Backup & restore

WM Keyboard backs itself up two ways: a config file you export and move yourself, and Android’s own backup system, which is off until you turn it on. Both exist so that a reinstall or a new phone doesn’t mean retyping every setting and rebuilding every theme from scratch.

Backup & restore: pick what to include, then export or import a file.

Exporting a config file

Open Backup & restore and choose which sections go in the file. Each one is its own switch:

Section	Default	What it covers
Settings	On	Every keyboard preference
Include API keys	Off	Translate, GIF, search and AI keys (only shown while Settings is on)
Themes	On	Your custom themes, including their background images
Dictionary	Off	Words and next-word patterns the keyboard learned from you
Clipboard	Off	Saved clipboard history (text only; images and files stay local)
Snippets	On	Your saved text snippets
Sticker packs	Off	Your own sticker packs, stickers and all (but not the photos you cut them out of)
Icon packs	Off	Your own icon packs, images and all
Custom word lists	On	Word lists you imported for any language
Addon repositories	On	The repository addresses you added, so a restore can reinstall from them
Emoji history	On	Your recent emoji, your favourites and the skin tone you last picked for each
Typing statistics	On	Your daily typing counts and your all-time speed

Sticker packs and icon packs default off only because their images make the file large, not because there’s anything private about them: turn them on and a restore on another phone gets working packs, not empty shells. The personal ones (dictionary, clipboard) default off because they’re your typing history rather than configuration. Emoji history and typing statistics are personal too but default on: both are small, and neither can be downloaded again if you lose it. The statistics are counts only, never anything you typed.

Tap Export backup to write a wmkeyboard-backup-<date>-<time>.wmconfig.json file through Android’s own save dialog: it goes wherever you choose, not to any WM Keyboard server. What you pick here is remembered, and it is the same list the automatic backup uses, so changing it changes both.

Addon repositories, not addons

The addon repositories section is just the list of repository addresses you’ve added, so a restore can point back at them. The addons you installed from those repositories already travel inside their own sections: an installed theme is in Themes, an installed icon pack is in Icon packs. See Installing addons for how that catalogue works.

Importing a file

Import backup opens a file picker and reads the file before touching anything. You get a confirmation dialog listing exactly what’s inside (for example “Themes: 3 custom themes”) before anything is applied, and importing is refused outright if the file isn’t a WM Keyboard backup.

Opening a .wmconfig.json file from a file manager works the same way: it launches the same confirmation dialog rather than importing silently.

The import confirmation, listing what a backup file contains before anything is applied.

Each section behaves differently once you confirm, and the difference matters more than the in-app dialog’s one-line summary suggests:

Section	On import
Settings	Merges. Only the preferences named in the file are overwritten; everything else on the device is untouched.
Themes	Replaces. Your entire custom-theme list is swapped for what’s in the file: custom themes you made since the backup are gone.
Dictionary, clipboard, snippets	Replaces. The on-device copy is overwritten by what’s in the file.
Sticker packs, icon packs, custom word lists	Replaces. The whole local collection is cleared and rebuilt from the file.
Addon repositories	Merges. Incoming addresses are added to your existing list rather than replacing it (duplicates are skipped).

If the file includes API keys, the dialog warns you before you confirm; see Secrets stay out by default below.

Settings import specifically is rollback-safe: after writing, the keyboard re-reads its own settings to make sure they still parse. If a hand-edited file breaks that, the whole write is undone and you see “That backup could not be applied — your settings are unchanged” rather than ending up with a half-applied preference set. The other sections in a full-config bundle still apply even if the settings portion rolls back.

Secrets stay out by default

API keys for Translate, GIF search, web search and the AI tools are excluded from every export unless you turn on Include API keys, which only appears while the Settings section itself is included. That covers the Grok, DeepSeek and other-service keys as well as the older ones.

AI history never travels, with or without that switch. The two settings that control it do, because they’re configuration, but the records are your own writing, and an off-by-default log of it is the last thing that should ride along in a file you mail to yourself. The learned dictionary is left out for the same reason. Leaving it off means the file is safe to store in a synced folder or hand to someone else; turning it on means the opposite: the keys sit in the file as plain text, and the app warns you about it after export: “Backup exported, API keys included. Treat that file as a password.” An incoming file with keys in it gets the same warning before you confirm the import, since those keys will overwrite the ones already set on the device.

This redaction is specific to the file you export yourself. It doesn’t apply to Android’s own backup below: turning that on does copy your saved API keys along with everything else, because the whole settings store travels as one piece there.

Automatic backup

Exporting by hand only helps if you remember to do it. Automatic backup writes the same file for you, on a schedule, by default while your device charges and on Wi-Fi. You pick where it goes:

Destination	What it needs	Works without Google
Folder	A folder you pick, anywhere with a files app behind it: your device, an SD card, Drive, Dropbox, Nextcloud, OneDrive	Yes
WebDAV	The address of a Nextcloud, ownCloud or other WebDAV folder, and a login	Yes
S3	A bucket on Amazon S3, MinIO, Cloudflare R2, Backblaze B2 or anything else that speaks S3, and an access key pair	Yes
FTP	An FTP server, a login, and TLS unless you turn it off	Yes
Google Drive	A one-time permission. The app gets a hidden folder of its own and can see nothing else	No, needs Play services
Dropbox	Signing in. The app gets a folder of its own under Apps	Yes
OneDrive	Signing in. The app gets a folder of its own under Apps	Yes

None of these send anything to a WM Keyboard server. There is no account with us and nothing of yours passes through anything we run.

Two conditions guard the scheduled job, and you own both. Only while charging is on by default, so a backup waits for the charger. Only on Wi-Fi is on by default too, so it waits for a connection Android doesn’t count as metered. Most backups are small, but one carrying sticker packs or icon packs is not, and it goes out every interval, which is why Wi-Fi is the default. Turn it off and a backup uploads over mobile data as soon as it’s due. The Wi-Fi toggle only appears for destinations that actually need a connection: a Folder is storage on your own device, so it backs up offline either way.

Turning Only while charging off is worth knowing about for the opposite reason. A phone that’s only ever charged in the car may never be plugged in at the end of an interval, and a backup that never finds a charger simply never runs, without anything telling you so.

The app keeps a few backups and deletes the oldest. You choose how many. It never deletes the newest one, and it never deletes an older backup until the new one has been written, read back and checked. A backup that fails halfway costs you the new copy and never an old one.

Backups can carry a passphrase. The file is then encrypted, and you need the passphrase to restore it. The app stores the passphrase on your device, because a backup that runs while you are asleep has nobody to type it. So this protects the file where it lands, for example in a cloud folder, and not against a person holding your unlocked device. Write it down: without it, a backup cannot be restored.

Some destinations send your password with every upload. WebDAV over plain http is refused for that reason, and so is an S3 endpoint on plain http. FTP without TLS is allowed, because some older servers offer nothing else, and the screen says plainly what it costs. Turn on a passphrase if you use it.

Nothing is backed up while your device is locked. The parts that matter most, like your learned words, live in storage that only exists once you have unlocked the device after a restart. A backup taken before then would be nearly empty, and rotating that in would push out a real one, so the app waits.

Android’s own backup

Separately from exporting a file, you can let Android’s built-in backup system cover the keyboard too (the same mechanism that restores your other apps after a factory reset or backs up during a phone-to-phone transfer).

WM Keyboard›Privacy›Android backup›Back up with Android

This is off by default. With it off, Android’s backup agent writes nothing for WM Keyboard at all: not a partial copy, nothing. Turn it on and a backup made this way restores settings, themes, layouts, snippets, learned words, sticker and icon packs, and plugins on a new device or after a reinstall.

A few things are always left out of an Android backup, regardless of the toggle, because they’re large and the keyboard can simply fetch them again: on-device speech and AI models, downloaded dictionaries, emoji keyword packs, and the scratch files the camera and document scanner write while you’re using them. Clipboard images are excluded too, though the clip text itself travels, and so are the photos your own stickers were cut out of, which the sticker editor keeps on the phone so you can edit a sticker again later; the stickers themselves still travel. None of this is a secrecy decision, it’s Android’s own backup quota, which is only a few tens of megabytes per app and drops the whole backup if it’s exceeded.

Two more conditions apply only to this path, not to a manual .wmconfig.json export:

• Encryption-gated. A cloud backup is only made on a device that can encrypt it under your own screen lock. If the device can’t, no backup is written even with the toggle on.
• Restore isn’t gated by the toggle. If you ever receive a backup made while the switch was on (after a reinstall, say), it restores regardless of the switch’s current state. The reasoning: a restore can only replay data an earlier install was allowed to back up in the first place, so blocking it on a fresh install would just discard a backup you already opted into.

Options

WM Keyboard›Data›Backup & restore

Reach it from the home screen or by searching “Backup & restore” in settings search. Its export switches are the ones described in Exporting a config file above, and they are ordinary stored settings: what you tick stays ticked when you come back. They have to, because the automatic backup reads the same list and there is nobody there to set it. Field by field, they’re on Backup & restore settings.

WM Keyboard›Privacy›Android backup›Back up with Android

• Back up with Android — default off. Folds the keyboard into Android’s own backup and phone-to-phone transfer system, subject to the exclusions and the encryption requirement covered in Android’s own backup above.

Moving to a new phone

1. On the old phone, open Backup & restore, choose the sections you want, and export a .wmconfig.json file.
2. Move that file to the new phone however you like: it’s a plain file you control, so email, a cable, or any file-sync app all work.
3. Install WM Keyboard on the new phone and either open the file from a file manager, or open Backup & restore and use Import backup.
4. Optionally, turn on WM Keyboard›Privacy›Android backup›Back up with Android for ongoing coverage between manual exports.

Do this on a fresh install where you can, or at least go in expecting an overwrite: because themes, sticker packs, icon packs and custom word lists all replace rather than merge on import, restoring onto a phone that already has its own customizations in those categories discards them in favor of what’s in the file. A manual export is also the more complete of the two paths for anything it includes: it isn’t subject to Android’s size quota or its encryption requirement, so a set of sticker packs too large for an Android backup still moves fine as a file you export by hand.

Details & edge cases

• File formats. Export currently produces one file type, .wmconfig.json: the full-bundle format described above. An older, settings-only .wmsettings.json format still exists and is still accepted on import, for backups made by earlier versions of the app; nothing in the current app writes one anymore. Opening either from a file manager prompts you to import it; it doesn’t install anything the way tapping a theme or plugin file does.
• Theme backgrounds do travel. A custom theme’s background image is embedded in the export file and written back to local storage on import, so a restore on a different phone gets a working theme, image included, not just the color settings.
• A failed write leaves nothing behind. If the app can’t write to the file you chose, you get “Could not write that file” rather than a half-written export. An automatic backup goes further: it writes the file locally, reads it back and parses it, and only copies it to your folder if that worked. Nothing older is deleted until the new one is safely there, so a backup that fails halfway costs you the new copy and never an old one.
• Backups don’t cover installed addons directly. What travels in the Addons section is the repository list, not the addon files themselves; those are already accounted for in Themes, Icon packs, and the rest. See What are addons? for how repositories and installed addons relate.
• The reference page for every field and default on the Backup & restore screen lives at Backup & restore settings.

See Network policy for what leaves the device outside of backups, and Data collection for what the keyboard learns from you in the first place.