October 2026

BackupKit 2026.10.2

Backups you can trust: every run is checked when it finishes, you can verify and exclude, and BackupKit tells you when a backup did not happen. Plus a fix that matters if you back up to S3 or other object storage, and a new main menu and Backup page.

The highlights, with screenshots: what’s new in BackupKit 2026.10.2

Important if you back up to S3 or other object storage

  • • This release fixes something important if you back up to S3, Azure Blob, Google Cloud Storage, Cloudflare R2, Backblaze B2, Wasabi or DigitalOcean Spaces. A backup larger than about a gigabyte could finish uploading correctly and still be reported as failed, leaving the data in a folder ending in _part where restore never looked — and where your storage provider kept charging for it. Backups to these storages are now written straight into place and marked complete when they finish, with no copy step afterwards, so this cannot happen again. If you have _part folders on a bucket, BackupKit offers to recover the complete backups among them.
  • • Backups over 5 GB to S3-compatible storage and Azure. A compressed or encrypted backup is a single file, and these storages accept at most about 5 GB in one upload — so larger backups could not be stored there at all. Large files are now uploaded in parts, and an upload that cannot continue is cleaned up instead of being left on your bucket, where it was billed.

If you back up to your own NAS or WebDAV server

  • • BackupKit now checks the HTTPS certificate of every server it connects to, as Windows does. It used to accept any certificate, so a connection could be intercepted without you knowing.
  • • If your NAS or WebDAV server uses a certificate it made itself, its backups stop connecting until you trust that certificate once: edit the storage, press Test connection, check the certificate it shows you (the server, who it was issued to and by, and its fingerprint), and trust it. BackupKit remembers it for that server, and the backups say so when this is what stopped them. Cloud storages, email and Telegram are always checked.

Backups

  • • Hidden files and folders are now backed up. Plain backups used to leave them out — including every Git repository’s .git folder — while compressed backups kept them. Both now behave the same and include them. Shortcuts to other folders (junctions) are not followed, so nothing is backed up twice.
  • • A compressed or encrypted backup no longer fails because one file is in use or one folder cannot be read. It backs up everything else, names what it could not read, and finishes as “completed with errors”. Previously the whole backup failed — including any backup of the Documents folder.
  • • A backup that leaves something out now says so. If a folder you selected has been moved or deleted, or could not be listed in time, the run finishes as “completed with errors” and names it, instead of reporting success.
  • • Every backup now records what it contains. A small .manifest.json file is written next to each backup folder: every file with its size and date, whether the backup finished, and anything it could not include. It is plain, readable JSON — useful if you ever recover by hand, and it means a backup that was incomplete still says so on a new PC.
  • • You can now exclude files and folders from a backup. Wildcards like *.tmp, node_modules or *.iso, an optional size limit, and presets for the usual suspects — caches and temporary files, node_modules and .git, files over 1 GB. Excluded folders are never even listed, so a backup that skips a large cache is faster as well as smaller. It works the same for compressed and encrypted backups.
  • • A backup can skip itself when nothing has changed. Turn it on for a backup and BackupKit compares the source with the last backup first; if nothing differs, it records “no changes” instead of storing a second identical copy. At least once a week a scheduled run goes ahead anyway. It is on by default for new backups of folders on this PC.
  • • A backup too large for your free disk space is refused up front, naming the space it needs and the drive it would use, instead of failing part-way through compressing. The backup wizard now explains that compressed and encrypted backups are built on this PC first.
  • • The encryption password is typed twice, or shown while you type it, so a typo cannot lock you out of your own backup.
  • • A backup whose destination sits inside one of the folders it backs up is refused before it starts, instead of copying into itself.

Restore and verify

  • • Restores to this PC or a network share arrive whole. When a storage sent a file in several pieces, as some cloud storages do when they are busy, only the last piece was kept and the restore still reported success, so a restored file could be cut short. The pieces are now joined, a download that stops part-way picks up where it stopped, and a file that still cannot be fetched whole fails with a message saying so.
  • • Point a new backup at a folder that already holds backups, and BackupKit adopts their history. Set up a new PC, connect the same storage, create the backup — and the previous runs appear, restorable straight away. If those backups were made from a different folder, BackupKit says where they came from and leaves the choice to you. Retention never deletes backups found this way.
  • • Verify a backup. A new action on each backup checks its latest run: every file present, every size right; for compressed backups the archive’s own index is checked without downloading it, and a full check reads every file back with your password. Every run is also checked automatically the moment it finishes, so a backup can no longer report success when nothing arrived.
  • • Restore warns you when the backup you are about to restore is incomplete, or has never been verified.
  • • A plain-text HOW-TO-RESTORE.txt is written into your backup folder, explaining how to get your files back with nothing but 7-Zip and your password — or with BackupKit on a new PC.
  • • Retention always keeps your newest complete backup. With “keep the last N”, a run of backups that completed with errors can no longer push out the last one that finished cleanly.

Know when a backup did not happen

  • • A new Monitoring section tells you when a backup has not happened — a backup that missed its schedule, one that stopped making progress, and runs missed while the PC was off — by popup, email, Telegram, webhook or script. Until now every notification was sent by a run that happened, so the failure that mattered most was the one you never heard about.
  • • A heartbeat for when BackupKit itself is not running. Give it a monitoring URL, such as a healthchecks.io check: BackupKit pings it while your backups are on time, and that service tells you when the pings stop — even if the PC is off.
  • • Webhook notifications now report their own failures in the activity log. A webhook that could not be delivered used to fail silently, so everything looked fine. Webhooks also accept custom headers and a body template now, so they can authenticate and match formats like Slack’s.
  • • BackupKit now offers to start with Windows and stay in the tray when you create your first backup, both switched on. Scheduled backups only run while the app is running, and that was easy to miss.
  • • The tray icon shows how your backups are doing — green, amber or red — and its tooltip says when the last one ran. Your backups are listed in the tray menu with their status, and you can run one from there.
  • • On Windows 11, right-click a folder in File Explorer and choose Create Backup, and BackupKit opens with the wizard already pointed at it.

Safer connections, clearer errors

  • • SFTP warns when a server’s key changes. A key you accept is remembered for that server and port only, and when a server you know presents a different key, BackupKit warns that someone may be intercepting the connection, with Reject as the default. Keys you accepted before still count.
  • • Errors you can act on. When a cloud storage’s sign-in has expired or was revoked, BackupKit says so and tells you to sign in again. Storage errors read as sentences instead of the server’s raw reply.
  • • A storage that stops answering fails the file instead of skipping it quietly, so a backup can no longer finish as a success without it.

A new main menu

  • • The menu opens from the arrow at the top left as a panel under the tabs, instead of sliding in over the whole window.
  • • Everything BackupKit does, one row each, with a line saying what it is for: Backup, Add storage, Activity, Tutorials and Connect an assistant.
  • • Settings, About and Close sit along the bottom, and a running trial shows its days left there too.
  • • The menu follows a language change straight away; it used to keep the previous language until BackupKit was restarted.

A tidier Backup page

  • • Filter by status at a glance. All, Healthy, Warning, Failed, Paused and Never run sit in one switch, each with the colour dot its backups carry and how many there are. A status no backup is in has no button.
  • • Create New stands out as the one coloured button at the top. The other buttons are quieter, and search opens as one field with its × inside.
  • • The sort button says its order (“Status ↓”) instead of showing a bare icon, and the last failure is marked with a red icon.
  • • You can see which backup is selected — it gets a blue outline — and which one you are pointing at. Before, both outlines were almost the same colour as the page.
  • • Next run is shown in grey, so colour on a backup always means its health: green, amber or red. A backup’s buttons sit together in one quiet group, with Run in blue.
  • • Runs missed while BackupKit was closed are announced by a calm notice with their count, Run all, and a button to show every backup again — instead of a red button next to a blue one.

The file browser’s toolbar follows what you select

  • • Nothing selected, it offers what the folder takes: New, and Paste once there is something to paste — instead of a row of greyed-out icons.
  • • Select files and it is about them, in words: Copy, Cut, Create Backup and Delete. How many files you selected and their total size sit on the right, with an × to clear the selection.
  • • The view mode is a switch — Icons, Details and Preview stay in sight — and the sort button says what it sorts by and in which direction.
  • • Jump to any folder from the address bar. The arrow after a folder lists the folders inside it. Click the empty part of the bar to type or paste a path.
  • • Right-click a folder in the address bar to open it in a new tab or in split view, copy its path, or show it in File Explorer. Middle-click opens it in a new tab, and you can drop files on it.
  • • As you type a path, BackupKit finishes the folder name from the folders it already knows.
  • • Right-click or hold Back and Forward to jump straight to any of the last 20 places in that tab.

A cleaner title bar

  • • Tabs, the + button, the menu button and the settings button share one rounded shape, with thin separators between tabs and more contrast between the tab strip and the page in every theme.

Fixed

  • • A backup to a second drive or a USB disk — or to another folder on the same cloud — reported “0 B”. The data was always copied correctly; the real size is now shown.
  • • A backup that stopped making progress kept its schedule blocked until BackupKit was restarted. It is now detected, stopped and reported.
  • • The folders left behind by stopped and failed backups are now cleaned up, if “delete interrupted backup data” is on — only when BackupKit can tell they are incomplete, and every deletion is listed in the activity log.
  • • If BackupKit closed unexpectedly just after a backup finished uploading, the backup is now recognised as complete at the next start instead of being treated as interrupted.
  • • Replacing a file during a restore could delete the original before the replacement was safely in place. Restoring a backup that excluded some files over its original folder no longer deletes the files the backup left out.
  • • The Zip viewer now opens archives over 4 GB and archives holding tens of thousands of files.
  • • BackupKit created a folder called ~FTPie-Temp on whichever drive had the most space. It is named after this app now.
  • • MEGA signs in again. MEGA started asking apps for an extra security check, and the sign-in failed with a message about quota even with the right password. BackupKit answers the check now, and a wrong password or two-factor authentication says so.
  • • OneDrive signs in even if you switch between Personal and Work or school while its sign-in page is open, and the two buttons say which kind of account each is for.
  • • SFTP connects on PCs set to allow only FIPS-approved encryption, as many company PCs are, and a busy FTP server that answers “try again later” no longer fails a file on the first try.
  • • BackupKit starts on PCs where Windows refuses to protect its data with your account’s key, instead of closing before its window appears.
  • • The Zip viewer asks for an archive’s password first, instead of after downloading it. If BackupKit ever has to close after an error, the window offering to send a report is readable on a dark theme.

Not in this release

  • • Incremental backups. Each run still writes a complete copy of the source at that point in time. The groundwork landed in this release — every backup now records what it contained, and a backup can skip itself when nothing changed — but true incremental backups, where only changed files are stored, are still ahead.
  • • Bandwidth throttling. Still planned.
  • • Open-file consistency. BackupKit reads files other programs have open, but it does not snapshot the disk, so a database being written to while it is backed up is copied as it was mid-write. Close such programs, or back up when they are idle.
  • • One backup still takes one source folder. Backing up two unrelated folders means two backups.