Backup

Loosing data sometimes happens easier than you might expect! To avoid the data to be gone forever, it can help to regularly take backups of your data. In this chapter, we'll discuss the means that OpenTodoList has built into it to aid in this.

Keeping Your Data Online

Generally, the most secure way to prevent your data to get lost is to keep it online. OpenTodoList has some sync mechanisms built into it which you can use to keep your data synchronized across several devices. Even if you use some libraries only on one device, these mechanisms can help you to keep an online copy of a library on a server - so you still have a copy of it in case e.g. your device gets lost. If possible, take advantage of this feature.

Warning

You might be tempted to stop reading here, but please go on. Setting up sync for your libraries is one part of the puzzle, but ideally, you don't rely on that mechanism only.

Although we try to employ defensive programming where possible, it can also happen that e.g. something goes wrong during a sync operation and you loose data not only on your device but also the server (e.g. because some unintended deletions are synced to the server). In such cases, having additional backups might allow you to restore otherwise lost items as a last resort.

Note

Setting up sync for your libraries might - depending on the used backend service you use for the synchronization - enable additional features. For example, Nextcloud can be set up to keep also previous versions of individual files. This allows you to restore these previous versions via the server's user interface.

Creating A Backup Of A Library

Backups in OpenTodoList are done per library. To create such a backup, run the following steps:

First, navigate to the library that you want to backup. There, open the file menu and use the option Backup to initiate a backup:

Once the backup has been created, the app will open the backup folder. The backup folder is a subfolder within the library itself (it is called .backup) and holds one or more backups as zip files. The file name holds the date and time when the backup has been created:

Note

On mobile devices, the created backup is opened directly. Use the device's share options to e.g. copy the file to a file app.

Note

The folder might contain more than one backup. OpenTodoList keeps backups for a certain period of time before deleting them automatically.

Warning

The zip files contain a 1:1 copy of the library's data on disk. Do not try to restore the data manually except you exactly know what you are doing!

In particular, do not unzip the folder and add the same library a second time to the app - this will not work as expected!