Anyone who reads that RecTake keeps entries only on the phone tends to ask the next question straight away: what happens when I get a new one? The answer is not a comfortable one, so here it is in full.
The short answer
Your entries do not move to a new phone by themselves. They sit in a database on the old device, RecTake deliberately keeps them out of the iPhone and Android backups, and there is no copy on our server. The only way to take them with you is as a file you export beforehand.
What that means in detail, and how to go about it, is in the sections below.
Why there is no copy in the cloud
There is no copy because your entries are health data and RecTake promises that they do not leave your phone.
That promise has two sides. The first: the account you sign in with knows your email address and your subscription, but not a single entry. There is no route in the app by which entries could reach our server. We could not read them if we wanted to.
The second side is less obvious. An iPhone normally backs up app data to iCloud, and an Android phone to its Google account. Your entries would then sit on Apple’s or Google’s servers without you ever having agreed to it. RecTake switches that off. On iPhone, the folder holding the diary, photos and note recordings is excluded from iCloud backup. On Android, backup is turned off for the app.
That is consistent, and it has a price: whatever is not on the phone is nowhere.
What comes with you and what stays behind
Your account and subscription come with you. Everything you recorded or set up in the app stays on the old phone.
| What | Comes along? |
|---|---|
| Account | Yes. You sign in on the new phone the same way as before. |
| Subscription | Yes, via “Restore purchases”. |
| Entries (supplements, medication, food, drinks, mood, notes) | No. Only as a file you export first. |
| Routines and reminders | No. |
| Words you taught the vocabulary | No. |
| Photos and note recordings | No. |
| Settings such as quiet hours | No. |
So on the new phone RecTake starts with an empty diary, even when you sign in with the same account.
Many new phones offer to copy apps and their data across from the old device during setup. RecTake is built so that its data does not go into the phone’s backup. Plan as if nothing comes across in the move, and export first.
How to secure your entries before you switch
Export them as a spreadsheet: in Settings, under “Your data”, tap “Export as spreadsheet” and send the file through the share sheet to a place you can reach from the new phone.
- Export. “Your data” offers two options. “Export history” gives you a text file to read, “Export as spreadsheet” a CSV file for spreadsheet programs. For a backup, the spreadsheet is the better choice. If in doubt, take both.
- Put it somewhere. Your phone’s share sheet offers where the file goes: an email to yourself, the Files app, a computer. You decide; RecTake does not know the destination. If you put the file in cloud storage, that is where it lives, and that is your choice rather than the app’s.
- Check it. Open the file once before you reset the old phone. Are the last few days in it?
- Only then reset. Deleting the app on the old phone or resetting the device deletes the diary with it.
The spreadsheet holds your whole history, one entry per row, with these columns: Date, Time, Type, Name, Count, Form, Amount, Unit, Total, Mood, Note, Status and Source. Entries you have not confirmed yet are included, and the Status column says so. Deleted entries stay out. Photos and note recordings are not in the file, and neither are routines, reminders or the vocabulary.
What you can do with the file on the new phone
You can read it, search it and open it in a spreadsheet program, but you cannot load it back into RecTake: there is no import today.
That is the most important limitation in this post. The spreadsheet keeps your data safe, but it does not restore your diary inside the app. The history on the new phone starts with the first entry you make there. Everything before that is in your file, where you can look it up, filter it or print it whenever you like.
For a doctor’s appointment that is often enough. How to prepare for one with your records is in Medication and supplements at the doctor’s.
If the phone breaks or gets lost
Then every entry since your last export is gone, and nobody can restore it, including us.
There is no back door. Support cannot look anything up, the account knows nothing, and the phone’s backup does not contain the diary. If your records matter to you, only one thing helps: export regularly.
- A fixed date. The first of every month, say, or before you travel.
- A fixed place. Always the same folder, so you can find the latest file when you need it.
- The newest file is the one that counts. Every export contains the whole history, so you can delete older ones.
Your subscription on the new phone
Your subscription comes with you, because it is held by the App Store or Google Play and not by the phone.
Sign in on the new device with the same account and tap “Restore purchases”. If that does not work, the steps are on the support page.
Why it is built this way
Because a copy in the cloud would mean your health data sitting with one more company, and that would contradict what RecTake promises.
Building it differently would be easy. Sync through a server, an automatic backup, and switching phones would be painless. But there would then be a place outside your phone holding your mood, your medication and your notes, and a privacy policy that would have to explain exactly that. We chose the other side. Your entries belong to you, and so the copy is yours to keep as well. The export is the tool for it.
What RecTake stores and where is set out in full in the privacy policy. What to look for in tracker apps in general is in Supplement tracker app: what actually matters.
RecTake isn’t in the store yet. If you would like to hear when it is, join the waitlist. You will get exactly one message.