Saving and sharing

What gets saved on its own

Everything, without you having to think about it. Every bead laid, every knot changed, every favorite ticked goes into the browser database a fraction of a second after the gesture. Closing the tab mid-stroke loses nothing.

One case is worth knowing about: if an app update is ready while you are drawing, the automatic reload waits until your last strokes are on disk. There is nothing to do about it, it is simply why the countdown sometimes seems to pause.

What autosave does not do is put your patterns anywhere other than this browser. That is what the rest of this page is about.

Exporting, and why it is the only safety net

Nothing goes to a server: no account, no online backup, no bin. A lost project is lost. Exporting is therefore the only action that puts a copy out of reach of a browser cleanup or a machine that gives up.

Two exports, in the same format.

• The whole database, from the ⋮ menu at the top of the projects screen. A dated file holding your projects and your motif library, which lives outside projects and would otherwise be forgotten.
• A single project, from its card menu. Without the motifs: they would all travel along with one bracelet, whereas the beads of a motif already placed are in the pattern.

The file is JSON, read back by the same import in both cases.

Importing a backup

“Import a backup” is in the ⋮ menu, and also spelled out on the empty screen, which is exactly the state of a browser where someone has come to restore something.

An import matches projects by identifier and replaces the ones it finds. That is the right meaning for a restore, and it is the only way an import destroys work. So Motifil counts what is about to be replaced and asks for confirmation when there is cause. Anything matching nothing is added, and nothing is ever deleted.

A file not written by Motifil, or in a newer format, is refused outright rather than half read.

Sharing with a link

The share button sits on every project card and in the header of both editors. It builds an address for you to copy and send.

Here is the surprising part, and the heart of the matter: the pattern travels inside the link itself. It is compressed and written after the # in the address, a part that browsers never send to the server. Nobody hosts your drawing, there is nothing to upload, and whoever receives it needs no account. A share link even opens offline.

Three consequences.

• Receiving opens a dialog, never a silent import. An address pasted into a bar must not modify someone’s collection, and seeing the pattern is the only way to know what you are getting.
• A received pattern gets a fresh identifier. A link adds a copy, it does not sync anything: someone resharing their updated pattern does not overwrite your work. Clicking the same link twice therefore gives you two projects.
• The link freezes the pattern. It holds the state of that moment. If you change the pattern later, the link still opens the old version.

Patterns converted from a photo often exceed what an address can carry: the noise in an image does not compress. Motifil says so plainly and points you to the file export, which has no limit. What sets the bound is not the browser but messaging apps, which cut an over-long link in transit without telling anyone.

The examples

The seven examples below the list are only written into your database when you open one. From then on it is your project: you edit it, it carries your file name, it exports.

Its card menu offers Reset to original, which simply deletes your version and brings the original example back, and Copy to my projects, which makes it a project of its own.

Examples do not count as your projects: they are left out of exports and counts. A backup file full of examples would mostly be demo material, and restoring it elsewhere would overwrite the other person’s.

Duplicating a project

“Duplicate”, in a card’s menu, takes the pattern, the palette and the size. It is the right reflex before a major rework you are unsure about: the two projects then evolve separately.

Deleting everything

The last entry in the ⋮ menu empties the whole database, projects and motifs alike. It asks you to type a word rather than click a second button, and that is not misplaced caution: two buttons get clicked on reflex, typing forces you to read what you are doing.

It is the one action in the product that cannot be taken back. No bin, no server copy, no undo. Export first.