A restore you have not done is a backup you have not proven. Single-file restore is the article to test first, because it is the cheapest way to confirm the whole system works end-to-end. Do it once today. Then do it again next month, on a different file, from a different snapshot. That is your audit.
Step 1 — Open the Restore view
Launch macup from Applications, or use the menubar icon. Click Restore in the main window, or press ⌘ + R from anywhere in the app. The Restore view opens to a list of your destinations and the snapshots they hold.
Step 2 — Pick the destination to restore from
If you only have one destination, macup picks it for you. If you have several — say, an external drive plus macup Cloud plus a NAS — the choice matters.
Freshest for quick restores
When you just deleted something this morning, use whichever destination is most recent. macup highlights the one with the latest snapshot.
Offsite for post-incident restores
When the Mac itself was stolen, damaged, or compromised, restore from the offsite destination — the one that was never physically attached to the machine that had the problem. macup Cloud is always a safe choice here because it is immutable by default.
Step 3 — Browse or search
Two ways to find the file.
File-browser view
Navigate the repository like a Finder window. Each folder shows the files that existed at the currently selected snapshot. Open folders, click through, find the file.
Search
Type a filename — partial matches work. Search runs across every snapshot, so you will see results even for files that were deleted months ago.
Step 4 — Pick a version
Select the file. A timeline slider appears at the bottom of the window, with a dot for every snapshot that contained this file. Hover any dot to see the file’s modification time and size in that snapshot.
Slide left to go back in time. The preview pane updates as you move, so you can see the file change across versions. Pick the version you want.
Step 5 — Preview
For images, PDFs, and plain-text files, macup shows an inline preview before you commit to a restore. This is the “yes, that is actually the one I meant” step. It catches off-by-one timeline mistakes before they cost you time.
Binary files (e.g. .psd, .sketch, large video) do not preview inline — you will restore them to a scratch folder and open them in the native app.
Step 6 — Choose where to put it
Two targets.
Original location
Restores the file back to the path it had when the snapshot was taken. If a current file already lives there, macup prompts before overwriting. This is the right choice when you are recovering a file you accidentally deleted or corrupted.
Scratch folder
Restores to ~/Desktop/macup-restored-<timestamp>/, preserving the original folder structure inside. This is the right choice when you want to compare the old version against a current file without touching the current file.
Step 7 — Click Restore
Click Restore. Transfer time scales with file size and your bandwidth. A 100 MB file from macup Cloud on gigabit fibre lands in about 2 seconds. A 10 GB video file takes a couple of minutes. An external-drive restore is bounded only by the drive’s read speed.
When it finishes, Finder opens to the restored file.
Make it a monthly drill
Pick a random file each month. Restore it from a random snapshot. Diff it against the current version. If the diff makes sense — or the file is identical — your backup works. If the restore fails or the file is wrong, you have caught a problem while you still have time to fix it. A working restore drill is the single best thing you can do to trust your backups.