{"slug": "arq-backup", "name": "Arq Backup", "category": "files", "category_name": "Files, sync and backup", "description": "", "recommenders": 18, "commenters": 20, "warners": 0, "score": 15.945, "rising": 0.42, "first": "2025-11-10", "latest": "2026-10-22", "why": "Arq scratches the itch of having control over your backups and putting them where you want", "why_is_quote": true, "has_verdict": false, "sentiment": {"recommend": 19, "neutral": 3, "compare": 0, "warn": 0}, "spark": [2, 3, 1, 1, 0, 7, 0, 0, 0, 2, 3, 0], "listed": true, "loved": [], "caveat": "", "short_quote": "Arq scratches the itch of having control over your backups and putting them where you want", "kind": "", "icon": true, "domain": "arqbackup.com", "github_repo": null, "official_url": "https://www.arqbackup.com", "pricing": "", "aliases": ["Arq", "Arq Backup", "arq", "ARQ"], "verdict": null, "praise": [{"label": "", "summary": "", "quotes": [{"id": 795835777, "item_id": 49739736, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49739736", "by": "mrngld", "date": "2026-09-17", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I have a Mac, so not just an iPhone, so I use Arq there", "excerpt": "That's tedious. Can't believe nobody mentioned Parachute Backup yet. It had a moment in the sun earlier this year or last year when it first started getting traction. I have a Mac, so not just an iPhone, so I use Arq there, it materializes the iCloud stuff as necessary for backup. But if all you have is an iPhone or iPad along with an external disk, NAS or whatever, Parachute Backup will do backups to a variety of de", "context": "Mac user", "use_case": "Mac and iCloud backup", "switched_from": "", "story": "Backups Aren't Simple"}, {"id": 795791136, "item_id": 49736946, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49736946", "by": "fragmede", "date": "2026-09-17", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Arq.\n\nhttps://www.arqbackup.com/", "excerpt": "Arq. https://www.arqbackup.com/", "context": "", "use_case": "Backups", "switched_from": "", "story": "Backups Aren't Simple"}, {"id": 795457600, "item_id": 49716100, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49716100", "by": "microtonal", "date": "2026-09-15", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "macOS has much better quality applications, from small indie stuff like Arq for backups to Affinity Suite, PDF Expert, etc.", "excerpt": "I mean every OS breaks I love Linux (first used it when I was 12yo in 1994), but I also had a Mac since 2007 and macOS never broke for me? The other thing is that even basic stuff like calendars, address books, etc. work many times better on macOS than the Linux desktop. For instance, last time I set up calendar sync in KOrganizer (Evolution-based CalDAV never worked well for me) about a year ago, it started triggeri", "context": "", "use_case": "backups", "switched_from": "", "story": "Leaving Linux"}, {"id": 789675328, "item_id": 49354708, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49354708", "by": "noduerme", "date": "2026-08-18", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I use Arq (highly recommended!) to maintain a remote encrypted backup on a VPS", "excerpt": "Fair enough, I guess if you want access to your entire lifetime photo collection through your phone that makes sense. As far as backups - I mean, that's just a general question of keeping your laptop backed up. I use Arq (highly recommended!) to maintain a remote encrypted backup on a VPS, along with Time Machine to an external SSD.", "context": "", "use_case": "encrypted remote backups", "switched_from": "", "story": "How do I permanently disable Google Photos pop-up prompt to backup my photos?"}, {"id": 787613280, "item_id": 49225830, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49225830", "by": "Syzygies", "date": "2026-08-08", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Arq is off-site storage.", "excerpt": "I also use Arq and Time Machine. How Pixar\u2019s Toy Story 2 was deleted twice, once by technology and again for its own good https://thenextweb.com/news/how-pixars-toy-story-2-was-deleted-twice-once-by-technology-and-again-for-its-own-good SuperDuper! and Carbon Copy Cloner are as close as you can get to a hot spare. For data drives, interchangeable. Time Machine's virtue is single file recovery. Arq is off-site storage", "context": "", "use_case": "off-site backup", "switched_from": "", "story": "SupererDuperer"}]}], "caveats": [], "who": [{"by": "mrngld", "context": "Mac user", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49739736", "date": "2026-09-17"}], "tags": [], "use_cases": ["backups", "macos backups", "mac and icloud backup", "encrypted remote backups", "off-site backup", "part of 3-2-1 backups"], "compared": [{"slug": "time-machine", "name": "Time Machine", "co": 5, "switched_from": 1, "switched_to": 0}, {"slug": "vorta", "name": "Vorta", "co": 3, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 1}, {"slug": "backblaze-b2", "name": "Backblaze B2", "co": 4, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}, {"slug": "backblaze", "name": "Backblaze", "co": 2, "switched_from": 1, "switched_to": 0}, {"slug": "parachute-backup", "name": "Parachute Backup", "co": 2, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}, {"slug": "kopia", "name": "Kopia", "co": 2, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}, {"slug": "borgbackup", "name": "BorgBackup", "co": 2, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}, {"slug": "claude", "name": "Claude", "co": 2, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}], "makers": [], "threads": [{"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47762864", "title": "Backblaze has stopped backing up your data", "mentions": 6}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49732513", "title": "Backups Aren't Simple", "mentions": 2}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46252114", "title": "Apple has locked my Apple ID, and I have no recourse. A plea for help", "mentions": 2}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45804416", "title": "A brief history of Time Machine (2024)", "mentions": 2}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50197601", "title": "A farewell to Arc browser", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49842487", "title": "The Mafia may be keeping fentanyl out of Italy", "mentions": 1}], "sentiment_by_month": {"2025-11": {"recommend": 2}, "2025-12": {"recommend": 3}, "2026-01": {"recommend": 1}, "2026-02": {"recommend": 1}, "2026-03": {"neutral": 1}, "2026-04": {"recommend": 7}, "2026-05": {}, "2026-06": {}, "2026-07": {}, "2026-08": {"recommend": 2}, "2026-09": {"recommend": 3, "neutral": 1}, "2026-10": {"neutral": 1}}, "quotes": [{"id": 803221712, "item_id": 50201357, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50201357", "by": "sandyarmstrong", "date": "2026-10-22", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "which I still use on some of my systems", "excerpt": "I thought this was about the backup software, which I still use on some of my systems, but had forgotten it's spelled \"Arq\" :-P https://www.arqbackup.com/", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "A farewell to Arc browser"}, {"id": 797744849, "item_id": 49859053, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49859053", "by": "setopt", "date": "2026-09-26", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I used Arq then based on online recommendations", "excerpt": "Good examples. When I switched to Mac in ~2020, the Mac users I knew all told me to avoid Time Machine \u2013 at least two had issues where they needed their backups, only to find that the entirety of their backups had been silently corrupted. (I used Arq then based on online recommendations, now I use Vorta on my Mac just because that\u2019s what I use on Linux.) Spotlight was near-unusable when I switched as well. Often 5+ s", "context": "", "use_case": "macOS backups", "switched_from": "Time Machine", "story": "The Mafia may be keeping fentanyl out of Italy"}, {"id": 795835777, "item_id": 49739736, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49739736", "by": "mrngld", "date": "2026-09-17", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I have a Mac, so not just an iPhone, so I use Arq there", "excerpt": "That's tedious. Can't believe nobody mentioned Parachute Backup yet. It had a moment in the sun earlier this year or last year when it first started getting traction. I have a Mac, so not just an iPhone, so I use Arq there, it materializes the iCloud stuff as necessary for backup. But if all you have is an iPhone or iPad along with an external disk, NAS or whatever, Parachute Backup will do backups to a variety of de", "context": "Mac user", "use_case": "Mac and iCloud backup", "switched_from": "", "story": "Backups Aren't Simple"}, {"id": 795791136, "item_id": 49736946, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49736946", "by": "fragmede", "date": "2026-09-17", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Arq.\n\nhttps://www.arqbackup.com/", "excerpt": "Arq. https://www.arqbackup.com/", "context": "", "use_case": "Backups", "switched_from": "", "story": "Backups Aren't Simple"}, {"id": 795457600, "item_id": 49716100, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49716100", "by": "microtonal", "date": "2026-09-15", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "macOS has much better quality applications, from small indie stuff like Arq for backups to Affinity Suite, PDF Expert, etc.", "excerpt": "I mean every OS breaks I love Linux (first used it when I was 12yo in 1994), but I also had a Mac since 2007 and macOS never broke for me? The other thing is that even basic stuff like calendars, address books, etc. work many times better on macOS than the Linux desktop. For instance, last time I set up calendar sync in KOrganizer (Evolution-based CalDAV never worked well for me) about a year ago, it started triggeri", "context": "", "use_case": "backups", "switched_from": "", "story": "Leaving Linux"}, {"id": 789675328, "item_id": 49354708, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49354708", "by": "noduerme", "date": "2026-08-18", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I use Arq (highly recommended!) to maintain a remote encrypted backup on a VPS", "excerpt": "Fair enough, I guess if you want access to your entire lifetime photo collection through your phone that makes sense. As far as backups - I mean, that's just a general question of keeping your laptop backed up. I use Arq (highly recommended!) to maintain a remote encrypted backup on a VPS, along with Time Machine to an external SSD.", "context": "", "use_case": "encrypted remote backups", "switched_from": "", "story": "How do I permanently disable Google Photos pop-up prompt to backup my photos?"}, {"id": 787613280, "item_id": 49225830, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49225830", "by": "Syzygies", "date": "2026-08-08", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Arq is off-site storage.", "excerpt": "I also use Arq and Time Machine. How Pixar\u2019s Toy Story 2 was deleted twice, once by technology and again for its own good https://thenextweb.com/news/how-pixars-toy-story-2-was-deleted-twice-once-by-technology-and-again-for-its-own-good SuperDuper! and Carbon Copy Cloner are as close as you can get to a hot spare. For data drives, interchangeable. Time Machine's virtue is single file recovery. Arq is off-site storage", "context": "", "use_case": "off-site backup", "switched_from": "", "story": "SupererDuperer"}, {"id": 767480369, "item_id": 47967523, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47967523", "by": "lukasgraf", "date": "2026-04-30", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "does some things quite well, which is why I use it", "excerpt": "I can't remember the exact phrasing, but are you talking about the error message that essentially says: \"The Tardis is broken. Your backup has diverged into an entirely separate timeline, and I have no way of reconciling it. You may now sacrifice an entire weekend to do an initial backup again.\"? I've been on a lucky streak for several years now, where I haven't gotten that one on any of my devices. \"Preparing backup", "context": "", "use_case": "Part of 3-2-1 backups", "switched_from": "", "story": "10Gb/s Ethernet: what I did to get it working in my home"}, {"id": 764460592, "item_id": 47778787, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47778787", "by": "julianozen", "date": "2026-04-15", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Most people have recommended Arq to me. I will try it next time I visit my parents", "excerpt": "Most people have recommended Arq to me. I will try it next time I visit my parents https://www.arqbackup.com/", "context": "", "use_case": "Computer backup", "switched_from": "", "story": "Backblaze has stopped backing up your data"}, {"id": 764301408, "item_id": 47768838, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47768838", "by": "jamie_ca", "date": "2026-04-14", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I've been extremely happy with Arq", "excerpt": "I've been extremely happy with Arq https://www.arqbackup.com/ for several years as a quiet backup solution, bring your own storage. I've done a few small restores and it's been just fine, and it automatically thins your backups to constrain storage costs. Managing exclusions is something to keep vaguely on top of (I've accidentally had a few VM disk images get backed up when I don't need/want them) but the default ex", "context": "", "use_case": "Bring-your-own-storage backup", "switched_from": "", "story": "Backblaze has stopped backing up your data"}, {"id": 764285873, "item_id": 47767867, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47767867", "by": "vsl", "date": "2026-04-14", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "but works and is actually cheaper", "excerpt": "Dropped Backblaze over this when I learned about it in December (https://mjtsai.com/blog/2025/12/19/backblaze-no-longer-backs-up-dropbox/) and went to Arq. Not as polished, especially on Windows, but works and is actually cheaper.", "context": "", "use_case": "Backups replacing Backblaze", "switched_from": "Backblaze", "story": "Backblaze has stopped backing up your data"}, {"id": 764282704, "item_id": 47767669, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47767669", "by": "devnulled", "date": "2026-04-14", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Arq scratches the itch of having control over your backups and putting them where you want", "excerpt": "I highly recommend switching to something more like Arq and then using whatever backend storage that you want. There are probably some other open source ways to do it, etc, but Arq scratches the itch of having control over your backups and putting them where you want with a GUI to easily configure/keep track of what is going on. Maybe there's something newer/better now (and I bought lifetime licenses of it long ago),", "context": "", "use_case": "backups with chosen storage backend", "switched_from": "", "story": "Backblaze has stopped backing up your data"}, {"id": 764275457, "item_id": 47767216, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47767216", "by": "brycewray", "date": "2026-04-14", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Can recommend all three highly", "excerpt": "Backblaze's B2 storage is fine if used with a separate app over which you have more control. Others here have mentioned Arq. I have used it, as well as Kopia[0] and Blinkdisk[1] (Blinkdisk is essentially Kopia but with a nicer UI). Can recommend all three highly; the latter two are FOSS. [0]: https://kopia.io/ [1]: https://blinkdisk.com/", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Backblaze has stopped backing up your data"}, {"id": 764260832, "item_id": 47766302, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47766302", "by": "decadefade", "date": "2026-04-14", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "This is why I use Arq with Backblaze. They just see a bunch of encrypted files", "excerpt": "This is why I use Arq with Backblaze. They just see a bunch of encrypted files with random GUID filenames. They don't need to know what I'm backing up, just that I am backing it up.", "context": "", "use_case": "encrypted backups", "switched_from": "", "story": "Backblaze has stopped backing up your data"}, {"id": 757100437, "item_id": 47318777, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47318777", "by": "chunktort", "date": "2026-03-09", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "ARQ workers", "excerpt": "Hi \u2014 this stack is my daily driver. I built Jorge, a live FastAPI + Redis + Claude AI real estate qualification bot (1,753 passing tests, deployed on Render) that handles inbound SMS intake, multi-turn qualification, calendar booking, and human-handoff logic via GHL CRM. I also built DocExtract AI (FastAPI + ARQ workers + pgvector + Supabase, live at docextract-api.onrender.com) and an agentic workflow API with SSE s", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: Who is hiring? (March 2026)"}, {"id": 749587104, "item_id": 46849194, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46849194", "by": "hughw", "date": "2026-02-01", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I use Arq for daily backups, but T.M. for hourly. When T.M. eventually craters its storage, I have robust dailies in the cloud", "excerpt": "The bigger question is why does Time Machine continue use a network file system for backups? It's so fragile you can't rely on it. It's gotten better in recent years, possibly due to APFS, but that just means somewhat longer intervals between disasters (wipe out and reinitialize, losing all your backups). A T.M. using a custom protocol to save and restore blocks would fail sometimes too, but not ruin all your existin", "context": "", "use_case": "daily cloud backups", "switched_from": "", "story": "TIL: Apple Broke Time Machine Again on Tahoe"}, {"id": 743769680, "item_id": 46485605, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46485605", "by": "ofrzeta", "date": "2026-01-03", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "", "excerpt": "> when I pass away, no one will want them. That's the point. I am lucky that I have kids and maybe they will like to take a look at some pics once in a while but certainly they won't go through ten thousands of images.", "context": "", "use_case": "Backups to Google Cloud", "switched_from": "", "story": "Why your early 2000s photos are probably lost forever"}, {"id": 741781074, "item_id": 46361317, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46361317", "by": "fragmede", "date": "2025-12-22", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Backups are your friend (Arq gets my vote)", "excerpt": "Basically that, but the entire project directory got wiped out, not just .git/. Backups are your friend (Arq gets my vote), as well as commiting often and pushing branches to the remote server that aren't my supposed to get reviewed, just so you have a recent off-machine copy. Claude has a way to deny rm and unlink and you can find other various protections, up to actually sandboxing your yolo session in a VM. For Cl", "context": "", "use_case": "Backups", "switched_from": "", "story": "Scaling LLMs to Larger Codebases"}, {"id": 740046720, "item_id": 46252920, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46252920", "by": "unsnap_biceps", "date": "2025-12-12", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Arq [1] has an option to \"materialize\" dataless files", "excerpt": "Arq [1] has an option to \"materialize\" dataless files, basically forcing them to be locally available. The only issue is if it's a large file and it gets pushed off device often, you can burn a lot of bandwidth re-downloading it over and over again. 1. https://www.arqbackup.com", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Apple has locked my Apple ID, and I have no recourse. A plea for help"}, {"id": 740039328, "item_id": 46252458, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46252458", "by": "sho", "date": "2025-12-12", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "", "excerpt": "> It requires to have a full copy locally. yeah that's the thing. When my iPhotos library exceeded 1TB I lost the ability to store the full local copies. Since then, iCloud itself has been the sole source. Looks like there's some decent, reasonably priced apps to handle this like https://apps.apple.com/us/app/parachute-backup/id6748614170?mt=12 (no affiliation)", "context": "", "use_case": "backup to S3", "switched_from": "", "story": "Apple has locked my Apple ID, and I have no recourse. A plea for help"}, {"id": 734010304, "item_id": 45875644, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45875644", "by": "marceldegraaf", "date": "2025-11-10", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "is a pretty decent backup solution", "excerpt": "Arq (https://www.arqbackup.com/) is a pretty decent backup solution for macOS (and Windows) that lets you bring your own storage. So you can let it back up to Amazon S3/Glacier, Dropbox, your own NAS with ZFS, or one of the other supported destinations.", "context": "", "use_case": "Backups to own storage", "switched_from": "", "story": "A brief history of Time Machine (2024)"}, {"id": 733981808, "item_id": 45873863, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45873863", "by": "setopt", "date": "2025-11-10", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Arq Backup works great on Mac.", "excerpt": "Arq Backup works great on Mac. It has a lot of smart features like only backing up on certain networks, only backing up when external power is connected, etc. You can backup either locally or remote (encrypted then uploaded to your preferred cloud provider, I used BackBlaze B2). If you prefer free and open source, you can try Vorta (based on Borg Backup which I can also vouch for).", "context": "", "use_case": "Mac backups to cloud", "switched_from": "", "story": "A brief history of Time Machine (2024)"}]}