Cloud Backup

How it backs up

• Cloud includes 25 GB per account across retained snapshots and their files. Unchanged files count once. Uploads in progress reserve space until they complete or are cleaned up
• Abandoned Cloud uploads are cleaned up on the 1st and 15th of each month; their reserved space may remain until cleanup runs
• If a backup is refused because you are signed out or do not have Cloud, automatic retries stop. After signing in or subscribing, press Back up now to resume
• Your backups are held in private storage. Restoring requires signing in to the account that owns them; knowing a storage URL does not grant access
• It waits for a pause. A backup starts a couple of minutes after your last change, so it never competes with the sentence you are writing
• It never leaves work stranded for long — if you write without pausing, one happens anyway within fifteen minutes
• Only what changed is sent. Your cover art and images are uploaded once and then recognised, so a normal backup is a small amount of text rather than your whole library
• You can keep writing during an upload. New edits remain pending for the next backup; a cloud copy only appears as complete after its manifest has uploaded and its referenced files have been registered
• Each backup captures one consistent view of your saved library and protects its files while they are being copied. Open editor windows save their pending text before capture
• Back up now waits for a copy containing the changes saved when you pressed it. If an older backup is already uploading, ChapterMuse finishes that copy and then backs up the newer changes
• Closing the app doesn’t start an upload it can’t finish. Your work is already safe on disk, and the backup goes up next time you open ChapterMuse
• No connection is not an error. You’ll see a note saying so, and nothing else happens — the backup catches up when you’re online

Restoring, and why it is never locked

Restoring replaces the library on this computer with the one you pick, so before it replaces anything ChapterMuse saves your current work to a pre-restore-safety file alongside your other data. If that copy can't be written, the restore stops rather than proceeding.

• Choose any backup in the list, not only the newest — each one shows its date, the computer it came from, and its size
• Your work on this computer is saved to a .muse file first, every time
• Close other ChapterMuse windows before restoring. After downloading, ChapterMuse briefly pauses editing while it saves your recovery copy and replaces the library
• If the library changes after the recovery copy is captured, replacement stops so those newer changes cannot be lost. You can try again with a fresh recovery copy
• Restoring is never blocked by a subscription. If yours lapses, new backups stop — getting your existing ones back does not

Writing on two computers

If you write on a desktop and a laptop, both keep their own library and both back up to the same place. ChapterMuse only asks you a question when it genuinely has to: when both machines have changed since they last agreed.

• One computer ahead of the other — you’re simply told which, and offered the newer copy
• Both changed — you’re shown the date and the computer name for the backup, and asked which to carry on from
• Whichever you choose, the other is kept. Pick this computer and the cloud version stays in your backup list; pick the backup and this computer’s work is saved to a file first
• Nothing is ever merged behind your back. The choice is always yours to make
• The choice appears in the main app even when Settings is closed. Decide later keeps your local writing available and leaves cloud promotion paused
• Choosing this computer applies only to the cloud copy you reviewed. If another computer uploads again before yours finishes, ChapterMuse asks you to review the new copy

What it costs to leave

• Your writing is never held hostage. A .muse export is free, works with no account, and contains everything
• Backups are kept for six months after a subscription ends, and can be restored throughout
• Nothing about cancelling touches the copy on your own computer

From first idea to finished book

Every other tool here belongs to a stage. Story World and the Mind Map are where a book starts as a feeling. The Outliner, Plot Grid and Chronos give that feeling a shape. The Writing Canvas is where it becomes sentences. Revision Passes and Manuscript Lens are how those sentences get better, and Export is how the whole thing finally leaves your hands as a book. Cloud Backup belongs to none of those stages, because it belongs to all of them — it is the only tool in the studio that does its work while you are not here.

It is the outermost of three circles, and they protect you from different things:

• Chapter History protects a chapter from you — a session that went wrong, a paragraph you wish you had kept
• A .muse backup protects your library from the machine — a drive that fails, a computer you are replacing
• Cloud Backup protects it from the room — the fire, the flood, the laptop taken off a café table with the only copy of your novel on it

What changes as you move along that path is not what the backup does. It is what the backup is worth. Lose a week-old idea and you lose an afternoon of remembering; you probably had the better version of it in your head anyway. Lose a finished manuscript and you lose the years. The tool behaves identically at both ends and the stakes are not remotely the same, which is the argument for switching it on at the beginning rather than at the point where it has become obvious.