Before a factory reset, a repair or selling the phone
A reset wipes JW Library's notes with everything else, and phone-transfer tools don't carry them. Make a backup, verify it actually opens, then reset with nothing at risk.
Reset the phone, send it in for repair, or hand it on to someone else, and JW Library's personal study data goes with it. Photos and apps come back from a cloud backup; years of notes, highlights and bookmarks generally do not, because phone-transfer tools skip the app's private data.
The fix takes five minutes, and the step people miss is the one that matters most: checking that the backup file is genuinely readable before the device is wiped.
Step by step
Create the backup
JW Library → Personal Study → Backup and Restore → Create a backup. You get a .jwlibrary file — usually only a few megabytes.
Get it off the device
Email it to yourself, or put it in Drive, iCloud or a computer folder. A backup that only exists on the phone you're about to wipe isn't a backup.
Verify it opens before you wipe anything
Load the file at jwsync.org and look at it — the notes, highlights and bookmarks should all be there, and the health check will flag anything wrong with the file. This is the whole point of the exercise: finding out the file is unreadable afterwards is too late.
Reset, then restore
After the reset or repair, install JW Library, sign in, then Backup and Restore → Restore and choose your file.
Used a loaner phone in between? Merge, don't overwrite
If you took notes on a temporary device, back that one up too and merge both files at jwsync.org before restoring — otherwise restoring the old backup erases whatever you wrote while you waited.
Why verification is worth the extra minute
Interrupted transfers, cloud drives that mangle files and extensions renamed in transit all produce backups that look fine in a folder and fail at restore. Opening the file first turns a silent problem into one you can still fix, while the original device still has the data.
Keep the file after the restore
Don't delete it once the new device is working. Old backups are the only way back from a note deleted by accident months later, and they cost nothing to keep.
Frequently asked questions
- Will my downloaded publications come back?
- The backup carries your personal study data — notes, highlights, bookmarks, tags and playlists. Publications simply re-download afterwards.
- Does the file work if I switch to a different phone brand or platform?
- Yes. The .jwlibrary format is the same on Android, iPhone, iPad and Windows.