Notifications and Healthchecks

ResticGUI can tell you when something goes wrong, without you opening it.

Notifiers

Open Notifications, the bell in the top bar, and add a notifier. A notifier is a Shoutrrr URL, which covers ntfy, Gotify, Discord, Slack, Telegram, email and many more:

Service	Example URL
ntfy	ntfy://ntfy.sh/my-backups (add ?scheme=http for a server without TLS)
Gotify	gotify://gotify.example.com/APP_TOKEN
Discord	discord://TOKEN@WEBHOOK_ID
Slack	slack://hook:TOKEN@webhook
Telegram	telegram://BOT_TOKEN@telegram?chats=@channel
Email	smtp://user:password@smtp.example.com:587/?from=backup@example.com&to=me@example.com

Each notifier chooses what it receives:

• Failures: a backup, cleanup (forget or prune) or check that failed, or that was interrupted because ResticGUI stopped.
• Missed scheduled backups: a scheduled backup that is more than an hour late, for example because the machine was off or the repository was busy. It is sent once per missed run. Missed backups are looked for every five minutes.
• Successes: every successful backup, cleanup and check, with the snapshot and how much was added.

Send a test sends a message right away, so you can check the URL.

The URL usually holds a token. ResticGUI stores it encrypted, never shows it again (the list shows the service only), and leaves it out of error messages. To change it, edit the notifier and enter a new URL; leaving the field empty keeps the saved one.

Healthchecks

Healthchecks.io, or a self-hosted Healthchecks, tells you when backups stop happening, which a notification on failure cannot. In a repository's Settings, set its ping URL, such as https://hc-ping.com/your-uuid. Each backup then sends:

• <url>/start when it starts,
• <url> when it succeeds, with the snapshot in the body,
• <url>/fail when it fails or is interrupted, with the error in the body.

Set the check's period to match the backup schedule; Healthchecks alerts you through its own integrations when a ping does not come.