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Backups

Overview

Cloud services often excel at handling backups automatically, so users rarely need to manage them directly. However, because Passwords resides exclusively on your own machine, backups become your responsibility. The good news is that with a little planning, you can set up a robust backup system that ensures you’ll never risk losing access to your passwords.

What you will want to backup

  1. GPG Key(s) as discussed in GPG Key(s) as discussed in GPG Keys.
  2. Passwords Database file.

Backing up the Passwords Database file

Passwords can optionally create a backup of your database each time it runs. To enable this, go to Database → Preferences and tick the Backup database checkbox. This setting ensures a new copy of your database is made before any changes are applied.

However, it’s important to understand the limitation of this feature: it primarily protects against accidental destructive actions within the application. It does not provide a full backup solution. If your machine fails or your disk becomes corrupted, these local backups will not allow you to restore Passwords from a damaged drive.

To achieve true disaster recovery, you must maintain copies of both your GPG keys (required to decrypt stored passwords) and your Passwords database file (required to access them) on a physically separate system or storage media.

To copy the database file:

  • Go to Database → Preferences → General tab.
  • Click the Open Backups… button.
  • This opens your backups folder, where you can copy the backup files to external media or another machine.

You can also copy the database file itself (not just a backup) at any time. To locate the path of your database file:

  1. Go to Help → System Information.
  2. Under Standard Paths, look for the entry labeled Database file.
  3. Use this path to access and copy the database file directly.

Backup Strategies

One of the simplest but also most error‑prone approaches is to say, “I’ll back up the database myself when I need to.” This ad‑hoc method is easy to forget and often inconsistent. The risk is that when you finally need to restore, you may discover your backups are six months old and missing many of your newer passwords, leading to serious recovery problems.

Instead of leaving backups to chance, it is strongly recommended to automate the process. This can be done using tools such as cron or Task Scheduler Alternatively, you can use an open‑source backup solution like Déjà Dup, the graphical front‑end to Duplicity, to create remote encrypted backups at regular intervals.

No matter which method you choose, remember: a backup stored only on the same machine is not a true backup. For disaster recovery, backups must be kept on a physically separate system or external media.