Advanced Features

Point in Time Recovery (PITR)

Overview

Point in Time Recovery (PITR) allows users to restore documents to a specific state at a given timestamp. This is useful for recovering accidental modifications or deletions, maintaining data integrity, and providing historical traceability.

Cloud Firestore PITR keeps versions of documents for up to 7 days. It does not impact performance for databases following best practices.

How It Works

PITR maintains historical snapshots of documents. You can pick a specific timestamp to view and restore data as it was at that moment.

PITR Window

Data is retained for 7 days after enabling PITR.
Earliest PITR availability:
PITR disabled: Data is available 1 hour before the read request.
Enabled within 7 days: Data is available 1 hour before enabling PITR.
Enabled over 7 days ago: Data is available 7 days before the read request.
One version per minute is kept. Only the latest version per minute is stored if multiple writes occur.
Non-minute granular reads (e.g., including milliseconds) return an error.
The earliestVersionTime field indicates the earliest recoverable timestamp.

PITR on the Emulator

Projects connected to the Firestore emulator support document PITR too: you can open a document’s history, compare its versions and restore one, and run queries at a read time.

History starts when the emulator starts: earlier versions, including the history of imported data, are not available.
Counts and the list of subcollections always reflect the current data, not the selected read time, so Open collection at this date is not offered on the emulator.

Point in Time Recovery

This is the most direct way to restore a single document:

1. Accessing PITR

Navigate to the document list in the database viewer.
Locate the document to restore.
Right-click the document and select PITR. With a single document selected, the selection menu in the toolbar has the same PITR entry.

2. Selecting a Version

A history panel appears showing available snapshots.
Select the timestamp to view that version.
Compare the current document with the historical version.

3. Restoring a Version

Click Restore version from … (the button shows the timestamp of the selected version).
Confirm the action.
The document reverts to that state.

Using PITR with Query Read-Time

Picking a read time and re-running the query.

This method is useful for bulk review and restoration of multiple documents:

1. Setting a Read-Time

Open the Firestore DB view.
In the query builder, turn on PITR (Point in Time Recovery) and pick the date and time to read at.
The interface will show documents as they existed at that point in time.

2. Comparing and Selecting Documents

You can review changes by comparing each document with its current version.
Select one or multiple documents that you want to restore.

3. Bulk Restoration

In the toolbar, open Actions → Restore (PITR). With documents selected, choose N documents selected to restore only those, or All / by query to restore every document the query returns. With nothing selected, the command restores the query result.
The selection menu offers the same command under More actions → Restore documents (PITR).
In the restore dialog, check the read time to restore from. To restore subcollections too, turn on Try to restore subcollections and enter their names.
Confirm the restoration. Restoring by query asks you to type RESTORE documents first.

Common Features

Granular recovery: Restore documents to a precise timestamp.
Version comparison: Compare current and historical versions before restoring.
Data integrity: Previous versions remain available for audits.
Retention window: Data is stored at minute-level granularity for 7 days.

Best Practices

Enable PITR before relying on historical recovery.
Use read-time queries for auditing or batch recovery.
Compare versions to ensure no critical data is lost before restoring.
Use minute-granularity timestamps for past reads.