Helping someone else move or rescue their JW Library notes
You're the one who gets asked to fix the phone. Here's the shortest reliable path to move a relative's JW Library notes to a new device — including how to do it without reading their notes.
Sooner or later someone hands you their phone and a new one beside it. JW Library's notes are the part that won't move on its own, and they're often the part that matters most — years of study that no transfer tool will carry across.
The process is the same as doing it for yourself, with one extra consideration worth thinking about first: whose device the work happens on.
Step by step
Talk them through making a backup on the old device
JW Library → Personal Study → the three-dot menu → Backup and Restore → Create a backup. It saves a .jwlibrary file. If you're not with them, this part they can do over the phone.
Get the file where you need it
Have them email it to themselves, or share it to you. It's small enough to send through any messaging app.
Check the file opens
Load it at jwsync.org and confirm the notes are there. Doing this before the old device is wiped or handed on is what turns a bad surprise into a non-event.
Merge if the new device already has notes
If they've been using the new phone for a while, back that one up too and merge both files — otherwise restoring the old backup deletes everything they've written on the new device.
Walk them through the restore
On the new device: Backup and Restore → Restore, choose the file. Notes, highlights, bookmarks and tags all appear.
Doing it without reading their notes
Personal study notes are personal. If you'd rather not see them — or they'd rather you didn't — do the whole thing on their device: it's a web page, so you can open jwsync.org on their phone or tablet, load their files there and never have the backup on your own machine. Nothing is uploaded either way, but this way the file never leaves their hands.
Leave them with a backup they can find
Before you give the phone back, make sure the backup file is somewhere they'll be able to find again — their own email or cloud drive, not just your downloads folder. Next time, they may not need you at all.
Frequently asked questions
- Can I do this remotely?
- Yes. If they can create a backup and send you the file, everything else works at a distance — and the restore is a few taps you can talk them through.
- They have an Android and the new one is an iPhone. Does that matter?
- No. The backup format is identical across Android, iPhone, iPad and Windows.
- What if they never made a backup and the old phone is gone?
- Then there's nothing to recover from — the data lived on that device. It's worth setting up a habit of regular backups on the new phone straight away.