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Backup & restore

Pyre keeps your library local, so backups are your portability and your safety net. Use them to move to a new device, archive a snapshot, or recover before trying something risky.

What a backup contains

A Pyre backup is a single JSON file. You choose which categories to include:

  • Characters
  • Personas
  • Chats
  • Lorebooks
  • Presets and Creator presets
  • Regex rules
  • Folders and tags
  • App settings, including appearance
  • BotBooru profile data
  • Creator drafts
  • Connections, if you explicitly choose to include them

Avatars, gallery images, attachments, and custom backgrounds are embedded as bytes, so a restore on a fresh install brings the actual artwork back.

Exporting

Open Backup & Restore and choose the categories you want. Then send the file through one of the available paths:

  • OS share sheet
  • Copy to clipboard
  • Save to file / browser download

The share-sheet temp file is cleaned up after handoff.

API keys in backups

The Connections category is off by default. Turning it on is the consent to include provider secrets, and Pyre asks for confirmation before exporting a backup that contains keys.

Do not share a keys-included backup

A backup with Connections included stores provider keys in plaintext inside that file. Use normal keys-stripped backups for sharing or migration unless you specifically need to carry keys.

Importing

Import is category-aware. Only categories present in the file are replaced or merged; missing categories are left alone.

Before applying a backup, Pyre shows what will be overwritten with current and incoming counts. That makes an old or partial backup less likely to surprise you.

Key handling on restore

If a backup contains provider keys, Pyre asks whether to:

  • Use backup keys, or
  • Keep mine.

Either way, keys are migrated back into OS-secure storage and are not kept as plaintext app data after restore.

Safety checks

Restore is defensive:

  • 50 MB backup size cap.
  • Tolerant JSON decoding.
  • Salvage parser for truncated/corrupted files where possible.
  • Locked Pyre default presets are re-seeded from the shipped app after import.
  • Dangling references are cleaned up after restore: providers, personas, presets, lorebook bindings, chat rosters, and message attribution.

Appearance changes apply immediately after restore.

Import from SillyTavern

The SillyTavern migration flow lives here too. Use Import from SillyTavern for loose mixed files or a full SillyTavern Download Backup .zip. That is also the supported path for importing SillyTavern chat logs.

See Importing & exporting for the exact format matrix.

Factory reset

Factory reset lives under Backup & Restore's advanced actions. It is deliberately hard to trigger:

  1. Pyre writes an automatic safety backup first, excluding API keys.
  2. It shows where the safety backup was written.
  3. You type reset to confirm.
  4. Pyre asks for one final confirmation.

If the safety backup cannot be written, the reset aborts.

Storage diagnostics

Storage is separate from Backup & Restore. It shows what is stored on the device and surfaces import/parse diagnostics, including malformed card extension data or lorebook shapes.

See also