Backups

Pellet on Mac, Windows and Linux can back up its own data for a vault on a schedule, and make a full backup of the whole vault when you ask. Open Settings › Backups. Backups are not available on iPhone, iPad or Android.

Automatic backups

An automatic backup saves Pellet’s own data for the vault you have open: your settings, views and saved filters, boards, properties, themes and dictionary words. It does not include your notes. Each one is a few hundred KB.

• Back up app data automatically is on to begin with.
• How often: every day (the default), every week or every month.
• Keep: the last 5, 10 (the default), 20 or 50. Older automatic backups are deleted.

Backups run while Pellet is open: shortly after a vault opens, then every hour Pellet checks whether one is due. A backup that came due while Pellet was closed runs soon after you open it again. When nothing has changed since the last backup, none is made, so the ones you keep are not copies of each other.

Back up now makes one straight away, whether or not anything changed.

Where they are kept

Each vault has its own folder inside Pellet’s app data folder (on a Mac, ~/Library/Application Support/Pellet/Backups). Change… picks another folder, such as an external drive or a folder you keep in the cloud. Show in Finder (or Show in Explorer) opens it.

Backups are kept outside the vault, so they are never synced. Each computer backs up its own copy.

Full backup

Create full backup… saves everything in the vault in one .zip file wherever you choose: notes, tasks, attachments, version history, the Trash and the app data above. Pellet never deletes a full backup. Save it outside the vault folder; Pellet refuses to save it inside, where it would be backed up into itself and synced.

What a backup never holds

• Passwords, your license and sync keys. They stay in your computer’s keychain. After restoring on a new computer, you sign in to your calendars and pair the device again.
• Sync’s own records. Putting an old copy back would make sync replay old history and could undo changes made on your other devices.
• Things Pellet rebuilds by itself, such as the search index, and the AI, voice and dictionary downloads, which you can download again.

Restoring

App data

Under Restore, pick a backup and choose Restore…. Pellet asks first, then:

1. Backs up what you have now, so you can undo the restore from the same list.
2. Puts back the settings, views, boards, saved filters, properties, themes and dictionary words from that backup. Your notes and files are not changed, and neither are the tabs you have open.

If sync is on, your other devices get the restored settings too, like any other change.

A full backup

Open full backup… asks for the .zip and for a folder to put it in. Pellet unpacks it into a new folder named after the vault and the date, and opens it in a window of its own. The vault you have open is never touched, and the restored vault starts with sync off.