Questions
Starting with the one that should decide whether you buy this.
What happens to my backup if you go out of business?
Nothing happens to it. Your backup is a standard restic repository — not a proprietary format with an export feature, the actual thing, written by the actual restic binary that Backstop bundles and drives.
restic is open source, BSD-licensed, and has been maintained since 2014 by people who have nothing to do with us. It will outlive this company. Here is how to get your files back with no Backstop installed, no licence, and no internet connection to us:
1. Install restic
brew install restic2. Point it at your backup
The location is on your recovery sheet — the page Backstop made you save during setup.
export RESTIC_REPOSITORY='/Volumes/Backup Drive/Backstop'3. See what is in there
It will ask for the password, which is also on the recovery sheet.
restic snapshots4. Restore everything
restic restore latest --target ~/RestoredOr just one folder
restic restore latest --target ~/Restored --include /Users/you/DocumentsThese five commands are checked by our test suite on every build: it creates a repository, backs up a real directory tree, and then runs exactly these lines out of this page against it. If they ever stop working, the build fails before it can ship.
Where does my data actually go?
Wherever you point it: an external disk, a folder, an SFTP server, or any S3-compatible storage — Amazon S3, Backblaze B2, Wasabi, MinIO. Backstop has no servers and no storage of its own. We never see your files, and there is nowhere for us to see them from.
What do you collect?
Nothing, unless you turn on crash reporting, and then a crash report contains a stack trace, a version number and a macOS version. No file names, no folder paths, no repository locations, no email address.
The diagnostics file the app can export for support is held to the same rule: paths appear only as
their depth and extension, like ‹path:5›.cr2. There is a test that greps a generated
bundle for a deliberately-planted password, hostname and filename and fails the build if any of them
survives.
What is a “restore drill”?
Once a month Backstop picks a handful of files at random from your most recent backup, restores them to a temporary folder, and compares them byte for byte with the originals still on your Mac. Then it deletes the temporary folder and records the result.
It compares against the originals, not against a hash it wrote down earlier. That is the
difference between proving the repository is internally consistent — which
restic check already does — and proving the round trip actually works.
Does it need Full Disk Access?
Yes, and it will tell you exactly what is missing from your backup if you decline: Mail, Messages, Safari and Photos all live behind that permission. Backstop shows you the list rather than nagging about a setting, and it starts backing up everything else while you decide.
Does it need macFUSE?
No. Browsing a backup and restoring from it are done with restic's own commands, so there is no kernel extension to install and nothing to break on the next macOS update.
Will it slow my Mac down, or use up my data allowance?
It skips backups below 20% battery unless you are plugged in, waits for wi-fi rather than using a tethered phone, and respects a “do not run between” window you set. The monthly deep verification — the expensive one — can be rate-limited and defers on a metered connection.
What if I lose the password?
Then the backup cannot be opened. Not by you, not by us, not by anyone. That is what makes it safe to put your files on somebody else's storage, and it is why setup makes you save a recovery sheet and type a sentence confirming it before the backup is created at all.
It is the only screen in Backstop that deliberately slows you down.
Three Macs — how is that enforced?
By trusting you. There is no activation server to count against, and a licence that stopped working when you replaced a logic board would cost us more in support than the seat is worth. If you need more than three, buy another licence or write to us.
Time Machine already does this, doesn't it?
Time Machine is good, and you should keep using it. It backs up to a disk in the same building as your Mac, which is the disk that will be in the same fire or the same burglary. Backstop is for the copy that is somewhere else — and, unlike Time Machine, it will tell you when that copy has quietly stopped working.