faq.md

FAQ

How is this different from git?

git is for intentional, shared history: you decide when to commit, and you publish those commits to collaborators. undo-anything is a personal, automatic safety net for the moments between commits — the uncommitted work that git, by design, doesn't protect. They complement each other. undo-anything even ignores .git/ by default so the two never trip over each other.

Will it bloat my disk?

Usually not. File contents are content-addressed, so identical content is stored once, and every blob is zlib-compressed. A snapshot only writes the bytes that actually changed. Run ua status to see real numbers — including how much space you've saved versus naive full copies — and ua prune to thin old history and reclaim space.

What triggers a snapshot?

Any create/modify/rename/delete under the tracked folder (excluding ignored paths) marks the tree dirty. After a short debounce (default 1.5s of quiet), one snapshot of the whole tree is taken. If nothing actually changed since the last snapshot, no new snapshot is recorded.

Can I track more than one folder?

Yes. Each folder has its own independent .undo/ store and its own background watcher. Run ua init and ua daemon start in each folder you care about.

Does it follow symlinks or store huge binaries?

No symlinks (only regular files are tracked), and files larger than watch.max_file_size_mb (default 50 MB) are skipped. Both keep the store small and predictable. Raise the limit in config if you need to.

What exactly happens when I restore?

1. A pre-restore safety snapshot of your current state is captured (unless you pass --no-safety).
2. The requested files — or the whole tree — are written from the chosen snapshot, atomically.
3. With --clean, tracked files not present in the target are removed (ignored files are never touched).

The safety snapshot's ID is printed, so you can undo the restore with ua restore <safety-id>.

I restored the wrong thing. Can I undo it?

Yes — that's the point of the safety snapshot. Run ua log, find the pre-restore snapshot (labelled "before restore to …"), and restore it. The ua timeline TUI makes this a two-keystroke operation.

Is my data encrypted?

No. Blobs are deduplicated and compressed but not encrypted. Treat .undo/ as sensitively as the files it protects, and use .uaignore to exclude secrets you don't want retained.

Does it phone home?

No. undo-anything makes no network connections at all — no telemetry, no account, no update checks. See the privacy section for a one-liner to verify it yourself.

How do I stop tracking a folder / remove everything?

Stop the watcher and delete the store:

ua daemon stop
ua daemon uninstall      # if you installed the OS service
rm -rf .undo             # removes all snapshots and history

Does it work on Windows?

The core (init, snapshot, log, show, diff, restore, timeline, watch) is cross-platform and tested on Windows in CI. The background service installer currently targets macOS (launchd) and Linux (systemd user units); on Windows, run ua watch in a terminal or wire it into Task Scheduler yourself. Contributions for native Windows service support are welcome.

Why "undo-anything" but the command is ua?

ua is short to type for a tool you reach for reflexively. Think of it the way rg is short for ripgrep.