GardenTrack
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Backing up your garden

Live · This works today.

Every change you make is saved on your phone the instant you make it, then copied to your account when there is a connection. The line at the bottom of the screen tells you which of those two has happened. Nothing is ever waiting on a connection before it is safe — the phone copy is written first, always, and the backup is a second copy rather than the real one.

Two copies, and the phone one comes first

Every single thing you record — a plant, a watering, a photo, a note — is written to your phone the instant you tap it. No connection needed, no waiting, no spinner. Then, separately, it is copied up to your account.

That order is deliberate and it is the whole design. Gardens are behind houses, under trees, at the end of gardens, and a plant you are looking at right now is not going to wait while a phone hunts for a bar of signal. So the phone copy is the real one, and the backup is a second copy of it.

The line at the bottom of the screen is only ever telling you about that second copy.

What the counter is actually counting

It counts changes that exist on your phone and not yet in your account. It is not a warning, and it is not a queue of things at risk — every one of them is already saved. When it reaches zero it says Backed up and goes away.

Photos are counted separately from everything else, because they travel separately. A large picture on a slow connection should not hold up a watering you logged afterwards, so it does not.

Your conversations and reminders travel with everything else. The questions you asked, the answers you got, what each photo was read as, and the jobs you asked to be reminded about — all of it goes to your account. Sign in on a new phone and the answer you were given in July is still there.

A refused change is a different thing entirely

Most of the time a backup has not happened because it has not had the chance — no signal, or the app has only just opened. That resolves itself and the app says so.

Occasionally something different happens: we ask the server to take a change and the server says no. That is a settled answer. It will say the same thing tomorrow, and waiting will not help. So the app stops calling it “waiting” and counts it apart from everything else.

On Profile you will see both numbers. The row reads Not backed up — 31 changes, 6 refused: thirty-one on the phone and not in your account, six of which have been turned down. The line under it says which ones signal will fix and which ones it will not, and the Back up now button only appears when there is something for it to send. If every change in the queue has been refused, the button that helps is Try these again on the card above.

Open Profile and it is listed: what the change was, and the reason it was turned down, written out rather than as a code. There is a button to try the lot again, which is worth pressing after signing into a different account or once something it depends on has gone up.

The change itself is still on your phone the whole time. Nothing is deleted because the server would not take it.

It also tries again by itself, once a day. A refusal is not always permanent — we update the app several times a day, and a change turned down this morning can go through perfectly well tomorrow. So you are not relied on to notice. The button is there for when you would rather not wait.

When you use two devices

Your phone and your laptop each keep their own copy and each catches up from your account. A change made on one shows up on the other the next time the second one is opened and has a connection — not the instant you make it. If you add a plant on your phone while the laptop is shut, the laptop learns about it when you next open it.

Deleting works the same way, and it is the harder half. A plant you remove on your phone has to be described to the other device as a deletion, because the other device still has it. If that message never arrives, the second device keeps showing something you got rid of — and it looks like the app forgot, when in fact it was never told.

That went wrong twice, and the second one was the real fault. On 13 August 2026 a garden cleared on a phone was still sitting on a laptop a day later. Eighty-four records — plants, beds, journal entries and conversations — had been marked as gone without being moved to the front of the queue the other device reads from. Those were put back in order.

The laptop still did not update, because it was never asking. The app talks to your account in a single call that carries changes both ways at once. Before making that call it checked whether it had anything of its own to send, and if it did not, it skipped the call — which also skipped hearing anything back. A device you only read from has nothing to send, so it stopped receiving after its first sync and would have stayed that way until you happened to change something on it.

The call now happens whether or not there is anything to say. Open the app on a second device and it asks for what it missed, every time. Nothing was ever lost by this — the device with your changes on it was always right, and the other one was simply out of date without saying so.

The two codes on Profile

Under The app, on the Plant data card, there is a line like App 4f7fca7 · plant data 9c2e11b. They are two different things and it is worth knowing which is which if you ever report a problem.

App is the version of the app itself — the screens, the buttons, the behavior. Plant data is the version of the growing information behind it: the sowing depths, the spacings, the frost dates, the pest entries.

They move independently. We correct plant information far more often than we change the app, so the second code changes more than the first. If you are telling us something is wrong, quoting both is the fastest way for us to see exactly what you were looking at.

Why this page exists

Because for two days in August 2026 the app got this wrong, and it got it wrong in the worst possible direction. Four changes had been refused, and the screen described them as waiting to back up — every time it was opened, for two days, while the answer had been settled on the first attempt.

Nothing was lost; it was all still on the phone. But an app whose entire promise is that it remembers your garden does not get to say “waiting” about something that is never going to happen. Being told nothing would have been better than being told that. It now separates the two and says which one you are looking at.

And then it happened again, in the other direction, on 11 August. The alarm at the bottom of the screen had been fixed to count the refused changes on their own — and it printed that count under the words not backed up, which is a different question with a bigger answer. A phone with thirty-one changes waiting, six of them refused, was told six. The other twenty-five were not backed up either and were never mentioned. Meanwhile the row on Profile had the opposite problem: it called all thirty-one waiting to back up when six of them were waiting for nothing.

Two numbers, three sentences, and every sentence picked the wrong one. They all read from one place now, and there is a test that fails our build if the total ever shrinks to the alarm count again.

Who can see your garden

Your plants, your journal and your photographs belong to your account, and every part of the app that reads them checks that they are yours first.

That was not completely true until 15 August 2026. Asking a question about a plant checked that the plant existed and not that it belonged to you. We found it ourselves, before the beta opened and while the only accounts in existence were our own, and fixed it the same day — the check is now in place and a test fails if anyone removes it. Nobody’s garden was read by anybody.

One check instead of a copy in every place

The check described above was written out by hand in each place that needed it. That is correct, and it stays correct only while everyone remembers to write it. As of 26 August 2026 it is one shared piece of code instead, and it refuses by default — if it cannot prove the thing belongs to you it says no, including when it cannot reach the database to ask.

This changes nothing you can see, and nothing was wrong before it. It is groundwork: we are adding ways for the assistant to look things up in your garden, and each of those is another place the check would have had to be written out again. Now they all go through the same door, and a test fails the build if one of them reads your data before checking rather than after.

Common questions

It says the server will not take some of my changes. What does that mean?
**It means those changes are still safe on your phone, and we have refused to file them rather than file them wrongly.** Tap *See what* and you get the list. **The usual cause is an app that is newer than the server** — you updated, the new version knows a word the server has not learned yet, and it sends it. **Until 25 August 2026 that went badly in a way you could not see**: the server quietly put the old value back, your phone pulled it down, and the correct answer you had just given was overwritten by the previous one. A garden with no real frost could go back to being dated off a winter zone, on every device, with nothing said anywhere. **Now it refuses the change and tells you.** Nothing is lost — the change stays on your phone and goes up as soon as the server understands it, usually within a day. ⚠ **If it is still saying it after a couple of days, tell us with the pencil button** and include what the list shows, because at that point it is our end rather than a version gap.
Every screen was blank with just the row of tabs at the bottom. What happened?
**The app could not open its records on that device, and until 23 August it said nothing about it.** Everything you record is written to your phone first, so if that store cannot be opened there is nothing for any screen to show — and every screen sat there waiting rather than telling you. It now says so, on a screen of its own with no tabs under it, because five tabs that all lead somewhere empty is five invitations to try again in a way that cannot work. **The commonest cause is having GardenTrack open in more than one tab when an update lands**: the older copy has to close before the newer one can start. Close the other tabs and open it again. If the older tab goes away on its own, the app picks up where it was without a reload.
Can my phone delete my garden on its own?
**It can, and from 26 August 2026 we ask it not to.** Everything you record is written to your phone first. That store belongs to the browser, and a browser is allowed to clear it out when it wants space back. **Safari is the one to know about**: it drops a site’s stored data after about a week of using Safari without visiting that site. ⚠ **That is a week of using the browser, not a week on the calendar** — so somebody who goes quiet through two wet weeks in November, while reading the news on their phone every day, is on a clock they cannot see. **The app now asks the browser to keep your garden as soon as you add your first plant.** We ask at that point rather than the moment you arrive, because that is the first time there is anything here worth keeping — and because browsers are more likely to say yes to a site somebody actually uses. ⚠ **The browser can still say no, and we cannot make it say yes.** Chrome decides for itself based on how much you use the app; Firefox asks you; Safari does neither in a way anyone can rely on. **And this is not a backup.** It only stops the browser reclaiming space on its own. It does nothing about a lost phone, a browser you clear yourself, or tapping *Clear everything on this device*. ⚠ **The only thing that survives those is an account** — which is what the rest of this page is about.
Do I lose anything when that happens?
When the message says another tab has your garden open, no — something is actively using your records, which is the whole reason this copy cannot. When it says it cannot open them at all, **we do not claim either way, because we do not know**: a browser or a phone can clear its own storage when space runs short. That is what an account is for. A backed-up garden survives anything that happens to one device; signed out, your garden lives on that phone and nowhere else.
The app took nearly a minute to open the first time. Why?
**Ours, and it is fixed as of 18 August 2026.** The first time you opened it, the app tried to download every single thing it might ever need before it would show you anything — all 152 crop pictures, all 151 variety lists, the whole frost map. **Over five megabytes, on a phone, before the first screen.** On a good connection that is slow. On a patchy one in a garden it is close to a minute of looking at nothing. **Now it downloads the app itself and starts.** Everything else comes down quietly a few seconds later, once you are already using it. **Nothing is lost from what worked before** — the whole catalog still ends up on your phone for when you have no signal, it just no longer makes you wait for it before you can see your own garden. If you open a plant before that quiet download has finished, its picture and variety list are fetched right then and kept. Either way you end up in the same place.
What happens to my garden if I sign out?
**It leaves this phone, and it comes back when you sign in again.** Signing out clears every plant, bed, note and photo off the device — on purpose. If you hand the phone to somebody, or sign in on a shared tablet, the next person must not be able to read your garden. **Your account keeps everything**, so signing back in downloads it all again. **The one thing that does not survive is anything not yet backed up.** If you are offline when you sign out, whatever is still waiting to reach your account goes with the wipe — Profile tells you how many changes are waiting, and if there are any it says so right next to the sign-out button. Wait until it says everything is backed up and there is nothing to lose. **Until 17 August 2026 that button said your garden stayed on the phone either way, which was wrong** — the wipe has always happened and the sentence beside it denied it.
Two of us share a tablet. Will the second person see the first person's garden?
**No — and until 16 August 2026 they would have.** Here is what was happening. Your garden is kept on the device as well as in your account, which is what lets the app work with no signal. To stay in step it remembers a marker: *I already have everything up to here.* Signing out cleared the login and left everything else exactly where it was — the plants, the journal, the photos, and that marker. So when the next person signed in, the app looked at a marker that belonged to somebody else, decided there was nothing new to fetch, and showed them the first person's garden while reporting a perfectly healthy backup. No error, no warning. **Now the device says whose garden it is holding every time it syncs, and the server — the only side that actually knows who is signed in — checks.** If they do not match, everything local is cleared first and the correct account is downloaded in full. **Signing out clears it too**, so a tablet you hand to somebody else does not keep your garden on it.
If signing out wipes the garden off my phone, have I lost anything?
**Nothing.** It removes the copy on that device, not the one in your account — the same way signing out of email does not delete your email. Sign back in and everything comes down again: plants, beds, journal, photos, chats. The app also tries to send up anything not yet backed up before it clears, and if you are offline when you sign out it still signs you out, because being somewhere with no signal is exactly when people mean it. The one thing worth knowing: if you were offline **and** had changes not yet backed up, those changes go with the wipe. The line at the bottom of the screen tells you whether anything is still waiting.
Profile said everything had backed up, but I do not have an account.
It did, and it was wrong. Fixed 13 August 2026. **That line was worked out from the queue of changes waiting to go up, and an empty queue is not a backup** — it only means nothing is waiting. On a phone with no account nothing was ever waiting, because there is nowhere for it to go, so the app read "queue empty" and told you the opposite of the truth. **Three blocks higher on the same screen it also said "it lives only on this phone", which was the accurate one.** It now reads *nothing is waiting, nothing has backed up either — that needs an account.* Your garden was never at any more risk than the honest sentence already described; what was broken was which of the two you happened to read.
Does signing in keep the changes I made before I had an account?
**Yes, every one of them, and from 13 August the sign-in screen says so.** Anything you recorded before signing in is on your phone, waiting. The moment you are in, it goes up — you do not have to do anything, and nothing is asked of you first. **The screen has always been able to tell you that** — *"4 changes will back up as soon as you are in"* — and it never did, because the number feeding that sentence had been left at zero and nobody went back to it. So the one screen where you are most likely to wonder whether your work survives said nothing about your work. It shows the real count now.
I am offline and not signed in. It offered to back my changes up. Could it?
**No, and as of 13 August 2026 it no longer offers.** Backing up means having an account, and signing in works by emailing you a code — so with no connection there is nothing that button could do. The line now says what is actually true: your changes are saved on this device and safe there, and signing in to back them up needs a connection. **The count was never the wrong part.** Those changes really are on your phone, really are safe, and really are not backed up anywhere else — that sentence is the same online or off. It was the invitation that could not be honored. The moment your signal returns, the offer comes back on its own without you reloading anything.
I tapped "Email me a code" and the button stuck on "Sending…" and never came back.
**That was a real bug, and it is fixed as of 13 August 2026.** If your phone could not reach us at the moment you tapped it — no signal, or our end being down — the button went to *Sending…*, switched itself off, and stayed that way. No message, no error, nothing left to tap. **The only way out was closing the app and opening it again**, on the one screen whose entire job is letting you in. It comes straight back now, and it tells you which of the two happened: *You are offline* when your phone knows it has no connection, and *Could not reach us just now* when it thinks it does — because a phone on café or hotel wifi will cheerfully report itself online while nothing actually gets through, and blaming your signal for our outage would send you hunting for a better spot to stand. **Your garden was never at risk either way.** It is written to the phone first and it stays there whether you ever sign in or not. **The same hole was in "Sign out on this device"**, which silently did nothing at all when it could not reach us — you tapped it, and you stayed signed in with no hint why. That is fixed too, and signing out now works with no connection at all, because forgetting the account on your phone is the part that never needed us.
Does everything I record get backed up, or only some of it?
Almost everything, and from 11 August 2026 there is a check that fails our build if a new thing is added to the app and quietly never sent to your account. That gap is worse than it sounds: a note that saves on your phone and never leaves it **looks recorded** until you replace the phone. **The last known one closed on 12 August 2026**, and it was a variety name you typed yourself rather than picked from our list: it saved on your phone, it was sent to us with the rest of the plant, and our side had nowhere to put it, so it stayed on the one device forever. It is stored and it travels now. **We found it the way we find most of these** — somebody used the app on two devices for the first time and told us what was missing.
I opened the app on a new phone or a laptop and there was no way to sign in.
**That was true until 12 August 2026, and it was our fault rather than yours.** Every place that offered you an account only appeared once you already had plants saved on that device — so the app looked complete to anyone who had used it before, and had no visible way in for anyone who had not. **On a fresh device the front page now offers it directly**, under the button for adding your first plant: *Sign in or start an account — so your garden survives a new phone.* Tap it, put in your email, and the code that arrives either brings an existing garden back onto that device or starts you a fresh one. **There is no separate sign-up to hunt for**: the same screen does both, because entering the code creates the account if you do not have one yet. **You do not need it to start using the app** — adding plants works with no account at all, which is why the offer sits below the main button rather than in front of it. It disappears as soon as you add your first plant, and from then on the line at the bottom of the screen tells you what is backed up.
The chat told me to sign in, but I cannot find "sign in" anywhere.
The word is on every door now, and getting there took two goes. The chat says "sign in on Profile to ask", and Profile offered "back it up", which lands on a screen headed "back up your garden" — **three names for one door**, none of them the word you were told to look for. We fixed the wording in the setup checklist on the home screen and **wrote here that Profile had been fixed too. It had not.** Profile still said "back up my garden" until 12 August 2026, when somebody went and looked at the actual screen instead of trusting this page. It now says **"sign in to back up my garden"**, so the word you were sent looking for is on the checklist, on Profile, on the front page of a new device, and on the screen you land on. It is one thing doing two jobs: your garden survives a lost phone and shows up on your other devices, and it is what lets you ask questions in Ask.
What does the line at the bottom of the screen mean?
It is the count of changes that are on your phone but not yet in your account. 'Backing up…' means it is happening right now. 'Will back up when you have signal' means **your phone has no connection**. 'Backup did not go through; trying again' means **you have a connection and the problem is at our end** — those two used to say the same thing, which was wrong from 25 August 2026, and telling somebody with full signal to wait for signal is advice they cannot act on. 'Waiting to back up' means it has not started yet and will shortly. And '✓ Backed up' means everything you have done is in both places. **Either way your work is safe on your phone and nothing is lost** — the difference is only whether waiting will help.
I followed 'Back it up' and the sign-in screen told me to back up again.
**It did, and it stopped on 23 August 2026.** That line draws at the bottom of every screen, and it had no exception for the one screen that is the answer to it — so the last thing you saw after doing what it asked was the same request, pointing at the page you were already standing on. **The count is still there on that screen**, because it is still true and it is worth knowing; what has gone is the offer, the same way it goes when you are offline and signing in is not possible. The screen itself already tells you the useful version — *'4 changes will back up as soon as you are in'*. **'Back it up' also got bigger the same day.** It was fifty-four pixels wide and thirteen tall, which is under a third of the smallest thing a thumb should have to hit, on every screen in the app. It is a full-sized target now. It looks the same; there is simply more of it to press.
It says '31 changes are not backed up. The server will not take 6 of them.' What are the two numbers?
**The first number is all of them, and it is the one that answers 'is my garden safe'.** Thirty-one changes are on your phone and not in your account. Most are simply on their way. Six of them are different: we asked, the server answered, and the answer was no — those will not go up on their own no matter how long you wait. **Until 11 August 2026 this line showed you the six and never mentioned the other twenty-five**, so it named the small problem and hid the bigger number. Both are on it now.
Is my garden safe if it has not backed up?
On that phone, yes. The write goes to the phone before anything else and does not depend on a connection. What you lose without a backup is the second copy — so if the phone is lost or the app is deleted, so is the garden. That is the only reason the counter exists.
What does it mean when the server will not take a change?
It means we tried, the server answered, and the answer was no. That is different from having no signal, and it will not fix itself by waiting — which is why it says something different. Open Profile: the card at the top reads 'N changes did not back up' and lists exactly what each one was and why it was turned down, in words, with a button to try them again.
One of the refused rows showed a word like not_your_thread instead of a sentence.
That was a real hole and it is closed. **The list that turns the server's reasons into English had eight of them; the server can send eleven** — so three could arrive with nothing to say, and one of those was the conversations you have in Ask. All eleven have sentences now, and a check reads the server's own code before every release, so a reason added on our side without an English version fails our build rather than reaching your screen. **If a newer server ever sends a reason this version of the app has not heard of, it says exactly that** — that it has no words for it — instead of showing you the code. A code you cannot act on is not a reason.
Why would the server refuse a change?
Almost always because it belongs to a different account, or because the plant or bed it hangs off has not backed up yet. The second kind sorts itself out on the next go. The first kind usually means the phone is signed into a different account than the one that holds that garden.
Do my conversations back up, or only my plants?
All of it. The chat and the reminders were the last things wired in and for a while they lived only on the phone. They now back up with everything else, including which photos were attached and what the answer read in them.
Does asking a question use my phone's copy or the backed-up one?
The backed-up one. Answers are worked out on our side, so they can only see what has reached your account. A plant you added while the backup was stuck is a plant the answer genuinely has not been told about — it is not forgetting, it has never seen it.

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Shipped 2026-08-05. Last checked 2026-08-26. Something here wrong or out of date? Tell us — support docs going stale is a bug.