Here are some considerations on how the backup works as they relate to the use of backup with multiple accounts:
- It is not immediately clear if the chat backup concerns only the account in use or all accounts (spoiler: it concerns only the account in use).
Coming from conversations (xmpp client) this is a bit counterintuitive: in conversations when you make a backup several files are created (each with the name of each account) in the backup folder and when you restore the backup all accounts are restored.
Personally I think that the system adopted by conversations is better: there is no danger to forget to backup some accounts or to make a backup convinced that it concerns all the accounts and then find yourself to restore the backup of a single account risking the loss of the data of the other accounts.
The possible solutions I thought of are:
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Keep the current operation but make it very obvious that you are only backing up the current account.
Maybe changing the entry from “back up chats …” to “backup of current profile”/“backup of current account” or something similar.
By the way, since the settings are also saved, I think it’s more correct to call it account backup rather than chats backup anyway. -
Add another option, just below “back up chats to external storage”, that allows to backup all accounts. This way it would be clear that the first one refers only to the current account.
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Change how the current backup item works and directly create a backup of all accounts (like in conversations).
- Currently when importing a backup the last backup created is always imported, with no choice.
This behavior could be fine if the backup was for all accounts, but currently you have to create the backup of an account, import it, then create the backup of another account and import it, and so on. It would be more convenient to have the possibility to select which backup to import and maybe have names for the backups that allow easy identification of the account they refer to.
Also if you import the same backup multiple times you are not warned that the account already exists and duplicate accounts are created.
Probably the solution I would prefer (since I often test DC nightly and I need to create and import multiple accounts) would be to change the name of the “back up chats…” option to “full account back up” and create a file with a recognizable name for each account and then allow to select the individual files when importing.