A few months ago I lived every developer's nightmare: I was cleaning up old collections in Firestore in production and with one click I deleted much more than I intended; entire sets of user feedback records disappeared in seconds.
If you've worked with Firestore, you know that sinking feeling: Firestore doesn't have an undo button in the console; without backups or a recovery strategy, that data is lost.
Luckily, I had Point in Time Recovery (PITR) enabled on my project, and I also had Fuego, which made the entire recovery process much easier.
What is Point in Time Recovery in Firestore: PITR is a feature that allows you to restore Firestore data to any second within the last 7 days; it works like a continuous backup system managed by Google Cloud and maintains a continuous log of document changes for 7 days, allowing you to choose a timestamp to restore the entire database or specific collections and documents, and places the restored data in a separate instance or namespace for review and selective merging.
Limitations to keep in mind: PITR has an additional cost for storing historical versions; it must be activated before the incident and does not work retroactively; data older than 7 days cannot be recovered with PITR; and it does not recover indexes or security rules, only documents and collections.
Why Fuego makes PITR truly usable: the native recovery process with Google Cloud can be cumbersome because it involves using the gcloud CLI, export/import jobs, and handling JSON responses; with Fuego I didn't have to touch the CLI, the visual interface allowed me to select the project, open the PITR tool, choose the timestamp, select the affected collection, and run the restoration with a few clicks.
1. Open the PITR tool in Fuego: from the sidebar, select your project and access Point in Time Recovery.
2. Choose the recovery time: Fuego has a visual date and time picker that lets you jump to any second in the last 7 days; I selected the moment just before the accidental deletion.
3. Select what to restore: you can restore a specific collection or specific documents; in my case, I chose the feedback collection to avoid overwriting unrelated data.
4. Start the restoration: when you click restore, Fuego manages the process in the background; the restored data appears in a temporary namespace so you can validate it before merging.
5. Merge to production: after confirming everything was correct, I merged the restored documents into the production namespace without data loss.
Lessons learned: always enable PITR on production Firestore projects because the cost is minimal compared to the risk of losing critical information; and have the right tools on hand because the native path works, but Fuego makes the process fast, visual, and less stressful.
At Q2BSTUDIO, we understand the importance of recovery and security strategies. We are a custom software and application development company that offers comprehensive services including custom software, custom applications, artificial intelligence, and cybersecurity. We also deliver AWS and Azure cloud services, business intelligence services, and Power BI solutions to extract value from your data.
We can help you implement PITR and automate recovery workflows with AI agents and orchestration tools, design custom software that integrates backups and validations, and deploy cybersecurity policies that reduce the risk of accidental deletions. Our artificial intelligence specialists develop AI solutions for businesses and AI agents that improve processes, accelerate incident detection, and enable faster recoveries.
If you build on Firestore and don't have PITR yet, enable it today. If you want recovery to be something you can execute under pressure and with confidence, contact Q2BSTUDIO for disaster recovery consulting services, custom software development, artificial intelligence solution implementation, cybersecurity, and AWS and Azure cloud services; we also offer business intelligence and Power BI services to make better decisions with your data.
In the real world, incidents happen; the difference lies in how quickly you can recover. Q2BSTUDIO combines expertise in custom applications, custom software, artificial intelligence, AI agents, and cybersecurity so your company can be operational again as soon as possible.
