Backing up and restoring your Solco library

Solco keeps your playlists, cues, grids, ratings, analysis and settings for each track in one library file. Your music files are not in it: back them up separately, as you always should.

Save a backup

1. Open Settings › Maintenance.
2. Under Library backup, click Save backup….
3. Choose a new file name. Solco never replaces an existing file.

You can keep working while it copies. Show progress opens Activity, where copying, checking and flushing show separately. Backups work even after an alpha build expires.

Save one before you install a new alpha, and close every Solco window before switching builds.

Cover images Solco downloaded for tag matches are kept beside the library in a folder named catalogue-covers. Back it up too if you move your library to another computer.

From a terminal: solco backup --output /path/to/backup.sqlite3.

Backups Solco makes by itself

• Before upgrading your library. When a new version needs to upgrade the library, Solco first saves and checks a copy in the library.sqlite3.backups folder beside it. If the backup fails, the upgrade doesn't happen.
• Before changing a rekordbox drive. Before Solco adds to, restores or replaces the library on a USB drive, it keeps a copy of the drive's library files (never music) in usb-backups beside your library. Each drive keeps its last three copies for 30 days.

Where the library is

• Mac: ~/Library/Application Support/com.getsolco.Solco/library.sqlite3
• Windows: %APPDATA%\getsolco\Solco\data\library.sqlite3
• Linux: ~/.local/share/solco/library.sqlite3 (or $XDG_DATA_HOME/solco if you set XDG_DATA_HOME)

Running the solco command

Some steps here use Solco from a terminal:

• Mac: /Applications/Solco.app/Contents/MacOS/solco
• Windows: solco.com in %LOCALAPPDATA%\Programs\Solco (or in your portable folder)
• Linux: solco, or ./solco in a portable folder

Going back to a backup

Solco never overwrites your library with a backup. To open one instead:

1. Quit Solco.
2. Make a copy of the backup, so the original stays untouched. Solco works in the copy, and upgrades it first if the backup came from an older version.
3. Start Solco on the copy from a terminal: solco --database /path/to/copy.sqlite3.

Solco uses the copy only for as long as it was started that way. Started the usual way, it opens your usual library again. To keep working in the backup, start it with --database each time.

Changes made after the backup are not in it, and cover images in catalogue-covers are found only beside the library Solco opens. Keep your current library file too, in case you need it.

Don't copy library.sqlite3 while Solco is open, and never delete the -wal or journal files beside it to make it open: they can hold your latest changes.

If the library won't open

Solco shows the reason with Try again and Open another library…. The … menu beside them has Save a backup…, Copy details and Quit. Nothing is replaced.

If it says This library requires a newer Solco build, your library was upgraded by a newer version: install that version again. To use an older version, open a backup made before the upgrade instead.

If Solco can't start at all, run solco diagnostics in a terminal and send us the report: see "Contacting the Solco team".