Backups

Profilarr can back itself up on a schedule or manually. Each backup is a single archive that holds:

• Profilarr’s database, with your settings, Arr instances, notification services, accounts, and API keys.
• Your linked databases.

Profilarr keeps the archives in the backups folder inside its config folder. You can restore any archive from Settings > Backups on the same machine or on a new one.

Automatic Backups

Profilarr backs itself up every day by default. The Backups card in Settings > General has three settings:

• Automatic Backups: turns scheduled backups on or off. On by default.
• Schedule: how often Profilarr backs up, from hourly to monthly. Daily by default. Daily, weekly, and monthly backups run at midnight in Profilarr’s timezone.
• Retention Period (days): how long Profilarr keeps backups, from 1 to 365 days. 30 by default.

Creating and Downloading

Settings > Backups lists every archive and lets you download, restore, or delete each one from its row. Create Backup starts a new backup, which appears in the list once it finishes.

When you download a backup, Profilarr removes its secrets first, so you can share the downloaded file safely, for example in a bug report. The downloaded file leaves out:

• Arr instances, with their URLs, API keys, and sync settings.
• Notification services.
• Accounts and sessions.
• API keys.
• Credentials for linked databases, such as personal access tokens.
• AI and TMDB API keys.

Keeping Copies Elsewhere

Profilarr keeps its archives on the same disk as everything else, so a failed disk takes Profilarr and its backups together. Keep at least one copy on another drive or machine. A common rule is 3-2-1: three copies of your data, on two kinds of storage, with one of them off-site.

Copy the archives from the backups folder, not the live database next to them. Each archive is a complete snapshot, so you can copy it while Profilarr runs. A copy of profilarr.db taken while Profilarr runs can catch it halfway through a write, so stop Profilarr first if you back up the whole config folder.

Tools like restic, Backrest (a web interface for restic), Borg, Kopia, and rclone can copy the folder to another drive or a cloud service on a schedule.

Restoring

To restore an archive, click its Restore button. Profilarr applies the archive the next time it starts, so restart Profilarr to finish, for example with docker restart profilarr. Until then, a banner at the top of every page names the archive and lets you cancel the restore. Anything you change before the restart is lost.

Restoring replaces all of Profilarr’s data with the archive, and you can’t undo it once Profilarr restarts. Profilarr doesn’t back up your current data first, so click Create Backup before you restore if you might want it back. Archives from older versions of Profilarr restore too, and Profilarr upgrades them as it starts.

Upload Backup adds an archive from another Profilarr instance to the list so you can restore it here. It accepts .tar.gz files up to 1 GB.

Moving to a New Machine

To move Profilarr with everything intact, use an archive from the old machine’s backups folder, not a downloaded one:

1. Install Profilarr on the new machine and create an account. The restore replaces it with your old accounts.
2. Copy an archive from the old machine’s backups folder into the new machine’s backups folder.
3. Open Settings > Backups on the new machine, restore the archive, and restart Profilarr.

Backups don’t include the settings in your compose file, like ORIGIN, AUTH, and the OIDC_ variables. Copy your compose file to the new machine too. If your old setup signed in only with single sign-on and the new one doesn’t set the OIDC_ variables, Profilarr won’t start. See Startup Errors.