Backups

Your data lives on this device. A backup is how you move it to another device, or keep a copy you control.

Create a backup here, send it to the device that needs it, and load it there.

A backup is one file holding everything: your Collections, your Cards, every Detail value and its history, your Records, your Reminders, your Tags, and the photos and files you have added. Loading it on another device makes that device the one holding your data.

Where your data lives

Your data lives on this device, and a subscription asks you once whether you also want the encrypted copy in the cloud.

Both answers are honest ones. Device only means nothing about your data ever leaves, and the copies that protect you are the backup files you create. Adding the cloud copy means a lost, stolen or replaced device is a bad day rather than a lost Collection.

The choice is not permanent. Cloud backup can be turned on or off later in Settings, and turning it off never touches what is on this device.

Moving to another device

There are three steps and they are always the same three:

1. Create a backup on the device that has your data.
2. Send that file to the other device, however you normally move a file.
3. Load the backup there.

The device you load onto becomes the one holding your data. Nothing is left half-moved: a backup is the whole thing, not a summary of it.

Loading a backup file

Picking a backup file shows you what is inside it before anything happens: how many Collections, Cards, Records and files it holds, and when it was created.

Nothing on this device changes until you say so. Loading replaces what is here with what is in the file, so if this device holds anything you have not backed up, create a backup of it first.

The cloud copy

With a subscription you can also keep an encrypted copy in the cloud. It keeps up as you work, and it is what puts everything back if this device is lost, replaced or wiped.

It is encrypted on this device, with your password, before any of it leaves. That is what makes it a copy you can trust us with: we hold the file and cannot read it. A recovery key is the spare way in if the password is ever forgotten. Without one, a forgotten password means the cloud copy can never be opened by anyone, including us.

The cloud copy is a backup, not a second home. What is on this device is the real thing, and the copy exists so that a lost device is not a lost Collection.

Loading the cloud copy

Loading the cloud copy pulls your encrypted backup down and makes it this device’s data, replacing what is here.

It is the same act as loading a backup file, from a different shelf. So the same caution applies: anything on this device that is not in that copy is what you would be trading away, and creating a backup first is how you keep both.

When you sign in on a new device

Signing in on a device with nothing on it yet, when a cloud copy exists, loads that copy automatically. That is the one moment the cloud is treated as the truth, and it is the moment a new device has nothing of its own to lose.

While it runs, the app says so and waits. Your encrypted backup is downloading and unlocking here, on this device, with your password. Photos and video keep arriving in the background afterwards, and the backup indicator shows how far along they are, so a big library does not hold up the rest of your data.

If it cannot be unlocked, the app says which of the two reasons it is. A backup sealed to a password this sign-in does not have needs the old password: sign out and back in with it. A device that does not hold your key yet needs the same round trip, and then your password opens it.

The recovery key

Your cloud copy is encrypted with your password, on this device, before any of it leaves. We hold a file we cannot read.

That is the protection, and it has a consequence worth understanding before you choose: if the password is forgotten and nothing else can open the file, nobody can open it. Not you, and not us.

A recovery key is the spare way in. Keeping one lets TrackThat unlock your cloud copy for you after a forgotten password. Declining one means the copy is yours alone, and a forgotten password means it can never be read again.

Neither answer is the careless one. The choice is which risk you would rather hold, and you can change it later.

If your subscription ends

Everything you have tracked stays on this device and stays readable. What stops is adding and editing. Creating a backup and exporting never stop, so your data can always leave with you.

The encrypted cloud copy is held for a time in case you come back. A backup file you created yourself does not depend on that window at all, which is the reason to keep one.