Every release, and what was wrong before it. Last updated 14 September 2026.
Copy Shelter is sold in two places and they number their
versions separately, so the download from this site and the one from the App
Store are listed together here in the order they came out.
Version 0.1.17 Direct download, build 18
Settings and the menu bar when no backup is open
With no backup open, Settings now shows a Show Your Backups button in
place of schedule and old version choices that had nothing to apply to. The
menu bar says No backup is open.
Open Copy Shelter brings the window back
Choosing Open Copy Shelter in the menu bar now restores the window even when
it was minimized to the Dock.
A simpler menu
File no longer offers a second copy of the same window, and the View and
Window menus no longer list tab commands.
Version 0.1.16 Direct download, build 17
The recovery key screen shows the whole key
After Create Backup, the recovery key could appear in a window too small
for it, with the title, part of the key and the Continue button cut off. The
window now fits the whole screen, and it scrolls if your display is small.
Clearer words when you skip the passphrase
If you create a backup without a passphrase, the key screen, the saved key
file and the later reminder now say the recovery key is what opens your
backup on another Mac.
Version 0.1.15 Direct download, build 16
A setup window that fits your screen
The window for a new backup was taller than a laptop screen, so the
passphrase box and the Create Backup button could end up under the Dock. It
is shorter now and always stays on screen. The everyday folders sit three to
a row, and mail, apps and settings fold under one line that says how many are
on.
The passphrase is optional
The screen now says so. Leave it empty and the recovery key shown next
opens your backup. When Create Backup is grey, the reason is written under
it.
Your backups say how they stand
Each backup in the list says when it last worked, in orange when it is out
of date. A backup whose folder or drive has moved offers Find... to point
Copy Shelter at its new place.
Version 0.1.14 Direct download, build 15
Sign In where you can see it
Signing in was only in the menu bar. The window that opens with no backup
now has a Sign In button, and once you are signed in it shows your address.
Settings has a new Account tab that says whether Copy Shelter Pro is on and
lets you sign in or out.
Purchase Pro from the app
The Copy Shelter Pro window has a Purchase button that opens the pricing
page, and the sentence at the top of it no longer gets cut off.
Version 0.1.13 Direct download, build 14
The lost Mac guide shows every step
"If this Mac is lost or wiped" showed its steps in a small scrolling box that
cut the last one off mid sentence, with no sign there was more. The whole
guide now shows at once, and scrolls as a whole only on a small screen.
Pro prices show what a year costs each month
The yearly plan now shows what it comes to each month and how much it saves
against paying monthly, under the price you are billed.
In Get Your Files Back, each backup's date sits on one line, with Most recent under it.
The app uses US English spelling throughout.
For people who use csctl
csctl now downloads as a disk image. Open it and copy csctl anywhere.
Version 1.0 App Store
The first release.
Version 0.1.12 Direct download, build 13
Backups keep the Mac cool
Backups and checks used to run at the same priority as the app you are
typing in, on the Mac's fastest cores, which is what turned the fan on. A
scheduled backup now runs on the energy efficient cores while your backups are
keeping up, the way Time Machine does. If backups fall behind, or have never
finished, it gets more of the Mac, so a busy machine cannot keep your files
unprotected. Back Up Now starts as soon as you press it.
A scheduled backup can be stopped with the same Stop button as one you started.
A backup that is already running is never interrupted by the schedule.
Updates arrive even with no backup open
Copy Shelter only looked for updates once a backup had opened, so a Mac
whose backup drive was unplugged never heard about a new version. It now
checks when the app starts, as soon as you have been through the welcome
screens.
For people who use csctl
csctl reports its real version, and backups it makes record it. It said
0.1.0 in every release until now.
Version 0.1.11 Direct download, build 12
Updates install from inside the app
Copy Shelter now downloads a new version by itself when one comes out, and
installs it when you quit, so there is never anything to download from the
website again. The main window says when a version is ready, with an Install
and Relaunch button for when you would rather not wait. An update never
installs in the middle of a backup or a restore.
Whole-Mac backups can read a snapshot
A whole-Mac backup reads the Mac while it is in use, so a file being written
during the backup can be caught half way. Turn on snapshots in What is being
protected, and each backup first takes an APFS snapshot of the Mac and reads
that instead, so every file is read as it was at the same moment. macOS asks for your
password once, to allow the small helper that mounts the snapshot. The helper
mounts snapshots read-only and does nothing else, and only Copy Shelter can
talk to it.
Without snapshots turned on, whole-Mac backups work as before and read the Mac as it is.
If a snapshot cannot be taken or mounted, that backup reads the Mac as it is and says why.
Version 0.1.10 Direct download, build 11
Back up this whole Mac
Pro can now protect the whole Mac in one go: every account, every app, their
settings and every file. macOS itself is left to its installer, which is the
only thing that can put it back. Swap and system caches are left out, and so is
the backup itself when it lives on the same disk. Copy Shelter says when it
still needs Full Disk Access, and opens the setting for you.
Pro backs up your iPhone, iPad and other Macs to this Mac. Free backs up the Mac it runs on, and a device already paired keeps sending after a licence ends.
Recovering a file you deleted, from a backup that still has it, is now part of Pro, as the pricing has always said. A file still in your newest backup restores on Free, and so does anything when the newest backup cannot deliver.
Leaving files out by name, such as *.mov, or by size is now part of Pro. Leaving out a folder is part of Free, and any rule you already set keeps working and can always be put back.
Widgets show when you last backed up and how many copies you have on Pro. On Free they show whether you are protected, which is never hidden.
"Not Now" on an upgrade prompt closes it. It used to open sign-in.
Version 0.1.9 Direct download, build 10
Keep your history inside the drive you have
Pro can now keep as much history as fits in a size you choose. A 100 GB drive
protecting a Mac with a much larger disk keeps the newest versions that fit, and
plans the oldest to go. The latest backup always stays, even when it is larger on
its own, and so does anything held for safety. As with every rule, nothing is
removed until you say so, and Copy Shelter waits a week before removing anything.
Your Old Versions choice is remembered, and travels with the backup to a new Mac.
A second copy now carries the holds that protect its history, and the rule for keeping old versions.
New backups use format version 2, which gives every stored piece its own encryption nonce. Backups made before keep opening and keep working exactly as they were made.
The space a backup takes is described with two figures that add up.
Version 0.1.8 Direct download, build 9
A second copy can live in a bucket, on a WebDAV server, or on another Mac
Add Location now offers Amazon S3, Backblaze B2, Cloudflare R2, Wasabi and any
other S3 compatible storage, a WebDAV server such as Nextcloud, and another Mac
you own on the same network. Each copy catches up on its own after every backup,
waits for a connection that does not charge by the megabyte, and tells you when
it has fallen behind. Every copy carries a read me and the format document, so
it can be opened on its own.
Leave out a folder, a pattern such as *.tmp, or anything over a size you choose.
Look inside a file in any backup before you restore it.
Search every backup for a file by name.
Live Photos come back with their motion, and repeating calendar events come back whole.
iPhone backups on this Mac are recognised and kept as their own backups.
Sign in with the email you bought with, and a six digit code arrives.
An iPhone or another Mac sending a backup here now does it over an encrypted, mutually verified connection, and stays paired when Copy Shelter quits.
Updates are checked against a signed feed before anything is installed.
App Lock is remembered between launches.
Version 0.1.7 Direct download, build 8
You can see the passphrase you are choosing
The screen where you set up a backup asks for a passphrase and had no way to
show you what you had typed. A typo there seals the backup with something you do
not know, and nothing tells you until you try to open it on another Mac. There
is an eye button now, the same one the screen for opening a backup has always
had.
Typing a folder path no longer checks the disk on every keystroke, which could make the window stop responding while you typed.
The switch for receiving backups now reads "From an iPhone or iPad", because it always accepted both.
Version 0.1.6 Direct download, build 7
The hourly check is about a third faster
Copy Shelter looks over your files on a schedule to see what has changed. On a
Mac with a million files that pass took 65 seconds and now takes 46, because it
was asking the disk about every file twice where once will do.
Nothing about what is stored has changed. The same information about every
file goes into the backup as before.
The button for opening a backup this Mac has not opened before now says what it does: Choose a Backup Folder.
Version 0.1.5 Direct download, build 6
Test strings were shipping inside the app
Every copy of Copy Shelter carried a set of deliberately mangled sentences
used for checking that the app can be translated. They were never shown to
anybody, but they had no business being in a release, and they are gone.
The disk image now opens with large icons, so the app and your Applications folder are the size they should be when you drag one onto the other.
Version 0.1.4 Direct download, build 5
Copy Shelter is a disk image now
Copy Shelter used to be downloaded as a zip. macOS runs an app opened from
your Downloads folder out of a temporary read-only copy, and an app in that
state cannot open at login, so scheduled backups never ran. Nothing said so: the
schedule looked on and simply did nothing.
The download is a disk image with an Applications folder in it. Drag Copy
Shelter across and open it from there. If you are reading this in a copy that is
still in Downloads, the app now says so at the top of its window and tells you
the one thing to do.
And a free app that only puts files back
Copy Shelter Restore is a separate download that opens a backup and restores
from it, and can do nothing else. It contains no code that knows how to back up
or delete anything, nothing that checks whether you have paid, and nothing that
makes a network request. Keep a copy beside your backup drive.
Opening a backup used to create folders in it and delete the contents of its tmp directory, before anything had been read. Reading now changes nothing at all.
Pointing csctl at a mistyped path created a folder there and then failed confusingly. It says there is no backup at that location and leaves the disk alone.
Several controls were drawn in whichever accent colour your Mac is set to instead of Copy Shelter's own.
The list of backups in History, and the details beneath it, now have the same edges as each other.
Version 0.1.3 Direct download, build 4
A passphrase, so nobody has to keep forty random characters
Setting up a backup now asks for a passphrase you will remember. That is what
opens it on another Mac. A recovery key is still written down with it, so
forgetting the passphrase is not the end of a backup, but it goes back to being
an emergency kit rather than the thing you type.
Copy Shelter never sees either one and cannot reset either one.
Opening a backup made on another Mac said "Nothing has been backed up here yet" and "Nothing is being protected yet" while holding every snapshot in it. The repository is what it asks now, not this Mac's memory of its own runs, so it says when the last backup was and which folders are in it.
Pressing Open could freeze the app behind a macOS dialogue asking for your login keychain password. It cannot any more.
The box you type a passphrase into no longer prints it on screen. There is a button to look.
Setup no longer makes you type two groups of the recovery key back before it will continue.
csctl init --passphrase sets one, and every csctl command takes either secret.
Version 0.1.2 Direct download, build 3
Sign in with your email, not a licence key
There is no licence key any more. Give the address you purchased with, a six
digit code arrives, and typing it back unlocks Pro. Do the same on any other Mac
you own.
Copy Shelter now has a colour of its own, instead of borrowing whichever accent your Mac is set to.
Being unable to reach us never takes anything away. Only a definite answer does.
Backing up, verifying and restoring are still not gated on any tier at all.
Version 0.1.1 Direct download, build 2
The command line tool works as one file
The published csctl crashed on info and on
recovery, which is the command that exists for the day the Mac
that made the backup is gone. It looked for a resource bundle that is not
beside it, because it is published as one file on purpose.
Every csctl command now works from a copy of the binary on its own, with nothing else alongside it.
Backing up, verifying and restoring were never affected, and are unchanged.
The app is unchanged in behaviour: it always had the bundle beside it.
Version 0.1.0 Direct download, build 1
First release
Copy Shelter keeps your files somewhere they survive this Mac, and tells you
honestly whether it worked.
Back up any folders you choose to a drive, a NAS, or a cloud folder you already pay for.
Everything is encrypted before it leaves your Mac, with a key nobody else holds.
Backups are read back on a schedule and checked, so a failing drive is found early.
Your newest backup restores on Free, after a licence ends, always. Older versions are a Pro convenience, and they unlock for everybody the moment the newest one cannot deliver.