Caller's Compendium

Backup & portability

Caller's Compendium keeps everything on your own device — there's no cloud account, and nothing leaves your device unless you send it. That's good for privacy and for working offline at a hall with spotty signal, but it also means you keep 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 on your device, a backup is 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 beside Export a backup.

While the backup is prepared, a progress bar shows that the app is working. On a computer it closes once you have finished with the save sheet; on a phone or tablet it closes as soon as the share sheet opens.

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 carries a built-in integrity checksum. It isn't a lock: it doesn't hide anything, and it can't stop someone who deliberately edits the file (they could recalculate it). What it does is let the app notice if the file was accidentally corrupted or changed after you exported it. If a restore 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, including fields marked Include in sharing off, 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, choreographers, difficulty levels, and saved venues. A sharing opt-out keeps a custom field out of files you send to other people; it does not remove the field from your own backup.
  • Your custom dialects and which one is active.
  • Your custom themes and which one is active.
  • Your settings and preferences, including your figure shorthands and walkthrough snippets.

A few device-specific things are left out on purpose, so a restored device doesn't inherit the old one's quirks: window size and position, any half-finished edits you hadn't saved yet, your last-backup date, and everything about Device Sync — so restoring a backup never turns sync on or connects a device to a store. All your real content comes along, and so does your reminder cadence (off / weekly / monthly) — but the last-backup date does not travel, so restoring leaves this device's own last-backup date as it was.

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 beside Restore from a backup.
  4. Either choose Choose file… (a picker that shows .json backups) or paste the backup text into Or paste backup JSON. A chosen file is shown as a short summary (its date, how many dances and programs it holds, and its size) rather than as text in the box; the box is for pasted text only. Choose Clear to forget the file.
  5. Confirm with Replace all data. A progress bar counts the restore from start to finish; it can't be dismissed, so wait for it to close.

On success, you'll see a Backup restored. confirmation. If any dance, program or other core item in the file can't be read, the restore stops before anything changes and tells you; only optional extras (custom dialects and themes) can be skipped, and the app tells you how many. If the file is invalid or corrupt, comes from a newer version of the app that this one can't read, or has no app-settings section (an older, hand-edited or incomplete file that couldn't say what your settings, themes and dialects should become), the restore stops 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 failed integrity check never harms your data. If a backup was corrupted or altered after it was exported, its integrity check won't match, so the app tells you it can't safely restore the file and stops. Nothing is imported and your current library is left exactly as it was. Export a fresh backup and restore from that instead.

Have an older .ccbackup file? Some early versions 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 still have data only in a .ccbackup, restore it with the older version 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 — 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.

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, a note under the setting suggests exporting one now. The app also shows a reminder bar on the main screen, once each time you open the app, with Export backup and Not now buttons. Not now hides it until the next time you open the app.

Backups happen automatically too

Before an app update changes how your data is stored, the app saves its own recovery snapshot on your device. There's nothing to press and nothing to manage — it's an extra safety net across updates.

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

Backups vs. sharing vs. importing

Three related features are easy to mix up:

  • 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 happens from that 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