v0.145.4Internal beta docs
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Beta documentation · eXLib v0.145.4. Public release is pending.

Autobackup & Restore

eXLib keeps a running history of your library without you having to ask for one. Every launch writes a full, dated backup automatically, and restoring from any of them is just the import pipeline you'd use for any other archive — there's no separate restore mechanism to learn.

Autobackup on every launch

Once per session, eXLib builds a complete .exlib archive of your library and adds it to a rotation it manages entirely on its own:

  • It never delays the panel opening — the panel is available whether the backup succeeds, fails, or is still running.
  • The new archive is written before anything old is pruned. If anything goes wrong partway through, that can only ever leave more backups on disk than the policy keeps, never fewer.
  • The rotation keeps the newest 30. Once a new backup lands successfully, the oldest ones past that count are removed.
  • If nothing in the library changed since the last launch, that launch's backup is skipped rather than spending a slot on identical bytes — so a session that restarts After Effects repeatedly (exactly when you'd want a real history most) still keeps 30 genuinely distinct snapshots instead of 30 copies of the same one.

Where the archives live

The rotation lives in eXLib's own system folder, deliberately outside anywhere an After Effects update or reinstall could reach:

  • macOS: ~/Library/Application Support/eXLib/backups
  • Windows: %APPDATA%\eXLib\backups

Each file is named exlib-backup-<date>_<time>.exlib (for example exlib-backup-2026-08-08_143002.exlib), so the file names alone sort into chronological order.

Restoring from one

Settings → Backup & restore lists the rotation, newest first. Each entry has its own Restore.

Restoring an automatic backup runs through the exact same pipeline as importing any hand-picked .exlib file — read, classify, and the same collision dialog if anything in it collides with what's already in your library.

i

These screenshots were captured in an earlier beta. Toolbar and Library layouts have since changed; the written instructions on this page describe v0.145.4. See A Tour of the Panel for the current controls.

Every launch writes a date-stamped archive and keeps the newest thirty — and you restore any of them from right here.
Every launch writes a date-stamped archive and keeps the newest thirty — and you restore any of them from right here.
The list itself refreshes automatically — once when the panel opens, and again whenever a launch backup lands or an import finishes.

The one manual backup verb

Settings → Backup & restore has a single manual backup verb: Back up / export library…. It opens a save dialog and writes the whole library to an .exlib file wherever you choose. Beside it, Import / restore archive… is the read-side counterpart — see .exlib Archives.

Backing up and exporting are the same act — one label for one idea. The file it writes is a standard .exlib archive, so anything you save this way can be restored from Settings or imported on another machine.

The internal pre-delete backup

Every expression delete in the Library — a single expression, a folder, or a batch — triggers its own automatic backup first, underneath the confirm dialog you already see. That's one recovery layer even if you never think to back up by hand. A pseudo-folder delete is the exception: it relocates managed rigs to the parent and moves the leftover tree to _meta/trash/ instead of writing this backup. See Library Recovery for the two distinct restore paths.

The same mechanism also runs before a Take theirs import resolution overwrites your copy with the archive's — see .exlib Archives.

i

This isn't a verb you'll find a button for. It exists to protect an action you're already taking — a delete, an overwrite — not to be triggered on its own. The launch rotation above and the manual export verb are the two backups you actually reach for; this one works quietly underneath both.