Back up and restore

Voyalier keeps everything on your device. That is the point — but it means a lost or wiped computer is lost trips, and the optional vault passphrase has no recovery. A backup is the way out of both.

Find it under Settings → Back up & restore in the desktop app.

The browser-from-source route still stores its workspace in local SQLite, but it does not have the desktop file picker or portable encrypted-backup bridge. Its Settings panel says which pieces are unavailable instead of claiming there is no local database. Use the desktop app when you need to create or restore a .vbk file.

Saving a backup

You choose a backup passphrase, and Voyalier writes a single .vbk file wherever you point it.

The whole file is encrypted with a key derived from that passphrase (Argon2id, then XChaCha20-Poly1305). Everything is inside the sealed part — not just the fields that are already encrypted at rest, but the ordinary ones too, so trip names, destinations, and dates are not readable in the file either.

The backup also carries your workspace’s encryption key, re-wrapped under your backup passphrase. That is what lets the file open on a different computer: without it the restored data would be undecryptable, because the original key lives in the first machine’s keychain and never leaves it.

There is no recovery if you lose the backup passphrase

Voyalier never stores it and cannot reset it. A .vbk file without its passphrase is unreadable — by us, and by anyone who finds the file.

What a backup does not include

• Downloaded offline maps. They are large, and you can download them again.
• Your AI provider keys. These stay in your computer’s keychain rather than travelling in a file. Re-enter them after restoring.

Everything else comes along: trips, confirmed facts, imported documents, pending suggestions, offline packs, saved advice and weather snapshots, and your notes.

Restoring a backup

Restoring replaces everything currently in Voyalier with the contents of the backup. It does not merge the two.

It happens in three explicit steps, on purpose:

1. You pick the file and enter its passphrase. Voyalier checks the container and shows its metadata without changing anything.
2. You review that preview and enter the passphrase again to confirm. Voyalier stages the restore. Nothing has changed yet — your current data is untouched, so a change of mind costs nothing; you can cancel the inspection or the pending restore.
3. You quit and reopen Voyalier. The swap happens at startup, before the database is opened, which is why the restart is needed.

Just before the swap, Voyalier snapshots your current data into its backups folder as a pre-restore-… file, so a restore you did not mean is recoverable. Those snapshots are pruned to the most recent few and are erased by Clear backups, alongside the pre-update ones.

After a restore

Your workspace opens unlocked, using the key that came with the backup. If the machine you backed up from had a vault passphrase, that is not carried over — set a new one under Encryption if you want it.

Restores that are refused

• A backup from a newer version of Voyalier. Its data may use a shape this build does not understand, so it is refused rather than half-read. Update the app, then restore.
• A wrong passphrase, or a damaged file. Both look the same to Voyalier: the file simply does not open. Nothing is staged.

An older backup is fine — it is migrated forward on the first launch after the swap, the same way an older workspace is.

Where the files live

The .vbk file goes wherever you saved it. Treat it as sensitive: it is encrypted, but it is a complete copy of your trips.

For where Voyalier’s own data and its backups folder live on each platform, see Troubleshooting.