Backup & restore

Everything APRS Connect knows lives in a database on your phone — messages, stations, packets, settings — and the app is fully usable with no connection. Backups are local for the same reason: a plain file you can save, share, inspect, and bring back.

Exporting a backup

Settings → Backup exports a JSON backup with three sections, each individually selectable:

• Settings — callsign, path, beacons, connections, map layers.
• Conversations — messages you sent and received, with delivery state and read state, thread names, archive state.
• Blocked callsigns — the block list and your notes on it.

Save it with SAVE TO A FOLDER, or SEND TO ANOTHER APP through the Android share sheet — cloud storage, email, or any other app. The file is plain JSON you can read and even edit before importing, and there are no passwords in it.

The backup deliberately excludes the packet log and station history — both rebuild from live traffic, and the raw feed is large. The packet log has its own capture-file export for that.

Importing: merge or restore

CHOOSE A BACKUP FILE on the same screen, then pick how to apply it:

• Merge — adds what is missing and deletes nothing. Safe to run twice: importing the same file again changes nothing. This is the default, and the right choice for combining two phones' history or topping a phone up after a gap.
• Restore — replaces settings and conversations with the file. Anything changed since the backup is lost, and the confirm button says so in red: REPLACE EVERYTHING, against merge's MERGE INTO THIS PHONE.

Device-specific settings — channels (radio pairings and audio routing) and the outgoing message counter — are held in their own section and skipped unless you switch Include device settings on. The screen is plain about when that is right: for restoring the same phone, not copying to a new one.

The import preview

Nothing is applied on file selection. First you get a preview: when the file was exported and how long ago, which app version wrote it, and exactly what it contains — how many settings, messages, threads, and blocked callsigns. Entries that cannot be applied are listed individually, each with the reason it will be skipped. And a file that cannot be imported at all is refused whole — "This file cannot be imported", with every problem listed — rather than half-applied.

Blocking stations

Settings → Blocked manages the block list — also reachable from any conversation. Blocking is per-SSID and takes your own notes. Messages from a blocked station never become a conversation, never notify you, and are never acknowledged — so the sender sees their messages fail rather than being quietly ignored.

The screen is equally explicit about what blocking does not do: it does not stop reception. A blocked station is still on the air, so its packets still appear in your packet log and on the map. Nothing about your block list is sent anywhere or shared with anyone — and it travels in your backup.

Exporting station tracks

Any station's page — including your own — offers Export track as GPX or KML, turning its position history into a file that mapping software and Google Earth can open. One honest detail both formats state in their own description: the times are when your station received each packet, not the sender's clock, because a delayed packet arriving late could otherwise run a timeline backwards.

Clearing data

Deleting is deliberately harder than exporting. Clearing the packet log or the map cache each takes a second, deliberate tap that states the exact count — CONFIRM — DELETE N PACKETS, CONFIRM — ERASE CACHED MAP. To remove everything the app holds, use Android's own Clear storage for the app (in the system's App info screen) — and export a backup first if you want any of it back.

Last updated 31 August 2026