WinRestoreKit

Back up, copy and restore Windows settings locally.

WinRestoreKit exports registry keys as .reg files and copies folders and files into a timestamped backup folder. Backups stay offline and local, with no cloud account and no telemetry.

Key features

• Back up and restore selected modules for Windows settings, apps, devices, Wi-Fi credentials, and developer tooling.
• Start from a preset, or open the full module list and pick individual items.
• Review a restore wizard that states what will be overwritten and what it cannot undo before you consent.
• Create an automatic pre-restore snapshot of the settings about to be overwritten.
• Browse backups and undo points in a History timeline.
• Store a machine-readable backup_manifest.json beside each backup log for backup metadata and status.

What restore actually guarantees

Restore is deliberately blunt about its limits, because both of its mechanisms are additive: regedit /s merges, and a folder copy leaves destination files that the source does not contain in place. Before a restore runs, the app takes a pre-restore snapshot and tells you, verbatim:

The snapshot can put back settings this restore overwrites. It cannot remove registry values or files that this restore adds — restoring the snapshot merges it over the current state rather than resetting to it.

The same sentence appears in the confirmation dialog, in the snapshot's backup_log.txt header and in restore_log.txt, from a single constant, so the promise cannot be worded more strongly in one place than another.

Requirements

• Windows 11, 64-bit. Windows 10 should work, but is untested.
• Run as administrator. Registry export and import shell out to regedit.exe, which requires elevation.

No .NET installation is required. The runtime is bundled, which is why the download is around 69 MB rather than about 1 MB. It is still a single WinRestoreKit.exe file.

Download

Download WinRestoreKit.exe from the latest release.

The binary is not code-signed, so SmartScreen will warn on first run. Choose More info, then Run anyway, or build it yourself from the steps below.

Using existing Appcopier backups

WinRestoreKit uses the same backup format, and existing Appcopier backups remain compatible. To reuse an existing backup collection, either place WinRestoreKit.exe beside the existing app\ directory, or copy the existing app\ directory beside WinRestoreKit.exe.

Copy the backup collection before trying this. Do not experiment on the only copy of a backup folder. Older backups can still show an Appcopier header line inside backup_log.txt; this is expected and harmless.

Building from source

Build and test the solution:

dotnet build src\WinRestoreKit.sln
dotnet test src\WinRestoreKit.sln

Publish the self-contained single-file release artifact. This block uses cmd line continuations (^) so that it stays byte-identical to the release checklist in .claude/skills/release/SKILL.md and the two cannot drift; in PowerShell, put it on one line instead.

dotnet publish src\WinRestoreKit\WinRestoreKit.csproj -c Release -r win-x64 --self-contained true ^
     -p:PublishSingleFile=true -p:IncludeNativeLibrariesForSelfExtract=true ^
     -p:EnableCompressionInSingleFile=true -p:DebugType=none -o publish

Documentation

• CHANGELOG.md - release history, including the Appcopier era.
• docs/ROADMAP.md - what is planned next.
• MIGRATION.md - what the rename from Appcopier changed, and what it did not.
• NOTICE.md - attribution.

Project history and attribution

WinRestoreKit began as a fork of Appcopier by Builtbybel. It has since been substantially rebuilt with a new engine, restore-safety model, test suite and interface. The original project and its copyright remain acknowledged under the MIT licence.

Licence

WinRestoreKit is available under the MIT licence, retaining the original copyright alongside the new one. See LICENSE and NOTICE.md.