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Backups
Your profile lives on your phone, so losing the phone could mean losing it. Backup keeps an encrypted copy in your own cloud account. Mera's servers never see it.
Backup is optional. You turn it on in the app.
The recovery code
Your phone generates a random 32-byte key and shows it once as a recovery code: 52 characters plus a check character, in groups of 5 so you can write it down.
The recovery code is the key. There's no password and no copy on any server.
If you lose the recovery code, nobody can open your backup. Mera can't recover it for you.
An option to keep a passphrase-protected copy of the key on a server was designed and dropped before release.
The app keeps the key in the phone's keychain, set to stay on that device, so it doesn't travel through iCloud Keychain.
Where backups go
| Provider | Available on | Where it sits |
|---|---|---|
| iCloud | iPhone | The app's private iCloud storage, not your iCloud Drive files |
| Google Drive | iPhone and Android | A hidden folder for this app only |
Drive access uses the drive.appdata scope, which can't read your own Drive files. You connect Google only for backup, never to sign in to Mera.
You choose how often: manually, daily or weekly, with an option for Wi-Fi only. Mera keeps your 3 most recent backups and deletes older ones after a successful upload.
A backup can be up to 25 MB. If it goes over, the app reports a failure instead of quietly dropping data.
What's in a backup
Mera backs up what you created or curated and leaves behind what can be fetched again.
| Included | Not included |
|---|---|
| Facts, topics, declined topics | Chat conversations |
| Places and your profile | Your feed, which refills from the server |
| Publication preferences and subscriptions | Article reactions |
| Followed stories | Fact checks |
| Saved articles and publication visits | Notifications |
| Selected settings | Your Mera account or plan |
Saved articles and publication visits have a row limit, and the newest rows are kept.
Chat is left out on purpose. A backup carries your profile, including the facts that came from a conversation, and leaves the transcripts behind.
Settings are included by allowlist, so a new setting stays out unless it's added on purpose. Keys, tokens and account identifiers can never go in.
How it's encrypted
The app compresses your data, splits it into chunks and encrypts each chunk with XChaCha20-Poly1305. A cloud provider stores a file it can't read.
The format also resists tampering:
- Swapping chunks fails, because a counter in the nonce is authenticated.
- Cutting a file short fails, because only the real last chunk is marked as last.
- Moving chunks between backups fails, because each backup has its own nonce prefix and header.
A small header stays readable. It holds format details and row counts, and no user identifier, email address or device name. It's authenticated too, so changing it makes the whole file fail.
The code is public in lib/backup/ in the Mera app repository.
Restoring
On a new phone, sign in, go to backup, choose your provider and enter your recovery code. The app checks the code before it touches anything on the phone.
A restore replaces your profile. It doesn't merge with what's there. It also doesn't turn backup on for the new phone, so you choose that again.
Your plan comes from your store account and isn't part of the backup. See Sign-in and devices.
Turning backup off
Backups stop and the phone forgets your recovery code. Copies already saved stay in your cloud account until you remove them, and you'll need the code you wrote down to open them.