Automatic Backups

On Library, Spleen can back up your projects to your own Dropbox or Google Drive every night. Each copy is a Spleen Archive, the same file as Export → Spleen Archive, so it holds your writing, research, notes, annotations, snapshots, and both bins, and it can be imported into Spleen again. Because the copies live in your own storage, they stay yours even if something happens to Spleen.

You can connect one of the two at a time.

Connect Dropbox or Google Drive

Open Account → Backups and choose Connect Dropbox or Connect Google Drive. You are asked to sign in if needed and to allow Spleen access. Spleen only gets a folder of its own and cannot see anything else:

In Dropbox, the folder is Apps/Spleen.
In Google Drive, it is a folder called Spleen at the top of My Drive. Spleen can only see the files it made itself.

You then return to Backups, which shows the account you connected. The first backup runs that night; choose Back up now to make one straight away.

To move from one to the other, disconnect first, then connect the other. The first backup after that copies every project, so the new place starts complete.

What gets backed up

Every night Spleen checks each of your projects and copies only the ones that changed since the last backup. Each project has its own folder, and every copy is named after the project with the date and time it was made, in UTC, for example the-salt-road-2026-09-26-0310-utc.spleen. Spleen keeps the newest 10 copies of each project and removes older ones.

Up to date as of shows the last time Spleen found every project safely copied. On a night when nothing changed no new copy is made, so the newest file can be older than that date. Back up now runs the same backup immediately and tells you how many projects it copied, or that everything was already backed up.

Restore from a backup

Download the copy you want from Dropbox or Google Drive, then import it as described in Importing Projects. The import creates a new project; it never replaces the one you already have.

When something goes wrong

If a backup cannot finish, Backups says why, and Spleen keeps trying each night:

Your storage is full. Free some space, or upgrade your Dropbox or Google storage plan. Backups continue by themselves once there is room.
Spleen no longer has access. This happens when access is removed in Dropbox or your Google Account, or the account is closed. Choose Reconnect.
Your storage could not be reached. A short outage is retried quietly; this message only appears when it lasts a few nights.
Some projects could not be backed up. The others were copied. Spleen tries the rest again that night.

Disconnect

Choose Disconnect and confirm. Backups stop, Spleen deletes its access, and it asks Dropbox or Google to remove it too. Copies already in your storage stay there.

If you leave Library, Backups says your backups are paused. Your storage stays connected, so backups resume the night after you upgrade again. Copies already there stay where they are, and you can still disconnect.