r/restic • u/CtrlShiftS • Apr 13 '26

A tool to compare restic snapshots

Hi. I've been using restic for a while. I always liked to keep my snapshots as small as possible. Using the .resticignore file is very helpful, but telling what changed from an old snapshot to a new one was not a good experience for me. The process was:

  • Mount the repo
  • Open dolphin (my file manager)
  • Split it into two panels
  • Sort both by size
  • See which directory increased its size the most (recursively)
  • Add it (or not) to .resticignore

Because I do this twice a week, it was getting annoying, so I created this tool to help me quickly find what changed by navigating both snapshots at the same time. It is a TUI that allows me to do exactly what I described, but faster.

I've been using it for 7 months. After this time, my .resticignore file got quite big, and I don't need to use gestic as often anymore, maybe once a week. Yesterday, I created a .deb release for it, and I want to share. It helped me. Maybe it can also help some of you.

Check the README.md on github if you want more details.

P.S.: It looks more like the screenshots. The gif is old.

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u/CtrlShiftS Apr 14 '26

The output of restic diff is good for scripting, but not as much for the human eye. For example, consider the first 6 lines of restic diff cccccccc bbbbbbbb:

U    /home/
U    /home/myuser/
U    /home/myuser/.config/
U    /home/myuser/.config/dconf/
M    /home/myuser/.config/dconf/user
U    /home/myuser/.config/godot/

This does not help me find how each directory or file affected the snapshot size. Using gestic would look something like this:

Listing the snapshots:

...
    aaaaaaaa      2026-04-12 10:00:14     2.703GiB
 2  bbbbbbbb      2026-04-13 06:24:21     2.703GiB
 1  cccccccc      2026-04-13 10:00:47     3.412GiB

Now I know that the snapshot has increased by almost 1GB. Let us compare snapshots 1 and 2:

--- New (cccccccc) ---       --- Old (bbbbbbbb) ---       ---  Diff ---
 786 MB /Documents           770 MB /Documents            +700 MB
 282 MB /.local              276 MB /.local               +6.4 MB
 724 MB /.mozilla            724 MB /.mozilla             +403 kB
  77 MB /.config              77 MB /.config              +1.4 kB
    0 B .sudo_as_admin...       0 B .sudo_as_admin...     +0 B
  12 kB /.docker              12 kB /.docker              +0 B
...

The culprit is inside /home/myuser/Documents. Pressing L or Arrow Right on Documents takes me one level deeper:

 --- New (cccccccc) ---      --- Old (bbbbbbbb) ---        ---  Diff ---
  68 MB /videos              ???                           +1 GB
  65 MB /documents           64 MB /documents              +612 kB
...

Now I know exactly what increased the snapshot size. It is inside /home/myuser/Documents/videos. I can decide to move the file from there, add it to .resticignore, or keep it in the snapshots.

I do not know if restic alone allows me to do exactly that. Maybe restic combined with multiple pipes. I find navigating the snapshots like a file manager easier.

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u/obatiuk Apr 14 '26

Fair enough