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Backing up your Confidant data

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Written by Jason Fried

Confidant doesn't run any backup of its own — there's no cloud bucket, no built-in sync. Your data is files on your computer, so backup is whatever you already do for the rest of your computer.

What to back up

Everything in Confidant's data folder:

  • macOS — ~/Library/Application Support/com.confidant.notes/

  • Windows — %APPDATA%\com.confidant.notes\

That folder contains:

  • The encrypted SQLite database (patients, sessions, transcripts, notes, settings)

  • The .dbkey file — your encryption key, also restricted to your user account

  • Audio recordings (also encrypted)

  • Downloaded model files (you can skip these — they're large and re-downloadable)

The database, the key, and the audio all need to travel together. As long as you back up the whole folder, you're covered.

Built-in OS backups

If you use Time Machine on macOS or Windows Backup, you're already covered — the data folder gets backed up along with the rest of your home directory.

To restore on the same machine and user account, just let Time Machine / Windows Backup put the folder back. Confidant will pick up where it left off.

Cloud backups (Dropbox, iCloud Drive, Google Drive)

You can copy or symlink the data folder to a cloud-synced location, but a few caveats:

  • The encrypted database file is locked while Confidant is running. Cloud sync may complain or fail to upload while the app is open.

  • You're trusting the cloud provider with your encrypted files. They can't read them (the .dbkey is also encrypted-at-rest from their perspective; the SQLCipher database is opaque), but a determined attacker who compromised both the cloud account and your .dbkey simultaneously could.

  • For extra paranoia: back up the encrypted database alone (omit .dbkey) and store .dbkey somewhere else. The two pieces are useless apart.

Manual export / archive

For a one-off snapshot:

  1. Quit Confidant completely

  2. Copy the entire data folder (above) to your backup destination

  3. Done

Restoring on a new machine

This works because the encryption key is just a file in the data folder, not tied to the OS keychain.

  1. Install Confidant on the new machine and complete onboarding (create a placeholder data folder)

  2. Quit Confidant

  3. Replace the freshly-installed data folder with your backup

  4. Re-launch Confidant — it'll open your existing data using the .dbkey you brought along

If macOS or Windows complains about file ownership after the copy (different user account, different UID), fix the ownership/permissions on the data folder so your new user account owns it. Confidant doesn't need anything beyond standard file ownership.

What about losing your backup?

If your only copy of the data folder is corrupted or lost, the data is gone. We can't recover it — we don't have it. The privacy story (nothing leaves the device) cuts both ways.

This is why we recommend at least one backup if your work depends on Confidant.

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