snaptui

A small TUI for managing btrfs snapshots on Omarchy Linux.

Talks to snapperd (snapper's D-Bus service) directly, so it shows and edits the same data the snapper CLI manages — including the automatic cleanup limits that snapper-cleanup.timer enforces.

Features

• List snapshots per config — number, type, date, description, cleanup algorithm, owner and used space.
• Delete snapshots (single or multi-select with space).
• Create single snapshots with a description and cleanup algorithm.
• Edit a snapshot's description / cleanup algorithm.
• Config browser — every snapper config and its subvolume.
• Limits editor — NUMBER_LIMIT, TIMELINE_LIMIT_*, SPACE_LIMIT, … saves via sudo snapper set-config, so old snapshots get pruned automatically by snapper-cleanup.timer. You set limits once and forget it.
• Live omarchy theming — picks up the active theme's colors.toml and re-themes itself as soon as the file changes (e.g. after omarchy theme set …).

Why not polkit?

This snapper build does not use polkit for authorization. Permission is granted per-config with ALLOW_USERS / ALLOW_GROUPS in /etc/snapper/configs/<name>, checked inside snapperd. The installer sets ALLOW_USERS for you, so snapshot operations work without passwords. Editing config limits (SetConfig) is root-only in snapperd, so the limits screen drops to a sudo prompt to save.

Install

./install.sh

This builds the release binary, copies it to ~/.local/bin/snaptui, and sets ALLOW_USERS on every snapper config (one sudo prompt).

To make the size column show real numbers, btrfs quotas need to be enabled on the filesystem (one-time, persists across reboots). Without it the size column shows –:

sudo btrfs quota enable /

Uninstall

./uninstall.sh

Removes the binary and clears the ALLOW_USERS value install.sh set — only if it still equals your username, so any ALLOW_USERS you set yourself or that another tool (e.g. btrfs-assistant) uses is left untouched. Delete the source tree with rm -rf ~/Work/snaptui.

Manual

cargo build --release
cp target/release/snaptui ~/.local/bin/
sudo snapper -c root set-config "ALLOW_USERS=${USER}"

Usage

snaptui

Key	Action
Tab / t	next tab (Snapshots / Configs / Limits)
↑/↓ / j/k	move selection
space	(snapshots) toggle multi-select
a	select all snapshots
d	delete selected / highlighted snapshot
c	create a single snapshot
e	edit snapshot description / cleanup
i	initialize snapshot storage (sudo btrfs subvolume create /.snapshots)
s	(limits) save changed limits via sudo
x	(limits) discard unsaved limit changes
r	refresh
q	quit

Snapshot "size" uses btrfs quota data (GetUsedSpace). It shows 0 B until qgroups are enabled:

sudo btrfs quota enable /

Permissions recap

• Read + snapshot create/delete/edit: granted via ALLOW_USERS in the config.
• Config limit changes: root-only (sudo snapper set-config …).