What is a backup, and where does it go?

A backup is one file that holds a copy of your history. Dictate Safe writes it to a folder you choose, locks it with a passphrase you choose, and checks it after saving. If your computer is lost, replaced or reset, a backup is how your history comes with you.

#What is in a backup

• Your dictations, including any history you brought in from another app.
• Their recordings, unless you switch Recordings off when you set backups up. Recordings are most of a backup’s size.
• Your notes, with their recordings unless Recordings is off.
• Your own prompts, with their pictures. The prompt library itself is not in it, because it comes from our website.
• Your snippets and your vocabulary.

Your license, your API keys and your settings are never in a backup.

#Where it goes

Only to the folder you pick in Settings → Backup. The app suggests an external drive, or a folder that iCloud Drive, Google Drive, OneDrive or Dropbox keeps in sync, so that a copy lives somewhere other than this computer. The file ends in .dsbackup and is named with the date and time it was made.

#Who can read it

Dictate Safe never uploads a backup, and we never receive one. The app only writes a file. If the folder you chose is kept in sync by iCloud Drive, Google Drive, OneDrive or Dropbox, that service uploads the file, the same as any other file in that folder.

A backup locked with a passphrase opens only with that passphrase. A backup with no passphrase is not private: anyone who gets the file can read it, and the app says so before it lets you make one.

#What a backup is not

• It is not a sync. Nothing moves between your computers by itself. You bring a backup in by hand, on the Import page.
• Deleting a dictation in Dictate Safe does not delete it from backups you already made.
• We have no server that keeps backups, so we cannot restore one for you. Keep the file and its passphrase safe: there is no other copy.