Reference

Your data, backups and moving computers

Where Engram stores your notes and cards, how to back them up, and how to move everything to a new computer.

On this page

Engram keeps your study material on your own computer. There’s no Engram cloud account holding a copy, so backups are in your hands. The good news: everything for a profile lives in one folder.

Where your data is

Each profile has a folder, called its vault. Unless you chose another location, it’s:

System Default vault folder
Windows C:\Users\<you>\Documents\Engram\<profile name>
macOS /Users/<you>/Documents/Engram/<profile name>
Linux ~/Documents/Engram/<profile name>

To see the exact folder for a profile, open Settings (General tab) or Profiles.

Inside the vault:

  • Your notes, as ordinary .md files in the folders you made.
  • Images and media from imports, including an _anki-media folder if you imported Anki decks.
  • A hidden .engram folder with engram.db, a database holding your decks, cards, review history, quizzes, tutor chats, code exercise progress, timer sessions, and this profile’s theme, tutor and timer settings.

A few things are stored by the app itself rather than in a vault:

  • the list of your profiles and where their folders are
  • the name Engram greets you with
  • your AI provider API key, if you ticked Remember on this device
  • your tutor add-on sign-in

These are small and easy to set up again, so the vault folders are what matter for backups.

Back up

  1. Close Engram. This makes sure everything has been written to disk.
  2. Copy each profile’s vault folder somewhere safe: an external drive, a USB stick, or a cloud-synced folder.

Copy the whole folder, including the hidden .engram folder inside it. Copying the vault folder itself (rather than the files inside it) takes care of this. On a Mac, press Cmd + Shift + . in Finder to show hidden folders if you want to check.

Do this regularly. Engram doesn’t make backups for you.

About sync services: keeping a vault inside a synced folder (such as OneDrive, iCloud Drive or Dropbox) works as a backup, but only use one computer at a time and let the sync finish before opening Engram elsewhere. Two computers editing the same database at once can conflict.

Restore a backup

  1. Close Engram.
  2. Copy the backed-up vault folder back to where it was, replacing the old one.
  3. Open Engram.

If the profile no longer appears in Engram, see the next section.

Move to a new computer

  1. On the old computer, close Engram and copy each vault folder to a USB drive or cloud storage.
  2. On the new computer, install Engram.
  3. Copy the vault folders into your Documents folder (or anywhere inside your user folder).
  4. Open Engram. If it’s the first launch, you can press Skip setup and use defaults for now.
  5. Go to Profiles, press New profile, give it a name, press Browse under the vault folder, and pick the folder you copied.
  6. Press Create. Your notes, decks, review history and settings are all there.
  7. Set up your AI provider key again in Settings, Tutor & API key, and sign in to the tutor add-on under Settings, Plan if you use it.

If you skipped setup in step 4, you can remove the empty “My Study” profile afterwards in Profiles.

Removing data

  • Remove a profile in Engram and its folder stays on disk untouched. Delete the folder yourself if you want it gone.
  • Uninstalling Engram doesn’t delete your vault folders either. See Uninstall Engram.