Backups and moving
Everything Dens keeps is on your computer: the keys to your accounts, your settings, and the den, if you host one. A backup keeps it safe, and it’s how you move to another computer. To move a den on its own, use its export instead.
Making a backup
In Dens’s settings, under System, choose Back up. It asks for your local
password, says about how large the backup will be, and your browser downloads
it: one file, named like dens-main-20261012-153000.backup. The file is locked
with your local password, so keep the two apart.
Or run this as yourself, not as admin, which writes the file into the folder you
ran it from (--output picks another place):
dens backupIt says how large the backup will be, and stops before it starts if the folder hasn’t room for it.
A backup that stops partway is never kept as finished: dens backup says it
stopped, and your browser marks the download failed. Make it again.
In the Flatpak, dens backup writes into Dens’s own folder,
~/.var/app/chat.dens.Dens, so the settings’ Back up is the easier way.
A backup holds everything except the cache of other dens’ messages and files, which fills up again by itself. If you host a den, the den is in it too, and a backup keeps every message it held, even ones auto-delete removes later, until you delete the backup.
Restoring, or moving to another computer
Backups work between Linux and Windows, either way.
Install Dens
Install it on the computer you’re moving to.
Restore the backup
Copy the file over, then restore it as admin. It asks for the backup’s local password, and replaces Dens’s data on this computer with the backup’s.
Restoring needs free space on the disk Dens is on: about the backup’s size, and a gigabyte to spare. It checks before it starts, and if the disk still runs short, it stops and says how much more it needs.
sudo dens restore dens-main-20261012-153000.backupOpen Dens
Run dens open, or in the Flatpak pick Dens from your apps menu. Browsers sign
in again after a restore.
If the backup has a den, it comes back with hosting off, so no copy of a den goes online by itself. Set up Caddy and the router for the new computer, point the domain at it, and turn hosting on in Settings, under System (Host a den). Members’ Dens find the den again by themselves.
Moving a den
A backup moves everything on your computer at once. To move a den alone, to
a server or to someone else’s computer, use its export: it only holds the
den, with its members, messages and files, and none of your client data, the
dens you’ve joined, your keys there and your settings, which stay where they
are. In Settings, under System, choose Move the den to another
computer, or run dens den export with hosting off.
The other computer restores the export as it would a backup, and turns hosting on. Once it serves the den, Remove from this computer deletes the copy on yours, and your Dens reaches the den at its address like any member’s. Host on a server goes through it step by step.
A restore replaces everything on the install it goes into, so an export
goes only where Dens holds nothing else yet, as on a new server: restore
refuses one over an install that hosts a den or has joined one, and says
what it holds. On a computer whose Dens is in use, someone’s who’s in the den
already, say, give the den an install of its own: a second instance, as the
end of Host a den describes, and restore
into that one with --instance.
Losing your password or your computer
- Lost the computer, but you have a backup and its local password: restore it on a new one.
- Lost both the computer and the local password: what was on it is gone, by design. Nobody can open it, including you. Your accounts in dens survive, though: on a new install, sign in with your username and a recovery code, then your DM recovery key to read your DMs (Join a den).
Handing a den to someone else
On the den’s computer, with hosting on, run:
dens den owner-inviteIt asks for your local password, and prints a one-time invite that lasts an hour. Whoever joins with it becomes the den’s owner, and you become a moderator. The den itself stays on your computer, which still has the last word: you can make another owner invite whenever you like.
To move the den to their computer as well, give them its export, and remove your copy once they host it. If they use Dens on that computer already, they restore it into a second instance, which keeps their own accounts as they are.
An owner invite is also the way back if you’ve locked yourself out of the owner’s account, say by signing out your only device with no recovery codes left: join with it under a new username.