Caller's Compendium

Backup & portability

Caller's Compendium keeps everything on your own device — there's no cloud account and nothing gets synced somewhere else without you asking. That's great for privacy and for working offline at a hall with spotty signal, but it also means you are the keeper of your own safety copy. A backup is a single file that holds your whole library, ready to bring back if a device is lost, replaced, or wiped.

Finding your way around these words. On-screen buttons and screens are written in bold — like Settings, Export, and Restore. The first time a dance term appears it links to the Glossary, so you can get a plain-language definition without losing your place.

Why back up

Because your work lives locally, a backup is simply your insurance. One exported file captures your entire collection of dances, your programs, and all your personal settings. Keep a recent copy somewhere safe — a cloud drive, a USB stick, or your email — and you can recover from almost anything.

A few good moments to export a backup:

  • Before a big cleanup or reorganizing your collection.
  • After an evening of building or editing programs for upcoming gigs.
  • Whenever you're about to switch to a new phone, tablet, or computer.

Export a backup

  1. Open Settings, then choose General.
  2. Find the Backup & restore section.
  3. Choose Export a backup.

The app creates a single dated file — something like callers-compendium-backup-2026-07-15.json — and hands it to your device's normal share or save sheet. From there you decide where it goes: a cloud drive, your Files area, an email to yourself, or a folder of your choosing. When it's done, you'll see a Backup exported. confirmation.

An integrity check, not a lock

A backup is plain, readable text — open it in any text editor and you'll see your library. It is not encrypted or password-protected, so treat the file the way you'd treat any personal document and store it somewhere you trust.

Every backup does carry a built-in integrity checksum. Think of it as a checksum, not a lock or a security seal: it doesn't hide anything and it can't stop a determined editor (who could simply recalculate it), but it lets the app notice if the file was accidentally corrupted or changed after you exported it. If a restore ever detects a mismatch, it stops before touching your data (see Restore from a backup below) instead of importing something damaged.

What's inside a backup

A backup holds everything you've built, including:

  • Your whole collection of dances — figures, notes, tunes, links, and any custom field values you've filled in, along with where each dance was imported from.
  • All your programs, with their slots, alternates, event details, and which dances you've marked as performed.
  • Your custom fields, tags, and choreographers.
  • Your custom dialects and which one is active.
  • Your custom themes and which one is active.
  • Your settings and preferences.

A few device-specific odds and ends are left out on purpose, so a restored device feels right at home instead of inheriting the old one's quirks — things like window size and position, any half-finished edits you hadn't saved yet, and the backup-reminder bookkeeping itself. You don't need to think about these; the important part is that all your real content comes along.

Restore from a backup

Restoring loads a backup file back into the app. Use it when you're setting up a new device or recovering after a problem.

  1. Open Settings, then choose General.
  2. Find the Backup & restore section.
  3. Choose Restore from a backup, then choose Restore.
  4. Either choose Choose file… (a picker that shows .json backups) or paste the backup text directly.
  5. Confirm with Replace all data.

On success, you'll see a Backup restored. confirmation. If a few items in the file couldn't be read, the app still restores everything else and tells you how many were skipped. And if the file turns out to be invalid or corrupt, the restore is safely stopped before any of your current data is touched — so you never lose what you already have by trying.

If your settings don't come back, your dances still did. Occasionally a restore succeeds for your content but fails while re-applying your saved settings. The app says so plainly — your dances and programs were restored, but applying your saved settings failed — and offers Retry settings. Choose it and the app tries again, confirming with Settings applied. Your restored content is safe either way.

A broken integrity seal never harms your data. If a backup was corrupted or altered after it was exported, its integrity check won't match and the app tells you it can't safely restore the file, then stops. Nothing is imported and your current library is left exactly as it was. Re-export a fresh backup and try again with that.

Have an older .ccbackup file? Earlier betas offered an optional passphrase-encrypted backup saved as .ccbackup. That option has been retired, and the app can no longer open those files. If you're updating from an older beta and still have data only in a .ccbackup, restore it with the older build first, then export a fresh .json backup.

Restoring replaces everything. A restore swaps out all of your current dances, programs, settings, and customizations for the contents of the backup file, and it cannot be undone. The app shows a confirmation dialog to make sure this is what you want. If there's anything on your device you haven't backed up yet, export a fresh backup first.

Because restore replaces rather than combines, it is not the way to merge two libraries together. If you want to add dances from another source alongside what you already have, use the import feature instead — imports add, restore replaces.

Move to a new device

Moving your whole library to a new phone, tablet, or computer is a clean round trip. Because a backup restores exactly, what you save is what you get back:

  1. On your old device, export a backup (see above).
  2. Transfer the file to the new device — through a cloud drive, a USB stick, or email to yourself.
  3. On your new device, restore from that backup.

That's it. Your collection, programs, dialects, themes, and settings all arrive intact.

Backup reminders

If you'd like a nudge to stay current, the Backup & restore section includes a Backup reminder setting. You can choose:

  • Off (the default)
  • Weekly
  • Monthly

The setting also shows Last backup: never or the date of your most recent backup, so you always know where you stand. When a backup is overdue, the app shows a gentle reminder to export one — no pressure, just a friendly tap on the shoulder.

Backups happen automatically too

Beyond the backups you make, the app quietly keeps its own recovery snapshot before any major internal upgrade. This means your data stays protected across app updates without you doing anything at all. There's no button to press and nothing to manage — it's simply there as an extra safety net.

This automatic snapshot is a bonus, not a replacement. Your own exported backups are still the copies you can move between devices and store wherever you like.

Backups vs. sharing vs. importing

It's easy to mix up three related-but-different features:

  • Backup & restore (this guide) works with your entire library at once — one file in, one file out.
  • Sharing a single dance or program as text or PDF is a separate thing that lives on each individual dance or program, not here. See Collection & search for sharing dances and Programs & matrix for sharing programs.
  • Importing brings dances in from other apps and sources — such as The Caller's Box, ContraDB, or another Caller's Compendium file — and merges them alongside what you already have. See Imports & migration. Remember: imports add, restore replaces.

Where to go next