Cloud sync & backups

Refresh Pilot keeps your extension and the web dashboard in step automatically, in both directions — you never press a "sync" button, because there isn't one. How they stay in step depends on whether you're signed in: a free single install mirrors live in one browser, while a signed-in account keeps a versioned copy in the cloud that every browser you sign into shares.

Two ways your settings travel

Live — a single install, no account FREE

Open the dashboard straight from the extension without signing in and it runs in live mode: it mirrors that one browser's Refresh Pilot in real time, both directions, over a direct link. Nothing is stored on a server — the save indicator reads "● Live — not stored". This single-install setup needs no account and is free.

Cloud sync — when you sign in

Sign into a Refresh Pilot account and your settings live in one versioned copy in the cloud. The extension and every browser you sign into read and write that copy automatically. A single install syncs this way just fine; sharing one set of settings across several machines is PRO — see Using PRO on more than one device.

What travels in the cloud copy: general settings, refresh defaults, weekly schedules, autostart rules, saved expressions, and custom scripts.

Pulling — the extension checks for news

The extension quietly asks the cloud "anything new?" at three moments:

• every 5 minutes in the background,
• when your browser starts,
• every time you open the popup.

If nothing changed, nothing happens. If the dashboard changed something, the extension takes the new version on the spot.

Pushing — your edits go up by themselves

When you change anything in the extension, it uploads about 5 seconds later. The short wait bundles a burst of edits (say, flipping four toggles) into one upload.

When both sides changed — conflicts

Rarely, both the extension and the dashboard edit at the same time. Refresh Pilot resolves it like this:

• In the extension: the dashboard wins. The extension drops its own version and adopts what's in the cloud. No question asked — the assumption is that the dashboard edit was the deliberate one.
• In the dashboard: you decide. A window pops up asking whether to keep "my version" (what you just edited) or the "cloud version".

The Synchronizing page

On the dashboard, the sidebar item once called "Sync Status" is now Synchronizing — your cloud copy's health page. (In free/live mode this item shows a Login pill and opens the sign-in screen instead, since there's no cloud copy until you sign in.) Signed in, it has three cards:

Connection status

• the cloud copy's version tag and stored size — shown as "X KB of 512 KB" — plus when it was last saved from here,
• Reload from cloud — re-fetch the cloud copy into the dashboard,
• Download backup (JSON) and Import backup (JSON)… — see below.

Link another device

Generate link code mints a short 6-character code. Enter it in another browser's Refresh Pilot Options page to link that install to your account, so it follows the settings saved here. That's the manual half of multi-device sync PRO; simply signing in on a browser links its extension automatically.

Applying changes in your browser

A reminder card that restates the automatic pull-and-push above, and how a same-time edit on both sides is resolved.

Backups

Sync protects you from switching devices, not from mistakes — if you delete a schedule, the deletion syncs too. For a real safety copy, download a backup file. There are two backup tools, and they are not the same:

Dashboard backup (the complete one)

On Synchronizing, "Download backup (JSON)" saves a file like refresh-pilot-backup-2026-07-17.json containing everything in your cloud copy — settings, refresh defaults, schedules, autostart rules, saved expressions, and custom scripts. "Import backup (JSON)…" merges such a file back into the cloud copy.

Extension Options backup (the offline fallback)

The extension's Options page (right-click the icon → Options) has its own Export settings / Import buttons, saving refresh-pilot-settings.json. It works without the dashboard and is FREE, but it covers a smaller set: settings, refresh defaults, schedules, autostart rules, and saved expressions. After an import, the extension pushes the result to the cloud automatically, so the dashboard picks it up on its own.