token prints the link for your other devices; Tab completion with backdown completions. The Linux package is now called backdown-io (Ubuntu’s own “backdown” is a different program).

5. 29 Sep 2026v1.0.0-beta.1

   The first 1.0 beta: the desktop app with installers for all three systems, drive health, rescans in seconds, freeing up drives, rescue, browsing mail, SQL dumps and disk images, where things came from, several machines over SSH, and looking at it all from your other devices over Tailscale (--host; over the network BackDown only shows, it never changes anything). Pro features are free during the beta.

6. 28 Sep 2026v0.2.0-alpha.4

   File browser fixes: double-click opens folders and files, the details pane previews images, PDFs, text and databases, and folders list correctly in older indexes.

7. 27 Sep 2026v0.2.0-alpha.3

   backdown daemon and backdown service install: runs in the background, rescans drives when they're due or plugged back in, hashes after every scan, and serves the web UI (backdown open).

8. 27 Sep 2026v0.2.0-alpha.2

   A local file browser with a time slider, and read-only viewers for PDFs, office documents, SQLite databases, git history and diffs.

9. 27 Sep 2026v0.2.0-alpha.1

   The first command-line preview for Linux, macOS and Windows: index, tiered hash, dupes, and check (is this drive safe to wipe?).

10. 21 Sep 2026v0.1

    The original scripts finish their first real job: 27 million files indexed, 15 TB hashed, and three drives wiped after hash verification.

All releases and checksums

1. Never write to a source drive. Drives being analysed are only ever read.
2. Never delete without a verified copy. Every deletion is backed by a matching hash in the journal.
3. Every long job can resume, and shows you why it's slow.
4. The free tier answers "what do I have, and what's duplicated?" completely.
5. Local first. No account, no telemetry, and no cloud needed for anything in the core.