Weird Timeshift behaviour

I faced really weird (at least from my point of view) behavior of Timeshift.

First of all, it stores the snapshot twice on my disc. First copy is created in /timeshift/snapshots/.
Then there is /run/timeshift/backup/timeshift/snapshots directory, which appears to have the same content. I thought it could be that Timeshift backups /timeshift folder on creating snapshot, so i put /timeshift/*** into Filters part of the settings, deleted and created the snapshot once again, and the copy was again in /run/timeshift/backup/timeshift/snapshots.

What is also weird to me - run/timeshift/backup has all of my /home directory, which is excluded by default in settings. Also files are being stored here “in real time” - i download a file to /home/username/Downloads, and it instantly appears in /run/timeshift/home/username/Downloads.

First time i noticed this, i deleted /run/timeshift/backup folder, which broke my system - i felt like it also deleted the real /home dir, and i had to reinstall.

As to Timeshift config - i have default in “Users” - exclude /root and /home/username, then in Filters -
exclude /home/username/, /var/, /timeshift/** /root/**, thats it.

I feel like i am really misunderstanding how timeshift/hard links that it use works, or i configured something really wrong, so i would really appreciate any explanation to that. I read some of official documentation, but did not find anything to explain this behavior.

Timeshift uses hard links (XFS, EXT4) or BTRFS’s built-in snapshots, depending on which file system you are using.

It may “appear” that things are being duplicated unnecessarily, but the use of hard links is deceiving at first sight.

It’s best to leave Timeshift’s settings at their defaults, unless you have a very specific need to alter them.

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