Changelog for restic 0.19.0 (2026-06-09)
=======================================
The following sections list the changes in restic 0.19.0 relevant to restic users. The changes are ordered by importance.
Summary

Fix #2034: Support serving a restic mount of a Windows system via Samba
Fix #4447: Use mode 0700 for repository directories created over SFTP
Fix #4467: Exit with code 3 when some backup source paths do not exist
Fix #4759: Error out when environment variables hold invalid values
Fix #5233: Return exit code 3 when failing to remove snapshots
Fix #5258: Exit with code 130 on SIGINT
Fix #5280: Reject impossible find time bounds immediately
Fix #5280: Make find --pack list blobs for tree packs
Fix #5354: Allow rclone and sftp backends when running in background
Fix #5427: Correctly restore ACL inheritance state on Windows
Fix #5477: Password prompt was sometimes not shown for backup -v
Fix #5487: Mark repository files read-only when using the SFTP backend
Fix #5586: Correctly handle snapshots --group-by with --latest
Fix #5595: Avoid spurious chmod errors on certain file backends
Fix #5683: Prevent backup --stdin-from-command from hanging
Fix #5757: Respect --user and --host in key passwd
Fix #21820: Correct handling of duplicate index entries
Fix #21820: Correctly handle pack files missing from the index
Chg #5293: Prune small packfiles more aggressively
Chg #5767: Prevent excluding paths explicitly passed to backup
Chg #21791: Update dependencies and require Go 1.25 or newer
Enh #3326: Limit check to snapshots selected by filters
Enh #3572: Support restoring ownership by name on UNIX systems
Enh #3738: Optional GitHub token for self-update API requests
Enh #4278: Support include filters in the rewrite command
Enh #4728: Support zstd compression levels fastest and better
Enh #4868: Include repository ID in the filesystem name used by mount
Enh #5175: Add status counters to copy in verbose text output
Enh #5352: Support excluding cloud-backed files on macOS
Enh #5383: Reduce progress bar refresh rates to decrease energy usage
Enh #5424: Enable Windows filesystem privileges before file access
Enh #5440: Make --host override environment variable RESTIC_HOST
Enh #5448: Support configuring nice and ionice in the Docker image
Enh #5453: Copy multiple snapshots in batches
Enh #5523: Add Open Container Initiative labels to release Docker image
Enh #5531: Reduce Azure storage costs by optimizing uploads
Enh #5562: Rewrite only changed status lines each frame
Enh #5588: Show timezone context in snapshots output
Enh #5610: Reduce check, copy, diff and stats memory usage
Enh #5689: Show more detailed progress for stats
Enh #5713: Significantly speed up index loading
Enh #5718: Stricter and earlier validation of the mount point

Details


Bugfix #2034: Support serving a restic mount of a Windows system via Samba
A repository mounted using restic mount on a POSIX system could not use Samba to serve files from backups of Windows systems, while backups of non-Windows systems could be served successfully. This has now been fixed.
#2034 #4382 #21784


Bugfix #4447: Use mode 0700 for repository directories created over SFTP
When creating a repository over SFTP, restic created the repository directories with the SFTP server's default permissions, often 0755, rather than the 0700 permissions it uses for local repositories.
Restic now creates these directories with 0700 permissions.
#4447 #21817


Bugfix #4467: Exit with code 3 when some backup source paths do not exist
Restic used to exit with code 0 when a top-level backup source path was missing, and exited with code 3 only when a child path under an existing source did not exist. Scripts that relied on the exit code could therefore treat an incomplete backup as success.
Restic now exits with code 3 when any backup source path does not exist.
#4467 #5347


Bugfix #4759: Error out when environment variables hold invalid values
If the environment variables RESTIC_COMPRESSION, RESTIC_PACK_SIZE, or RESTIC_READ_CONCURRENCY could not be parsed, restic used to ignore them. Restic now fails with an error unless the same setting is overridden on the command line.
#4759 #5592 #5700


Bugfix #5233: Return exit code 3 when failing to remove snapshots
Previously, the forget command returned exit code 0 when it failed to remove one or more snapshots. This was misleading to scripts.
The forget command now instead returns exit code 3 when failing to remove one or more snapshots.
#5233 #5322


Bugfix #5258: Exit with code 130 on SIGINT
Restic used to return exit code 1 on SIGINT. It now returns 130, the usual convention for a process stopped by Ctrl-C.
#5258 #5363


Bugfix #5280: Reject impossible find time bounds immediately
The find command now fails with an error when both --oldest and --newest are set and --oldest is later than --newest.
#5280 #5310


Bugfix #5280: Make find --pack list blobs for tree packs
The find --pack <tree-pack> command now also reports blobs for packs that only contain tree blobs.
#5280 #5664


Bugfix #5354: Allow rclone and sftp backends when running in background
Previously, starting restic in the background could result in unexpected behavior when using the rclone or sftp backends. For example, restic -r rclone:./example --insecure-no-password init & could cause the calling bash shell to exit unexpectedly.
This has now been fixed.
#5354 #5358 #5493 #5494


Bugfix #5427: Correctly restore ACL inheritance state on Windows
Since security descriptor backups were added in restic 0.17.0, Access Control Entry inheritance was not restored correctly on Windows; restored permissions were always marked as explicit (not inherited) even when they were inherited from a parent folder.
The inheritance flags are now correctly applied when restoring the security descriptor, preserving the original permission structure.
#5427 #5465


Bugfix #5477: Password prompt was sometimes not shown for backup -v
The repository password prompt could be hidden when running the backup -v command. This has now been fixed.
#5477 #5554


Bugfix #5487: Mark repository files read-only when using the SFTP backend
Files created through the SFTP backend previously stayed writable. New files now get read-only permissions where the server supports chmod.
#5487 #5497


Bugfix #5586: Correctly handle snapshots --group-by with --latest
For the snapshots command, --latest did not interact correctly with a non-default --group-by value. This combination now behaves as intended.
#5586 #5601


Bugfix #5595: Avoid spurious chmod errors on certain file backends
On filesystems that do not support chmod (for example CIFS or FUSE-mounted WebDAV), restic since version 0.18.0 failed to remove stale locks, throwing the error chmod ...: operation not supported. This has now been fixed.
#5595 #5596


Bugfix #5683: Prevent backup --stdin-from-command from hanging
When using --stdin-from-command, the backup command could hang until manually cancelled if the backup stopped before all subprocess output was consumed, for example after a failed upload to the repository. This has now been fixed.
#5683 #21829


Bugfix #5757: Respect --user and --host in key passwd
The key passwd command previously ignored the --user and --host options and always stored the new key with the current user and host name. These options are now honored.
#5757 #21781


Bugfix #21820: Correct handling of duplicate index entries
Before restic 0.10.0, a bug could, in very rare cases, split information about a pack file across multiple index files.
Since restic 0.17.0, any operation that rewrites the index (like prune or repair packs) could lose part of that information, resulting in errors in later check or prune runs. This can be fixed by running repair packs, and only repositories using repository format version 1 might be affected.
Split pack index entries are no longer lost during index rewrites. The check command now reports these cases as errors that can be fixed using the repair packs command. On older restic versions, running repair index twice also fixes the problem.
#21820 #21828


Bugfix #21820: Correctly handle pack files missing from the index
The repair packs command was unable to salvage blobs from a pack file if the pack file was not contained in the index or the index entry was incomplete.
The command now uses information from both the index and the pack file header.
#21820 #21827


Change #5293: Prune small packfiles more aggressively
The prune command now repacks more small packfiles by default. The option --repack-small is no longer needed and has been marked as deprecated. The --repack-smaller-than option can still be used to further control repacking of small pack files.
#5293 #21803


Change #5767: Prevent excluding paths explicitly passed to backup
When e.g. restic backup --exclude-if-present .git /home/user/data was run and /home/user/.git existed, restic excluded the data directory from the snapshot. The same applied to --exclude-caches or --one-file-system.
Similarly, restic backup --exclude-larger-than 1M large-file.bin produced an empty snapshot when the file was larger than one megabyte.
The backup command now tracks which files and directories were specified on the command line and does not apply excludes to those paths. Content inside a backed-up directory is still filtered by excludes as before.
#5767 #21797


Change #21791: Update dependencies and require Go 1.25 or newer
Dependencies have been updated. Building restic now requires Go 1.25 or newer. The Windows build with Go 1.26 was also fixed.
#21791 #5619 #21796


Enhancement #3326: Limit check to snapshots selected by filters
The check command can now restrict pack verification to snapshots chosen with the usual snapshot filters (--tag, --host, --path, or explicit snapshot IDs on the command line).
#3326 #5469 #5644


Enhancement #3572: Support restoring ownership by name on UNIX systems
The restore command used to restore file ownership on UNIX systems by UID and GID. It now supports restoring ownership by user and group name with --ownership-by-name, so that snapshots can be restored on systems where numeric IDs do not match those on the backup host.
Note: POSIX ACLs are still restored by numeric value; this change does not add ACL-by-name support.
#3572 #5449


Enhancement #3738: Optional GitHub token for self-update API requests
The self-update command used only unauthenticated GitHub API requests when checking for releases. Shared IP addresses could hit the GitHub rate limit, resulting in a 403 Forbidden error and preventing updates.
Unauthenticated requests remain the default, but authenticated requests are now possible. Set the environment variable GITHUB_ACCESS_TOKEN to a GitHub personal access token to avoid rate-limit failures.
#3738 #5568


Enhancement #4278: Support include filters in the rewrite command
The rewrite command now accepts the same include filter options as the restore command (--include, --include-file, --iinclude, --iinclude-file, and short -i). Include and exclude filter options are mutually exclusive.
#4278 #5191


Enhancement #4728: Support zstd compression levels fastest and better
Restic now supports the zstd compression modes fastest and better. Set the environment variable RESTIC_COMPRESSION to fastest or better, or pass the same values with the --compression option.
#4728 #5321


Enhancement #4868: Include repository ID in the filesystem name used by mount
The filesystem exposed by the mount command now includes the repository ID in its name. The ID is printed when opening a repository or can be read with restic cat config.
$ df ./test-mount/
Filesystem        1K-blocks  Used Available Use% Mounted on
restic:d3b07384d1         0     0         0    - /mnt/my-restic-repo

#4868 #5243


Enhancement #5175: Add status counters to copy in verbose text output
The copy command now prints additional counters in text mode when --verbose is set: blobs to copy, their on-disk size, and the number of pack files read from the source repository.
#5175 #5319


Enhancement #5352: Support excluding cloud-backed files on macOS
Previously, restic treated cloud-backed files (such as files stored on iCloud) like normal local files, forcing a full download of placeholders and other "meant to be cloud only" content during backups.
The backup command now supports --exclude-cloud-files (previously only available on Windows) to skip those files on supported macOS versions. From Sonoma (macOS 14.0) onward the option can prevent unwanted downloads. Older macOS versions will still download the files during a backup run.
#5352 #5370


Enhancement #5383: Reduce progress bar refresh rates to decrease energy usage
Progress bars were previously updated at 60 frames per second, which could cause high CPU or GPU usage in some terminal emulators.
The refresh rate is now 10 FPS to conserve energy. For some terminal emulators, the lower rate is also necessary to allow selecting text in the terminal.
#5383 #5551 #5626


Enhancement #5424: Enable Windows filesystem privileges before file access
Restic used to enable some Windows filesystem privileges only while reading or writing security descriptors. Extended attributes could therefore be read before enabling the backup privilege, possibly resulting in missed data or errors.
Restic now enables the relevant filesystem privileges before any file access.
#5424


Enhancement #5440: Make --host override environment variable RESTIC_HOST
Previously, when the environment variable RESTIC_HOST was set, snapshot listings and other operations were always filtered to that host.
Passing --host as an empty string (--host="" or --host=) now overrides RESTIC_HOST and shows snapshots from all hosts.
The same override applies to other commands that support snapshot filters, including snapshots, forget, find, stats, copy, tag, repair snapshots, rewrite, mount, restore, dump, and ls.
#5440 #5541


Enhancement #5448: Support configuring nice and ionice in the Docker image
The container entrypoint now reads optional scheduling hints from the environment:


The environment variable NICE sets the process nice value (see man nice).


The environment variable IONICE_CLASS selects the I/O scheduling class (see man ionice). Real-time classes need the SYS_NICE capability added to the container.


The environment variable IONICE_PRIORITY sets the priority within IONICE_CLASS and has no effect unless IONICE_CLASS is set; it defaults to 4 (neutral priority).


For further details, please see: https://restic.readthedocs.io/en/stable/020_installation.html#docker-container
#5448


Enhancement #5453: Copy multiple snapshots in batches
The copy command used to copy snapshots one at a time, even when doing so produced pack files smaller than the target pack size. This led to many small files when copying small incremental snapshots.
The copy command now copies multiple snapshots together so that small pack files are avoided where possible.
#5453 #5472


Enhancement #5523: Add Open Container Initiative labels to release Docker image
The release Docker image now includes OCI-style image annotation labels, which helps external tooling identify the image.
#5523


Enhancement #5531: Reduce Azure storage costs by optimizing uploads
Restic previously used Azure PutBlock and PutBlockList for every upload, which cost two storage transactions per file and roughly doubled transaction charges for repositories with many pack files.
Files up to 256 MiB now use PutBlob, requiring only a single transaction per file and cutting typical transaction costs by about half. Larger blobs still use block uploads as required by Azure.
#5531 #5544


Enhancement #5562: Rewrite only changed status lines each frame
The status bar rewrote every line on each frame whenever any content changed, which made selecting text impossible in some terminal emulators even when most lines were unchanged.
Now only lines that actually change are rewritten on each update.
#5562 #5648


Enhancement #5588: Show timezone context in snapshots output
The snapshots command now prints which timezone is used for displayed timestamps. Snapshots may have been created in different timezones but are shown in the local timezone, so a footer line (for example, timestamps shown in CET) clarifies the display context when comparing snapshots from several sources.
#5588


Enhancement #5610: Reduce check, copy, diff and stats memory usage
The check, copy, diff and stats commands now use less memory when handling large snapshots.
#5610


Enhancement #5689: Show more detailed progress for stats
The stats command used to show progress only while loading the index. During the scan it printed only scanning... with no further updates. It now reports how many snapshots, files, and blobs have been processed so far.
#5689 #5705


Enhancement #5713: Significantly speed up index loading
Loading the index for a large repository is now significantly faster. Also, the mount command now loads the index once at startup and then only loads new index files as they appear. It also loads snapshots before printing that the repository is being served.
#5713 #5720


Enhancement #5718: Stricter and earlier validation of the mount point
The mount command previously accepted invalid mount points, resulting in an error after loading the repository. The specified mount point must now refer to a directory that the current user can access and write to, and this check is performed before opening the repository.
#5718

View the full release notes at https://github.com/restic/restic/releases/tag/v0.19.0.