tui-snapper

btrfs snapshots, managed by snapper, from the terminal

v0.1.1snapshotsMIT

The snapshot history: pre/post pairs, timeline snapshots and the pinned ones, newest first

A terminal UI for the btrfs snapshots snapper manages. It lists every config and its history — pre/post pairs from package upgrades next to the hourly timeline snapshots — compares any two of them, and shows what changed file by file, with a read-only diff for anything you want to look at closely.

It creates, deletes, relabels and cleans up snapshots too, and puts individual files back with undochange without touching the rest of the filesystem. Every one of those is shown as the exact snapper command line and confirmed before it runs; starting the tool only reads.

Rollback is the one thing that genuinely differs between machines, so it is detected rather than assumed: where snapper rollback is the mechanism it is offered with a full warning, and on an Omarchy or limine-snapper-sync layout the boot menu entries are read from /boot/limine.conf and shown read-only, because that is where the rollback really happens.

--demo runs the whole UI against a sample history, so you can try it without a btrfs filesystem to risk.

Keys

Key	Action
d / enter	Compare two snapshots; a post snapshot pairs with its own pre
space	Mark a snapshot: two marks are a range, many are one delete
c	Create a snapshot: description, type and cleanup algorithm
D	Delete the selected snapshot, or every marked one
e / a	Change a snapshot's description / cleanup algorithm
C	Run a cleanup: number, timeline or empty-pre-post
u	In the diff: put the selected files back with undochange
R	Rollback, or how this machine actually rolls back
s / T	Switch config / snapper's timers, read-only
/	Filter the list
? / q	Help / quit

Press ? inside the tool for the full help screen, which is generated from the same action table as the key map.

At a glance

Binary: tui-snapper
Platforms: linux/amd64, linux/arm64
Latest: v0.1.1, 2026-08-30
Since: 2026-08-29
Source: tui-tools/tui-snapper
Config: /etc/tui-snapper/config.toml
~/.config/tui-snapper/config.toml

Try it without a machine to risk

--demo runs against sample data. Every key works, every command is built and previewed for real, and nothing touches your system.

Demo mode

$ tui-snapper --demo

Compatibility

This tool is a face on the program below, so its version matters.Tested is not a claim: a version lands there only after the tool's own suite passed against it on a real machine in the lab, and the run is kept as evidence in the repository. At startup the tool probes the backend once and says what it found in its header — a version nobody has run against is shown as(untested) in the warning colour, one older than the minimum as (below minimum) in the error colour. Neither stops it: the backend still refuses what it cannot do, in its own words.

snapper

snapper ≥ 0.8.6

Binary: snapper
Minimum: 0.8.6
Probed with: snapper --version
Tested: 0.10.60.13.00.13.1

Needs a version this new

undochange-root-pathssince 0.10.6

What changes on older versions

snapper <0.8.6
snapper has no --jsonout, and both the config list and the snapshot list are read as JSON, so nothing can be listed at all
snapper <0.10.6
snapper undochange cannot recreate a path that sits directly under the subvolume root, so putting back a deleted top-level file or directory fails with "failed to create"
snapper <0.10.7
snapper diff is broken for LVM-based configs, so the file view comes back empty there even when the compare screen lists the change

Install

Once per machine, then every tool in the family is one pacman away.

Add the repository

$ curl -fsSL https://pkgs.tui.tools/install.sh | sh

Or run the same thing yourself, one command at a time

A family whose whole promise is preview before you run is not going to insist you pipe a script into a shell. These are the commands that script runs.

The one-time setup, by hand

$ curl -fsSL -o /tmp/tui-tools.asc https://pkgs.tui.tools/pubkey.asc
  sudo pacman-key --add /tmp/tui-tools.asc
  sudo pacman-key --lsign-key \
    "$(gpg --show-keys --with-colons /tmp/tui-tools.asc | awk -F: '/^fpr:/{print $10; exit}')"
  printf '[tui-tools]\nServer = https://pkgs.tui.tools/arch/$arch\n' \
    | sudo tee -a /etc/pacman.conf
  sudo pacman -Sy

Arch Linux · tui-snapper

$ sudo pacman -S tui-snapper

Upgrades then arrive with the rest of your system updates.

Once per machine, then every tool in the family is one apt away.

Add the repository

$ curl -fsSL https://pkgs.tui.tools/install.sh | sh

Or run the same thing yourself, one command at a time

A family whose whole promise is preview before you run is not going to insist you pipe a script into a shell. These are the commands that script runs.

The one-time setup, by hand

$ sudo install -d -m 0755 /etc/apt/keyrings
  curl -fsSL https://pkgs.tui.tools/pubkey.asc \
    | sudo gpg --dearmor -o /etc/apt/keyrings/tui-tools.gpg
  echo "deb [signed-by=/etc/apt/keyrings/tui-tools.gpg] https://pkgs.tui.tools/deb stable main" \
    | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/tui-tools.list
  sudo apt update

Debian / Ubuntu · tui-snapper

$ sudo apt install tui-snapper

Upgrades then arrive with the rest of your system updates.

Once per machine, then every tool in the family is one dnf away.

Add the repository

$ curl -fsSL https://pkgs.tui.tools/install.sh | sh

Or run the same thing yourself, one command at a time

A family whose whole promise is preview before you run is not going to insist you pipe a script into a shell. These are the commands that script runs.

The one-time setup, by hand

$ sudo rpm --import https://pkgs.tui.tools/pubkey.asc
  sudo curl -fsSL -o /etc/yum.repos.d/tui-tools.repo https://pkgs.tui.tools/rpm/tui-tools.repo
  sudo dnf makecache

Fedora / RHEL · tui-snapper

$ sudo dnf install tui-snapper

Upgrades then arrive with the rest of your system updates.

Needs the tui-tools repository, a one-time setup you do once per machine.

openSUSE · tui-snappercoming soon

$ sudo zypper install tui-snapper

The rpm repository is shared with dnf; zypper support is not tested yet.

Static binary · linux/amd64

$ curl -fsSL https://github.com/tui-tools/tui-snapper/releases/download/v0.1.1/tui-snapper_0.1.1_linux_amd64.tar.gz | tar -xz tui-snapper
  sudo install -m0755 tui-snapper /usr/local/bin/tui-snapper

Static binary · linux/arm64

$ curl -fsSL https://github.com/tui-tools/tui-snapper/releases/download/v0.1.1/tui-snapper_0.1.1_linux_arm64.tar.gz | tar -xz tui-snapper
  sudo install -m0755 tui-snapper /usr/local/bin/tui-snapper

Static, no runtime dependencies beyond the snapper binary it drives.

From source · tui-snapper

$ git clone https://github.com/tui-tools/tui-snapper
  cd tui-snapper && make demo

make demo needs no btrfs filesystem and no root.

What it can do to your machine

Preview, then confirm
Every change is shown as an exact command line and confirmed before it runs. The dialog and the runner receive the same value, so the preview cannot drift from what executes.
Escalates for actions
Reads too, not only writes: snapper opens its subvolumes directly, so even listing snapshots needs root. Run with sudo, or leave sudo = "sudo -n" configured. create, delete, modify, cleanup, undochange and rollback change things, and each is confirmed first. --demo escalates nothing.
No daemon, no state of its own
Nothing keeps running after you quit, and nothing is installed to run later. The system is the source of truth; the tool re-reads it after every change.
No network access
The tool opens no network connection of its own. No telemetry, no update check, no phone home.
Static binary
Released statically linked, with no runtime dependencies to install.
Releases are not signed yet
Releases carry SHA-256 checksums but no signature. Verify the checksum, and read this as the open item it is.

Reporting

Report a security issue privately, through GitHub's private vulnerability reporting on the repository's Security tab. The family-wide policy, and what counts as in scope, is on the security page.

Downloads

v0.1.1 · 2026-08-30

File	Size	SHA-256
checksums.txt	800 B	—
tui-snapper-0.1.1-1-aarch64.pkg.tar.zst	1.7 MB	19db38a185cd35422d59bb044100d58aa86e4dff9ab4da53f7daf072a462bf76
tui-snapper-0.1.1-1-x86_64.pkg.tar.zst	1.8 MB	c5068b2b55ec7b129e2c5cc770791ed5f362c56cd470099f572ed6fdc301aa1e
tui-snapper-0.1.1-1.aarch64.rpm	1.7 MB	9032e8aab045b2abd5681ec088665722560d97d3865c6c8a026965682d38216e
tui-snapper-0.1.1-1.x86_64.rpm	1.8 MB	7b86880c6e94c9693790d6506362bf4b782b73ff98c388c6a9259b75dd2d4e08
tui-snapper_0.1.1_amd64.deb	1.8 MB	985152e7a779fb4427a1841050597283004c4822220e09602ae05c3f78daa71f
tui-snapper_0.1.1_arm64.deb	1.7 MB	7b74a2525171a427704c323c4cfbacd819b46097db721c1de7e8991fa856b2cd
tui-snapper_0.1.1_linux_amd64.tar.gz	1.8 MB	c67f1468bbf5057241c453018723675905b248788d88760e49220dfc0e9dc65e
tui-snapper_0.1.1_linux_arm64.tar.gz	1.7 MB	48d85edfd5ad17253126be7037e84560309dd031a8e22ae9f8476e164051ebdd

Every release ships a checksums.txt. Download it next to the archive and run sha256sum -c checksums.txt --ignore-missing. See verifying a download.

Releases

v0.1.1

2026-08-30

## Changelog
* 0e8d3a873253c297e174a7c76f0f733af37f0a1a Bump the github-actions group with 5 updates (#1)
* cce03797b03ded206265b06a3b333aa5a3849e40 Hold this tool to the family's lint bar
* 60c6d09fa8666890df4be66f0dede0efe1f29e0b Join the lab, and fix what the real Omarchy machine showed
* 36fb218dcde5cc0ac7853043c80fef778b927638 Packages are available from pkgs.tui.tools
* 5669e30bd8fc9e259cb1b4b41ac37212eb768887 Point the install line at v0.1.0
* f8296f32ddeebd30eb1c4949809b05ebed4319d2 Re-pin the kit at v0.1.3 and put the help screen back under the width test
* 5a84f3c11d87b62feb8b9531039634907031214d Re-pin the kit at v0.2.3
* 80794b77cace82177b986d9a14c338049603fba7 Ship the tool as a .deb, an .rpm and a pacman package
* ad670b41277a46c1d82f6441d04e0f6c9266abb0 Tell the user which snapper they are running
* 9f66d07254381b1ddc35ae7bd463206d46eda2c2 Use a neutral home directory in the path-with-spaces fixture

v0.1.0

2026-08-30

## Changelog
* 3927add228d0434cde0cdb80c0188900841ef102 Add --no-dbus, for a machine with no running snapperd
* 492a639daa4ee7656f42c78e22802408d761e8c2 Initial commit
* 1ca855042732942359cb2af5e5c7d87699d35a95 Replace the template with tui-snapper