Margins

Margins · backup & recovery

Keep a copy of what matters.

Your account helps your memories travel between devices. A separate backup gives you another way back.

Know when a save has finished

Wait for “Kept in your private space” before closing or switching devices. If you see “Saved here · waiting to sync,” keep the app open and reconnect. An unfinished recording is not yet a saved memory.

Make a full backup

  1. Open Margins on the device where your latest memories are visible and let recordings and keepsakes finish loading.
  2. Open Settings and choose Export full backup. The app refuses an incomplete export when required media is missing.
  3. Save the downloaded JSON file somewhere you can find again. On iPhone or iPad, use the share/save interface to keep the file outside the app.
  4. Keep an additional copy in a secure place you control, such as an encrypted drive or a private protected backup service. This is a choice you make; Margins does not automatically send exports there.

A full export contains private words, audio, photographs and videos. The JSON file itself is not password-encrypted. Treat it like a personal diary. Do not post it, put it in a public folder, or email it to support without agreeing a secure method first.

Restore without overwriting books

In Settings, choose “Restore a Margins backup.” Select your complete exported JSON. Missing books are added with their included media; matching book IDs are skipped, so this does not merge two versions of the same book. Wait for sync to finish and check the restored memories. Keep the original backup until you have verified playback and photos.

Earlier saves are different

“Earlier saves” keeps up to ten state revisions in the same account. It can help with an unwanted change, but it is not an independent copy of all historical recording files. Export a full backup separately.

Using a shared device

Normal sign-out may leave an account-scoped copy on that device for recovery. For a shared device, finish saving and use the sign-out option that clears this account’s device copy. Unfinished recovery drafts must first be kept or explicitly discarded. Other devices and downloaded exports need their own cleanup.

A separate, encrypted copy

Daily backups are scheduled for 4 a.m. South African time. They copy synced reading spaces, earlier versions, a minimal account ownership list and their referenced recordings, photographs and videos into a private Backblaze bucket in the United States. Files are encrypted before leaving the backup service. A backup is marked complete only after all required files are copied. The first content recovery check passed on 26 October 2026.

New copies are protected from deletion for seven days. Expiry of that protection does not itself delete a copy; backups are currently retained until an operator removes them. A removed account is excluded from future backups, but an older protected copy may remain. Contact us for deletion questions. Recovery from these copies is handled by the operator, rather than through the app’s personal-export restore button.

What a backup cannot promise

A daily copy can miss changes made since the last successful backup. Unfinished or unsynced recordings are not included. These content backups do not contain account passwords, sign-in sessions or Spotify connection tokens; a complete authentication and infrastructure recovery drill is still outstanding. Real-iPhone interruption testing also remains in progress. Browser storage can be evicted, a device can fail, and a recording interrupted before its last checkpoint may lose recent seconds. No system can promise zero loss. Keep another copy of irreplaceable memories.

For help, contact bookishbaddie18@gmail.com. See Privacy and Support.