Back Up Your Setup: Keeping Your Own Copy
Solar Spotter keeps nothing about you on any server — no account, no profile, no copy of your gear or your history anywhere but your phone. That promise has a cost: there is nothing to restore from if the phone goes. So the app gives you the means to keep your own copy, and makes it one tap.
Why there’s no account to restore from
Most apps back you up by quietly keeping your data themselves. This one won’t — everything you build lives on your device, for you, and that is a feature, not a gap. The honest consequence is that the backup is on you. One tap makes it a small job.
One tap, one bundle
Under Settings → Your Data, Copy backup puts everything you have built onto your clipboard as one block of text: panels, batteries, camp gear, rigs and charging sources, your power budget, your trips, saved places, place notes and home location, your settings, and every day the app has recorded. Paste it wherever you keep things — your notes, an email to yourself, a message. Done.
The recorded days matter more than they sound. Energy History only appears once seven of them are behind you, so carrying them across means you don’t start that count again on the new phone.
Nothing is transmitted. The app builds the text and hands it to you; where it goes is entirely your choice. And the bundle is a curated list, never a sweep of the device — your Pro purchase belongs to your store account and stays out of it, along with the throwaway parts: weather caches, prompts you have already dismissed, and the raw Bluetooth sample log the app rebuilds by itself.
It is plain readable text, and your battery’s Bluetooth pairing is in there, so keep it where you would keep anything else personal — the same care you’d give a photo of your paperwork.
If a copy ever fails to land there is a second route that can’t. Under the button, Copy didn't stick? Show as text opens the bundle as selectable text, and you take it with the phone’s own long-press → Select All → Copy. It exists because a phone can report a successful copy and put nothing on the clipboard, so it’s worth checking your first paste actually arrived.
Restoring on a new phone
Install the app and get Pro back on the phone first. The backup lives in a Pro section, so until the store has confirmed your purchase there is no Your Data to paste into. Often it is recognised on its own; if not, Settings → Purchases → Restore Pro purchase does it. Either way that step needs a connection — the store is the only thing that can answer.
Then Settings → Your Data → Restore from a backup, paste the bundle in and tap Check backup. Nothing has changed yet. The app reads the file and tells you what it would replace and the date the backup was taken; if it holds anything this version doesn’t recognise, it says how many items it will skip. Replace my data is the tap that does it.
Read that word. A restore replaces rather than merges: whatever the backup holds goes over the top of what is on the phone, category by category. Your current panels aren’t added to the backup’s panels, they’re replaced by them. Anything the backup doesn’t hold — a trip you took after it was made, say — is left alone.
Once it runs you get an undo, and it is a copy you have to take. The screen offers Copy undo: tap it, paste the result somewhere safe, and check it actually arrived before you tap Reload now. The undo is your old setup as text, held for that moment only — it is gone once you reload, and the app does not keep it for you.
The reload isn’t cosmetic, and it is your tap rather than the app’s. Until you close and reopen, the screens are still showing what was in memory before the restore — so a restored phone that still looks unchanged is waiting on that step, not failing.
One limit worth knowing: an older copy of the app refuses a bundle made by a newer one rather than guess at it. Update the app, then try again. The other direction is fine.
And one thing deliberately doesn’t survive the move. Your phone’s private name for a Bluetooth battery belongs to that phone, so on a new iPhone the restored pairing points at a battery it has never met, and the Bluetooth marker sits there paired and offline. Open the battery’s panel, tap Forget this battery, and pair again — a minute’s work, once.
Built for the bad day
A backup tool earns its keep on the day something has already gone wrong, so this one is built for that day. Values are copied exactly as they sit on the device — never re-read and “tidied up” on the way out, because a damaged value is precisely what you would be backing up in order to recover. Anything the app itself could not read is carried verbatim, so a loss is recoverable rather than merely survived.
If the app ever couldn’t read something, the backup section says so — and the What this means line under the notice answers the obvious question. Nothing was deleted. Everything readable still loaded. The damaged copy is kept and travels in this backup, and the app asks you to send it to support@solarspotter.app so we can tell you what was in it.
After a successful copy a second button appears — Saved it — clear the damaged copy — and that clears the notice for good. It is offered only after the copy, on purpose: the damaged data is worth letting go of once it exists in two places, and not before.
Restoring that backup later won’t bring the warning back. The damaged copy stays in the file, which is where a diagnostic copy belongs, and is deliberately not written onto the phone again. The confirmation says so before you commit.
It is deliberately not automatic. No schedule, no cloud, no sync — you decide when what’s on the phone is worth a copy. Before a phone upgrade is the obvious moment; after a big trip’s worth of recorded days is the other one.
Common questions
Is the backup sent anywhere?
No. Tapping the button builds a bundle of text and puts it on your clipboard — nothing else happens. Where it goes from there is entirely your choice: your notes, an email to yourself, a message. The app transmits nothing, which is the whole reason the backup exists.
What exactly is in it?
Everything you built: panels, batteries, camp gear, rigs and charging sources, your power budget, your trips, saved places, place notes and home location, your settings, your battery pairing, and every day the app has recorded. Deliberately not in it: your Pro purchase — that belongs to your store account and restores from there — along with weather caches, prompts you already dismissed, and the raw Bluetooth sample log the app rebuilds by itself.
When should I make one?
Any time what’s on the phone is worth more than the ten seconds it takes. Before a phone upgrade, after you finish building your rig, after a big trip’s worth of recorded days. It is deliberately not automatic — you decide when a copy is worth keeping.
What if some of my data was damaged?
That is exactly the case the backup is built for. Values are copied exactly as they sit on the device, never tidied up on the way out — and anything the app itself could not read is included verbatim. A damaged value is precisely the thing you’d be backing up in order to recover.
What happens when I restore?
You paste the bundle in and tap Check backup, and nothing changes until you confirm. Then it replaces rather than merges: whatever the backup holds goes over the top of what is on the phone. You are offered an undo, but it is a copy you have to take — tap Copy undo, paste it somewhere and check it arrived before you reload, because it is gone once you do.
Do I need Pro before I can restore?
Yes. The backup section lives with Pro, so on a new phone you bring your purchase back first. Often the app recognises it on its own; if not, Settings → Purchases → Restore Pro purchase does it, and Your Data appears once the store has confirmed it. That step needs a connection. A free install has no backup controls at all, which is the same reason it has nothing to back up.
Your setup, on your terms
Backup lives with Solar Spotter Pro — the tier that has gear and history worth saving. A one-off purchase, no subscription, and your data stays on your phone.
