Backing up

Manual backups

The Backup page lists detected games with search, sort, live-filter, and multi-select. Pick what you want and run a backup; the CLI mirrors this:

savevault-cli backup
savevault-cli backup --games "Dark Souls III" --games "Elden Ring"

Saves, configs, and registry

Archives store game saves and configs separately (under data/saves/… and data/configs/…). On Windows — and inside Proton/Wine prefixes on Linux — SaveVault can also capture and restore the relevant registry keys. Choose what to bring back at restore time with --include saves|configs|both.

Archive formats

Format	Notes
zip	Widely compatible (default)
tar.gz	Smaller, slower
tar.zst	Best ratio and speed (zstd)

Set the default with default_format in config or under Settings.

Self-describing archives

Every backup carries a plain-text README.txt and a savevault-manifest.json. Files live under data/<saves|configs>/<placeholder>/<rest>/…, where <placeholder> is appData, documents, home, gameInstall, and so on. Placeholders resolve against the current machine at restore time — which is what makes backups portable across machines and users.

Retention & pinning

SaveVault keeps a configurable number of backups per game (retention.default_max_backups, default 4) and automatically purges the oldest unpinned backup beyond the limit. Pin a backup to protect it from cleanup, and add a label to remember why it matters.

Scheduled backups

Run automated passes on an interval, backing up only games whose saves changed:

savevault-cli schedule enable
savevault-cli schedule-run        # run one pass right now
savevault-cli schedule status
savevault-cli schedule history

schedule enable registers a job with your OS scheduler (Task Scheduler on Windows, a systemd timer on Linux, launchd on macOS), so passes run even when the app is closed. A scheduled pass can also check for app updates and sync to the cloud when configured.

Performance

Two independent knobs tune throughput:

• scan.parallelism — threads for the install scan (default: all logical CPUs).
• backup.parallelism — threads for per-game archiving/compression (default: half your logical CPUs).

Set them under Settings (Game Scanning → Scan threads, General → Backup threads) or in config.