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Delete by number #272
Description
Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.
When you're stuck unable to boot and need to clean up timeshift backups via CLI (or walk someone through it remotely...) there's no autocomplete for the timestamps, so they're fairly arduous to delete one-by-one. Especially if you want to delete all except one so that you still have an actual backup...
Describe the solution you'd like
That timeshift --delete-nums 1-5,7 deletes the snapshots numbered 1,2,3,4,5 and 7 (as numbered in the output from timeshift --list).
Describe alternatives you've considered
Just supporting this on --delete.
Activity
oghmjos commentedon Oct 17, 2024
+1 this would be very good to have!
github-actions commentedon Oct 18, 2026
This issue has been automatically marked as stale because it has not had
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ygerlach commentedon Oct 18, 2026
i think this is still a pain point.
what do we do if a snapshot is created or deleted since the last run of the cli command and the numbers get reassigned? Should we have stable ids, that dont get reassigned (stored in the info.json)?
codingthat commentedon Oct 19, 2026
Thanks for the bump @ygerlach and good point. Stable IDs is good route. Another could be --delete-interactively where it shows you the current list and asks you for a selection, then confirms it with you, internally making sure the selection has no chance to shift.
In either case perhaps listing all with the current selection highlighted as a confirmation is probably a wise idea.