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The Restore tab in Kopia Desk lets you copy an entire backed-up folder to any location you choose — useful after a Windows reinstall, a new user profile, or when the original source path no longer exists. Unlike the Compare tab, which only fills in missing files against an existing local folder, Restore transfers every file from the backup unconditionally.

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How It Works

1

Switch to the Restore tab

Click the Restaurar tab in the top bar of the main panel. The view shows a prompt to select the drive that contains your backup.
2

Select the backup drive

Choose the drive from the destination dropdown in the sidebar. This is the external drive or USB that holds your KopiaDesk_Backup folder — not the drive you want to restore to.
3

Load available backup folders

Kopia Desk calls restore:list-sources, which reads .kopia-data/manifests/ on the selected drive and returns the name of every folder that has a manifest file. The results appear as a list in the Restore panel.
restore:list-sources only finds folders that have a .json manifest in .kopia-data/manifests/. If a manifest was deleted manually, that folder will not appear in the list even if its backup files still exist on the drive.
4

Select the folder to restore

Click the name of the backed-up folder you want to recover. This selects it as the restore source.
5

Choose a restore destination

Click the restore button. Kopia Desk opens a native Windows folder dialog (dialog:select-restore-target) so you can pick any folder on your PC as the restore target. The original path is not required — you can restore to a completely different drive letter or user profile.
You can plug in the backup drive on a brand-new PC and restore directly to any path. Kopia Desk does not require the original Windows user profile, username, or drive letter to be present.
6

Build the file list

restore:full-list reads the manifest for the selected folder and returns every file entry, each augmented with its absolute path on the backup drive (backupFullPath). This is the complete set of files that will be copied — no filtering against local content.
7

Copy files with progress

restore:copy-files copies each file from backupFullPath to the target directory, preserving the relative folder structure recorded in the manifest. Files are copied with the same adaptive concurrency used during backup. Progress events are emitted after each file.

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Progress Events

During a restore, restore:copy-files sends a progress event to the renderer after each file is copied: 
{
  phase: "restore",
  current: number,   // files copied so far
  total: number,     // total files to copy
  file: string,      // relative path of the file just copied
  percent: number    // 0–100
}
Subscribe to these events using the window.kopiaAPI.onProgress callback: 
window.kopiaAPI.onProgress((event) => {
  if (event.phase === "restore") {
    console.log(`${event.percent}% — ${event.file}`);
  }
});

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Relative Structure Preserved

Files are restored to the same relative path they had when they were backed up. If the backup manifest records a file at Fotos/Vacaciones/playa.jpg, it will be written to <targetDir>/Fotos/Vacaciones/playa.jpg in the restore destination. All intermediate directories are created automatically.

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Restore vs. Compare

Restore and Compare both copy files from the backup to your PC, but they serve different purposes:
RestoreCompare
What it copiesAll files in the backup folderOnly files missing from a local folder
Requires an existing local folderNoYes
Detects files lost from backupNoYes
Best use caseAfter format or new PCAccidental deletion recovery
For selective recovery when you still have the original folder on your PC, see the Compare page.

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