Cloud-synced and app data - DeltaSnap Docs

DeltaSnap restores files from a snapshot of your disk. Some apps do not treat your disk as the final word. iCloud, Dropbox, Notes, and Mail keep their real copy on a server, and the files on your Mac are just a copy of whatever that server currently says.

You can still restore those files. You just have to stop the app from syncing first. If you do not, it will notice the difference, decide the server is right, and put everything back the way it was.

Which files this affects

iCloud Drive, including your Desktop and Documents folders if you sync those
Dropbox, OneDrive, and Google Drive folders
Notes, Mail, Contacts, and Calendar
Photos, if iCloud Photos is turned on
Any other app that keeps its data in sync with an account

Everything else restores normally: projects and code, media files, downloads, documents in ordinary folders, and anything on an external drive. That is most of what people actually lose.

What happens if you skip this

Say you deleted a note on Monday and want it back on Tuesday.

You restore the Notes database from Sunday's snapshot, and the note is in there. Then you open Notes. Notes checks with iCloud, iCloud says that note was deleted on Monday, and Notes deletes it again.

You are back where you started.

How to restore these files safely

Quit the app. Closing its window is not enough. This also matters for a second reason: restoring a file underneath a running app can leave its database in a broken state. See What DeltaSnap cannot do.
Stop it reaching the server. Turn off Wi-Fi, sign out of the account, or turn off syncing for that folder.
Restore with DeltaSnap. Use Restore a Copy so your current file is still there if the older one turns out to be wrong.
Open the file and check it before you reconnect.
Reconnect and let the app sync. It will compare notes with the server again, so if the restored version is the one you want to keep, move it somewhere outside the synced folder first.

Check the app's own recovery first

For anything that lives on a service, that service usually has its own history, and it will be less work than a snapshot:

iCloud Drive keeps deleted files in Recently Deleted for 30 days.
Notes, Photos, Mail, Contacts, and Calendar each have a recently-deleted list.
Dropbox, OneDrive, and Google Drive keep older versions on the server, usually for at least 30 days.

Use DeltaSnap when the service has already dropped the version you need, or for the files sitting around the synced data, like exports, original media, and project files you never synced in the first place.

Why these files show up in DeltaSnap at all

DeltaSnap indexes your Library instead of skipping it. App databases, preferences, mail, and sandboxed documents hold work you cannot recreate, so leaving them out would make version history much less useful. It only skips things that rebuild themselves: caches, logs, saved application state, Apple's derived metadata, and developer output like DerivedData, CoreSimulator, and node_modules.

That is why your iCloud Drive and Dropbox files appear in Version Control alongside everything else, and why this page exists.

If you would rather DeltaSnap left a synced folder alone, add it as a path exclusion under Settings → Indexing. Snapshots still capture the folder, so you can reach it later by mounting a snapshot or running Compare Everything (Full Scan). See Mount and recover files.

The rule of thumb

If the file lives on your disk, DeltaSnap can put it back. If it lives on a server and your Mac just holds a copy, the snapshot only has half of it.