I recently discovered that Arc hasn’t backed up for six months. I’m not sure if this is because I reset my iPhone or not. I tried keeping Arc running in the foreground while my iPhone was plugged in with its battery, but nothing seemed to work. I also tried disabling and re-enabling the backup function, but it always reverted to the on status automatically after restarting the app. My iPhone is running iOS 18.1, and the Arc app is version 3.17.0.
Some time ago I had the same issue.
It turned out that I had disabled background activity for this app. Re-enabling it in the iOS settings made it work again.
Sietse
Oh yes, as @vogon1 says, do make sure Arc has all its requested permissions.
Other than that, it may well be that the backups are not too far off complete. When it says “last backup completed” it’s really meaning literally that - last time it fully completed doing the backups. It will still be working away at them every night, most likely getting very close to complete, but just getting stopped short each time due to iOS not wanting to give Arc all the time it needs to get it done.
You can double check to see how up to date it is by having a look in the LocomotionSample folder in the Backups folder on iCloud Drive (Arc App / Backups / LocomotionSample). There should be a file in there for each week of each year that you have data, and as long as those all look present and correct you’re pretty safe. Those files are the heart of the backups, and everything else can be reconstructed from that data if needed.
Oh, best to avoid trying this. When you do that it resets the “backed up” state of every object in the database, starting everything from from zero, and creating a new empty Backups folder (renaming the old one to Previous Backups). That sets you back to the beginning in terms of getting a full backup complete.
It will definitely be running the backups every chance it gets (as long as Arc has the permissions it needs), so there’s nothing to worry about in terms of getting the backups to happen. It’ll just be a matter of allowing them to run long enough each day to fully finish.
If a backup task hasn’t fully completed within the last 1-2 days then it will also run the backups when Arc is in the foreground and plugged in to power (as well as its usual running of the task when the phone is idle and plugged in to power, eg overnight). So you can hurry it along by doing that - leaving Arc open in the foreground while on the charger.
But as long as you do see all the weekly sample files in that folder, I wouldn’t worry about it too much. It’ll just mean it’s getting almost all of the job done, but getting cut short each day by iOS telling Arc to stop. The important data will be there, as long as those sample files are all there.
Hi Matt, I tried disabling the background app refresh and enabling it again, and I’ve been doing this
for 10 days, but the app still said that the last backup completed 6 months ago. I checked the Backup/LocomotionSample folder on iCloud, and there are only five json.gz files from 2024-W44 to 2024-W48. I do have several previous backup folders containing more json.gz files from 2022.
Am I supposed to copy and paste them to the Backup/LocomotionSample folder? Thank you.
Each time you turn off and back on the iCloud Drive Backups setting in Arc a new Previous Backups folder will be created. The Backups folder gets renamed to Previous Backups, to preserve it. Then a new empty Backups folder is created.
If you ever need to restore from backup, it’s possible to restore from multiple previous backups. So as long as all the sample week files are there, spread across those folders, you’re okay. But it’s not ideal! It’ll mean more fuss and frustration when restoring, so it’s nice to have one fully complete Backups folder.
Though there’s no need to create that manually by copying files around. You can get Arc to do it itself. Though it will take several days to finish, in most cases.
If Arc has iCloud Drive Backups turned on now, leave it that way. No point in creating more Previous Backups folders by fiddling the setting. As long as it’s turned on and Arc either gets given time by iOS to run its task, or it gets foreground time while plugged in to power, it’ll keep chipping away at doing a complete backup.
Overall I wouldn’t worry about it too much. As long as it’s turned on and it is getting at least partially completed each night there won’t be anything to worry about. But for the sake of comfort, you could have a check through the various previous and current Backups folders and check to see that there’s a samples week file for every week that you have data. If all those week files are there, your data is safe. And if the most recent week(s) are updated recently, that means that the new data is still getting backed up each day.
That’s the problem. I’ve kept Arc in the foreground for days, but no old samples week files have been moved to the current Backups/LocomotionSample folder. It still said that last backup completed 6 months ago.
I can see a new samples week file created each week, but the old files in the Previous Backups folder remain unchanged.
Sounds like the new backup is only creating week files for data that’s changed since the new backup started. Which isn’t what it’s meant to do, but also isn’t a major problem. As long as the data exists in the Previous Backups folder it’s not lost, and can still be restored from.
If you want to encourage it to recreate week files for the weeks that haven’t had changes since the new backup started you could try swiping back to days within those weeks in timeline view. Just viewing any day in the week will probably cause some minor changes to the items, which will then result in that week being backed up again in the new Backups folder.
I’ll have a look into why it might not be bothering to recreate the week files for week that haven’t changed. Hopefully can get that fixed in the next update. But yeah, in the meantime, that’s not something to be too worried about as long as those Previous Backups folders are there.
This part is odd though! It doesn’t need to recreate every file in order to consider the backup complete. It just needs to have backed up all the data that it sees as changed. So it really should’ve “completed” a backup by now, if it’s had foreground time while plugged in to power. That typically shouldn’t take more than a few hours at absolute most.
Things to double check: That the phone isn’t in Low Power Mode at the time; that the phone is plugged in to a charger; that you’re not travelling at the time (the backups won’t start when actively recording).
I’ve just come looking in the forums for this exact issue. Mine last performed a backup on 2 Sep 2024 (which I didn’t realise until today). Thanks @vogon1 for the suggestion RE background app updates. I had disabled that on my phone when travelling in a country with very little phone coverage, let alone wifi, and didn’t realise the impact on Arc Timeline.
I guess it’s just a matter of waiting (impatiently) now. 
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For reference in case others read this…
I put Arc in the foreground and set my phone lock to ‘never’ and it took about 25 mins for the backup status to change from “last backup completed 4 months ago” to being backed up.
I checked Google Drive and could see the Backups/LocomotionSample folder updating throughout. There was no change to the Daily nor Monthly backup folders during this time.
Another 10 mins later and the Monthly backups folder has been updated with the missing months.
There has been no change in the Daily folder so I’m waiting (still impatiently) and hope it will sort itself out in the coming 24 hours.
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Glad to hear the backups caught up so quickly! That’s better than it usually happens for me. Though I guess usually when I’m doing the “turn off screen lock” trick I’m starting from zero, with a completely fresh backup on a test device. That usually takes my test phones a bunch of hours.
Ah the daily and monthly auto exports? Those… I really need to do something about those. Though I’m still not entirely sure what, other than removing the monthly setting and adding a weekly setting, given that the monthly ones are the most energy expensive. But that auto exports system as a whole really is a major energy sink, often causing problems for the other scheduled tasks…
I don’t use the monthly exports but I do use the daily ones to help me see the roads I have travelled, as part of a personal preference to not use the same road twice if I can help it, when visiting my family interstate.
I thought these were the products of the backup process, but now it sounds like it’s something else???
Yeah they’re from the next settings section down, “Automatic daily exports”. If you don’t need the monthly ones, then definitely turn them off.
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Ok, so I’ve turned off monthly exports now.
The daily ones have not been saved as expected. There are only 14 files exported for Sep, 8 for Oct, 11 for Nov, and 9 for Dec.
The dates are non-sequential and seem to be randomly chosen. I can’t figure out any obvious pattern to them. For example, in October there’s an overall file called 2024-10
There’s also:
2024-10-04
2024-10-05
2024-10-15
2024-10-18
2024-10-22
2024-10-26
2024-10-28
Ideas and thoughts welcomed!
Hmm. According to the code it should be ordering from newest to oldest when updating/creating the files. Though it’s only updating files that have changed data since the last auto export was completed. But that doesn’t line up with the missing days in previous months that you’re seeing, so that’s… unexplained.
That looks like one of the monthly auto export files.
My guess is that iOS isn’t starting the auto export task, or starting it but not letting it finish. Though given that it should be starting from most recent data / most recent days and working backwards, the missing days don’t make sense.
I’d say just leave it and see what happens over the next few days. Hopefully with the monthly auto exports turned off iOS will become more willing to start the daily task and let it run for longer. So maybe it’ll catch up and fill in gaps. Though I’m still curious about the gaps - from the code logic I can’t see how those would happen…
I agree. I don’t know why it’s in the Daily folder
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Likewise, no idea why it’s in there! Makes no sense.
For all these kinds of mysteries I’m leaning more and more towards “just get Arc Editor into beta, and rebuild the feature with fresh clean code in there”. And it’s so close! There’s just one annoying blocker (some weird processing that’s happening overnight sometimes), then I’ll be able to start prepping for beta…
I don’t think this will do anything useful, unfortunately. Best to just leave background app refresh on permanently, and only turn it off for apps that you don’t trust.
Hmm. That’s annoying! Though it will still doing backups each night, just not completely finishing each time.
Yes that’s correct. the Previous Backups folders never change. Those are created when you turn off backups and turn it back on. The Backups folder gets renamed to Previous Backups, then left unchanged. A new Backups folder is then created and each night’s backups then go into that one.
I would say that as long as you see sample week files for every week that you have timeline data, you’re safe. Those files are the most important, and everything else can be recreated based on those.
So while it’s not ideal that the backup task isn’t being allowed to complete each day, if you do have all of those sample week files, there’s no reason to be majorly concerned. Your recorded data is still safely backed up.