Backups: Do not fill up donwload folder with multiple STG-backups folders

[Svintooo]

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe. After a few updates to firefox my download folder is filled with multiple STG-backups folders, one for each version of firefox I have been using. This is very annoying, since these backups are the last thing I'm interested in when I'm manually browsing my Downloads folder. And I can't see a setting to change this behavior.

Describe the solution you'd like Group all backup folder inside a main backup folder. Example: Downloads/STG-backups/STG-backups-FF-95.0.2 Or add a setting to change which directory the backups are stored in. Or both.

Describe alternatives you've considered I have not found any alternative solutions to the problem.

Additional context Add any other context or screenshots about the feature request here.

[vitusson]

Or add a setting to change which directory the backups are stored in.

Only this setting exists already…

[timg11]

@vitusson please explain how to use the setting that already exists. It appears the "folder name" field under "auto backup" is not editable.

[vitusson]

Nor reproducible here, I can click with the mouse into the field and then I get a prompt and edit the name. I run two versions of Firefox here under Debian Linux and gave each one of them an individual folder name for the backups. What's your environment?

[Svintooo]

Only this setting exists already…

Well, kind of. There is an editable field for the folder name for the backups. But this is the folder name only. Not the path. I can not write slashes or backslashes here to point it to another folder. It is hard-coded to the root of the default Download folder.

Also: This field seems to change its STG version number each time STG is updated. Hence why I get all these different folders after STG has been updated a couple of times. I'm not sure I can change that.

[vitusson]

Also: This field seems to change its STG version number each time STG is updated. Hence why I get all these different folders after STG has been updated a couple of times. I'm not sure I can change that.

You can change that. I changed mine to just "STG-backups-FF" and I don't get new folders with version numbers since. Only if you don't make personal changes you'll end with different folders for minor version bumps.

I don't like either that the download directory is hardcoded, but according to the maintainer, this is a FF directive we have to live with. I made $HOME/Download/STG-backups-FF a symbolic link, and put the real folder into the corresponding .mozilla profile directory.

[asdgfd]

Perhaps a useful tip for anyone on a Windows system. Something I did a long time ago was set the folder attributes to hidden and system which completely hides it from view and thus also helps protect the folder from accidentally getting caught up in a delete or move.

ATTRIB +H +S folder-name

( Note:

1. replace folder-name with the folder name, obviously;
2. the +H has to come before +S or else the setting of the +H attribute will fail;
3. If you have used a symbolic link to change the folder location, you can still hide the link itself by adding the /L switch;
4. to reverse it, change the plus-signs to minus signs, AND put the -S before the -H [the opposite of when setting those] )

I'm not sure how one would do this on Linux or Mac (I don't use Mac, and I really only use text-only builds of Linux).

[qirien]

I'm glad that you can customize STG to do what the original poster wanted, but I agree that the default should be to put all the backups in an STG directory. Or have an option to auto-delete old backups in the STG settings?