I recently went on a trip and carried a different phone . I set up Arc on the new phone (phone 2), had a fun time, and assumed I’d be able to import from an iCloud backup.
Reading through the forum threads here, I set Arc on phone 2 to back up to iCloud where it created the `Previous Backups RNDSTRING` folder with my phone 1 backup in it. Now I have two Arc database backups, but (despite waiting a while for it to load) Arc on phone 1 isn’t finding anything when I go to import files.
I’m hoping there’s a method to import the 2nd phone DB and then I can merge the couple of duplicate places that will arise? Do I need to name files a specific way or put them in a specific place?
I’m still using the main app for now, but out of curiosity, I checked if Arc Editor had a better UI for restoring databases… And indeed it does! The file browser is a lot more predictable, though it doesn’t seem to have an Import Database button, just restore - which presumably wipes the existing one.
Ah, this is a genuinely tricky one! And 99% in the “it’s impossible” zone, but that remaining 1% has some hope.
The short answer is you can’t deal with this in either Arc Timeline or Arc Editor. There’s no built in functionality that’ll gracefully (or even ungracefully) make it possible. Though Arc Timeline does have the File Importer view, for importing data week by week. But that would at best create an unholy mess.
The most plausible path I think is to… well, I’d have to think through the steps carefully. But the very short version would be:
Migrate to Arc Editor
Export the db from Arc Editor to JSON
Get Claude Code or Codex to look at all that, plus the Arc Timeline backups, and… Do Magic
Delete Arc Editor, reinstall it to get a fresh empty db, then import from Claude/Codex’s magically cleaned up and contiguous JSON
So yeah, the load bearing part there is “get the AI to do it”. And they absolutely can.
A bunch of people are now using Claude Code and Codex to do quite sophisticated analyses, data cleansings, etc, that can then be reimported back in. And the Arc Editor export schema is much more workable than the old Arc Timeline one. (The new schema was largely designed by Claude, so whenever it sees it in a new chat it’s quite pleased with it, and concludes “yeah I can work with this”).
Not the best answer unfortunately! But merging overlapping timelines is genuinely Very Hard. Traditional code in an app can only go so far. It requires Intelligence to get it right. So either it’s a human doing it painstakingly, trial and error, or it’s an AI doing it at scifi speeds, and hopefully getting it right. And with enough care in the process, both Claude and Codex will get it right.
That’s actually not far off from what I had initially planned to do, though I’m not sure I really want to give Anthropic or OpenAI all my location data…. I really need a local model to do sanitization tasks like this!
Might just leave the DBs seperate and live with the data gap for now. I intend to import all of this elsewhere eventually so I can probably kick that can down the road. Any chance this is considered as an import feature for Arc Editor? I feel like my use case is a bit niche…
Oh I definitely wouldn’t recommend any local model for this. Getting this stuff right… it’s non-trivial, there’s a lot of cognitive traps that easily fool both humans and AIs, and even the best current frontier models can make significant mistakes in this area. It warrants careful consideration, validation, and ideally best available intelligence.
And you wouldn’t be giving Anthropic or OpenAI your data wholesale, only enough insight into it to get the job done.
But yeah, I strongly recommend not letting any local model mess with your timeline data! Or at least, if you do do so, make sure you’re not dependent on them getting it right
To answer your question: Yes I think it should be an import feature, even though your use case is niche. It’s niche, but not wild or crazy. It can be needed for non-silly reasons.
The problem is it’s Very Hard. Like, it essentially requires intelligence to do it to any acceptable level of quality. So I think it’s something that’ll have to come after AI is properly integrated into the app. The integrated AI assistant could be provided with all the tools and careful instructions it needs.
Actually, I’ll make sure it’s filed in Linear. It’s going to have to be further down the track, but it shouldn’t get forgotten. Filing now
Do Magic 
