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Graphophone

Encrypted backup & restore

Make a single .ajbackup file you can store anywhere, and bring it back on a new device.

A backup is a single, encrypted file that contains every entry, every attachment, your tags, your stats, and a copy of the vault header. It is protected by a passphrase you choose at backup time, and is useless to anyone without it.

How it works

  1. Open backup settings

    Settings → Vault → Encrypted backup.

  2. Choose a backup passphrase

    This protects the backup file itself. It can — and should — be different from the vault passphrase, so leaking one does not compromise the other.

  3. Save the file somewhere durable

    Graphophone writes a single .ajbackup file. Drop it in iCloud Drive, Dropbox, a USB stick, or an SD card — the contents are useless without the passphrase.

Where to store backups

  • Cloud drive (iCloud, Drive, Dropbox, OneDrive). The provider sees ciphertext only — they can't read your entries.
  • External drive or USB stick Belt-and-braces if you don't trust any cloud at all.
  • NAS The .ajbackup file is fine to keep on a Synology or TrueNAS share — it's already encrypted.

Restoring on a new device

Install Graphophone on the new device and choose Restore from a backup on the first onboarding screen. Pick the .ajbackup file, enter the backup passphrase, then choose a new vault passphrase for this device — it does not have to be the one you used before, and it is what will encrypt the restored journal here. The app tells you how many entries came back, and mints a fresh recovery code for the new vault.

The same flow is offered from the unlock screen as Erase and restore from a backup, for the case where the vault on this device can no longer be read. The file is decrypted on the device — a restore involves no network and no account.

Your journal is not in your device's backup

This is the part worth reading twice. Graphophone deliberately excludes its vault from the operating system's own backup: on iOS the app's storage is marked isExcludedFromBackup, so it is in neither an iCloud backup nor an encrypted Finder backup; on Android allowBackup=false and the app's data-extraction rules exclude it from both Google cloud backup and device-to-device transfer. The unlock secrets held in the Keychain and the Android Keystore are pinned to this device and do not migrate either.

That is on purpose — an automatic cloud backup would place a copy of your journal somewhere we cannot defend, which is the whole thing this app is for. But it has a cost, and the cost is yours: restoring a new device from an iCloud or Google backup will not bring your journal with it. An .ajbackup file is what carries it across. (So does folder sync, if you have already paired two devices, and Markdown export keeps readable copies — but neither is a substitute for a backup you can restore.)

When to make a backup

Before you replace, wipe, sell, or hand on a device — that is the one that actually loses journals, because the OS backup you would normally lean on does not cover this app. Also before an OS upgrade, before typing out a big rebuild, and every now and then just for peace of mind.

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