Backups and git

Your notes are already plain files, so backup is a question of convenience rather than possibility. Papyra offers several routes; pick whichever you will actually keep doing.

Copy the folder

The whole of /data is the backup. rsync it, snapshot the volume, point your existing backup tool at it — nothing here needs Papyra’s cooperation.

rsync -a --delete /var/lib/docker/volumes/papyra-data/_data/ /backup/papyra/

Restoring is putting the folder back. The SQLite cache and Lucene index inside .papyra/ are rebuildable, so a backup that skips them is still complete — but do keep /data/.papyra/keys/, or every signed-in browser is logged out on restore.

Zip export

Settings → Backup → Export. Downloads your whole vault as a zip. Per account, on demand, no scheduling. Good for taking a copy before you change something.

Encrypted archives

Settings → Backup → Generate. Produces an AES-GCM encrypted archive with a key derived from a password you choose. Settings → Backup → Restore takes one back.

Use this when the backup will sit somewhere you do not fully trust — object storage, a USB stick, a friend’s NAS.

The password is not recoverable. Papyra does not store it and cannot reset it. An encrypted backup with a forgotten password is lost.

Automatic git mirror

Settings → Backup → Git, per account. Give it a remote and a branch and Papyra commits and pushes your notes on a schedule, using a real git implementation rather than shelling out.

This is the one to set up if you want the backup to happen without you remembering. It also gives you a full history of every note, browsable with any git tool.

It will never force-push over a diverged remote. If the remote’s history has moved apart from Papyra’s — you pushed from elsewhere, or rewrote history — the sync stops and reports it rather than overwriting whatever is there. Resolve it by hand and it resumes.

Push manually any time with Sync now.

What to actually do

For most people: keep the volume in whatever backs up the rest of the machine, and turn on the git mirror. The first protects you from losing the disk; the second from losing a note you wanted back.

Add encrypted archives when the copy leaves your control.

Restoring onto a fresh instance

1. Bring up Papyra with an empty volume so it initialises.
2. Stop the container.
3. Put the backed-up /data in place, including .papyra/keys/.
4. Start it again.

On start-up Papyra reconciles disk against cache before it opens the port, so notes restored underneath it are picked up on the way up. You do not need to rebuild anything by hand, though Settings → Data & Storage will rebuild the index and embeddings if search looks stale afterwards.

Trash is not a backup

Deleted notes sit in Trash for the retention period — 30 days by default, configurable in Settings → Data & Storage, including “keep forever” and “delete immediately”. Once retention expires the note is erased for good.

Snapshots of overwritten text are a different mechanism again, kept per note and reachable from File recovery and Time machine in the note toolbar. Neither of those is a substitute for having the folder somewhere else.