Backup, restore, and moving to a new phone

The rule that makes a restore safe

The dangerous moment in any restore is between deleting the old data and finishing the import. If the app crashes there — or the file turns out to be truncated, or from a different app — you have lost everything and gained nothing.

Here nothing is deleted until the file has been checked for the app name, the format version and its contents. The delete and the import then happen inside one transaction: it either completes or the old data stays exactly as it was. Rotating the screen or pressing back cannot interrupt it, and a safety snapshot of the current data is written automatically before the restore begins.

Moving to a new phone

Because there is no account, moving is a file operation rather than a login. Back up on the old phone, move the file across however you like, install the app on the new phone, restore. Nothing about your data was ever tied to a device or an identity, so there is nothing to transfer but the file itself.

• Back up on the old phone
• Send the file to yourself — Drive, e-mail, cable, memory card
• Install the app on the new phone
• Restore from the file
• Check a customer and a recent sale before wiping the old phone

The automatic snapshot is not a backup

The three-day snapshot lives on the same phone. It protects against a mistake — a bad restore, an accidental bulk delete — not against losing the phone. Keep at least one backup file somewhere that is not the device.