Backing up and restoring your Pillow data
Pillow can package everything it has stored on your device — sleep sessions, alarm presets, your personalised sleep program, Discover insights, Sleep Aid favourites, your profile, app settings, and (optionally) your audio recordings into a single backup file you can export and restore later. Use it when you're switching to a new iPhone or iPad or just keeping a safety copy.
This article walks you through creating a backup, transferring it, and restoring it.
What's included in a backup
A backup contains:
All of your sleep sessions, including notes and mood tracking information
Alarm presets
Your personalised Discover sleep program
Sleep Aid favourites (references to the tracks only, not the actual audio files)
Discover insights, challenges, tips and other timeline items (if the program has produced tips, then only a reference to the tip text is included, not the full text of the tip)
Your personal configuration (age, weight, height etc.) and preferences
Optionally, your audio recordings (you choose: all, starred only, or none).
Backups do not include:
Your subscription or in-app purchase history (these are tied to your Apple ID and restore automatically when you sign back in)
Alarm sounds, or sleep aid sounds
Any non-generated parts of your personalised program like image assets from tips, text body of tips, audio or video content of tips. In this case a reference to that content will be exported and Pillow will use that reference when you import the backup to retrieve the content.
Apple Health data.
Technical support data (data you have exchanged with our technical support team if you have ever contacted them).
Creating a backup
Open Pillow and go to Settings → Manage data.
Tap Create Backup.
On the intro screen, review what the feature does and tap Next.
Choose whether to include audio recordings (see Audio recordings: with or without below) and tap Next.
Review the summary of what will be backed up.
Tap Back up now. Pillow will start packaging your data — this can take from a few seconds to several minutes depending on how much sleep history and how many audio recordings you have.
⚠️ Important:
Don't switch to another app or return to the home screen while the backup is in progress. Keep Pillow on screen until you see the Backup Ready! confirmation. If you background Pillow by returning to the home screen or if you switch to another app, the backup will most likely be cancelled due to limitations imposed by iOS. In this case the backup has to be restarted.
When the backup is ready, the screen shows the final file size (for example, Backup size: 1.2 GB).
Tap Save backup and pick where to save the file using the standard iOS share sheet — see Save and transfer your backup below.
Battery requirement
If your device is on battery and below 50%, Pillow blocks the backup with a Low battery alert. Plug your device in or charge it to at least 50% and try again.
Cancelling
You can cancel a backup at any time by tapping Cancel backup. Pillow asks you to confirm:
If you cancel now, no backup will be created. You can try again later.
If you tap the close button while the backup is running, you'll see the same confirmation. Cancelling is safe — no partial file is left behind.
Audio recordings
If you have any audio recordings, Pillow asks how to handle them. The choice is between three options:
All recordings — every recording stored by Pillow is included. This produces the most complete backup but also the largest file.
Starred only — only recordings you've marked with a star are included. A good middle ground if you only care about a few favourites.
None — audio is excluded entirely. The backup file will be much smaller and faster to create and transfer.
If you pick All recordings and some of them are stored only in iCloud (not yet downloaded to this device), Pillow asks:
Some of the audio recordings are currently not available on this device.
You can then choose:
Download remote files — Pillow will download the missing recordings from iCloud before continuing. This requires a good internet connection and may take time.
Skip remote files — only the recordings already on this device are included. Anything stored only in iCloud will not be in the backup.
Cancel — go back to the audio choice.
If you don't need to keep audio in the backup, picking None avoids all of these decisions.
Save and transfer your backup
Tapping Save backup opens the standard iOS share sheet. The exported file is a .zip archive named like PillowExport_<timestamp>.zip. Common destinations:
Save to Files — store it in iCloud Drive or On My iPhone/iPad. Recommended for large audio backups, since iCloud Drive uploads in the background and is easy to access from another device.
AirDrop — fastest way to send a backup to a nearby iPhone, iPad, or Mac.
Mail or Messages — practical for small, audio-free backups (large files are typically rejected by mail providers).
Any third-party cloud storage app you have installed (Dropbox, Google Drive, OneDrive, etc.).
Tip: Backups that include audio can be several gigabytes. Use AirDrop or iCloud Drive for those, and keep your device on Wi-Fi during the transfer.
Pillow doesn't keep a copy of the file once you close the wizard, so make sure you save it somewhere you can find it later before tapping the close button.
Importing a backup (restoring from an existing backup file)
Restoring a backup brings the contents of a .zip you created earlier back into Pillow. You can restore on the same device or a different one — for example, when moving to a new iPhone.
Make sure the
.zipbackup file is saved somewhere accessible to the Files app (iCloud Drive, On My iPhone/iPad, or a third-party cloud storage app).In Pillow, go to Settings → Manage data.
Tap Import Backup.
On the intro screen, tap Select file and pick your Pillow backup
.zipfrom the Files browser.Choose how to handle existing data on this device — see Merge or replace? below — then tap Next.
Pillow imports the backup. Keep the app on screen and don't lock the device until you see the summary.
⚠️ Important:
Don't switch to another app or return to the home screen while the import is in progress. If the import process is interrupted, your data may be lost, become corrupted and Pillow may be unable to launch on your device.
The summary screen tells you exactly what was added — see What you'll see when the import finishes below.
Battery requirement
If your device is on battery and below 50%, Pillow blocks the backup with a Low battery alert. Plug your device in or charge it to at least 50% and try again.
Merge or replace?
When you start an import, Pillow asks how to handle data already on the device:
Merge (default and recommended) — Pillow keeps everything you already have on this device and adds anything new from the backup. Items that already exist are skipped, so nothing is duplicated. Nothing is erased. This is the right choice in almost every situation, including moving to a new device.
Erase and then import — Pillow first deletes every piece of Pillow data on this device, then imports the contents of the backup. This is destructive and cannot be undone. Use it only if you specifically want this device to mirror the backup exactly — for example, when restoring after a corruption issue.
⚠️ Warning: Erase and then import is permanent. Make sure you've created a fresh backup of this device's current data before you use it, in case you change your mind.
Cancelling an import
Tapping Cancel import during the early stages (unzipping, reading the manifest) shows:
Cancelling now will stop the import. Any data already written to your library will remain, which may leave you with a partial or inconsistent import — and you may need to start over. This action cannot be undone.
Once Pillow has started writing data to your library, cancellation is no longer available:
Your library is currently being updated. Stopping now could corrupt your data and leave it in an unrecoverable state. Please wait for the import to finish.
In short: cancel early if you change your mind, but once the import is past the preparation stage, let it finish.
What you'll see when the import finishes
The summary screen shows what was added, updated, or skipped. Examples:
124 sleep sessions imported
3 sleep sessions updated
17 sleep sessions ignored as already existing
4 alarm presets imported
26 audio recordings imported
9 audio recordings already on device
If the backup was identical to what you already have on this device, you'll see:
No new data was imported. Everything in this backup already exists on your device.
That's expected and harmless — it just means there was nothing new to add.
Tap Done to close the wizard.
Compatibility
Pillow backups work between iPhone and iPad and between different iOS devices.
Backups created in a newer version of Pillow can't be imported into an older version. If you see a message that the backup was created with a newer version of Pillow, update Pillow on the device you're importing onto, then try again.
Only
.zipfiles exported by Pillow's Create Backup flow are supported. Other zip files (including manually re-zipped folders) won't import.
Troubleshooting
"Pillow couldn't find any data to export"
This usually means iCloud is still syncing your data to this device, or there's nothing to export yet. Wait a minute or two and try again. If you've just signed into iCloud on a new device, give sync time to finish before backing up.
"Low battery"
(when starting a backup)Plug the device in or charge it to at least 50%, then try again.
"Some audio recordings couldn't be downloaded from iCloud in time"
Your network was too slow to fetch one or more audio files from iCloud, so the backup was stopped to avoid producing an incomplete file. Move closer to your Wi-Fi router (or switch to a stronger connection) and try again. Alternatively, choose Starred only or None for audio so the backup doesn't depend on iCloud downloads.
"Backup failed" with a generic error
Free up storage on your device, fully close and re-open Pillow, then try again. If the backup keeps failing, restart the device and retry.
Import says "the selected file appears to be corrupted" or "doesn't look like a Pillow backup"
The file isn't a valid Pillow backup — for example, it was modified after export, partially downloaded, or created by another app. Re-export from the source device and use the new file. Only .zip files produced by Pillow's Create Backup flow can be imported.
Import says the backup was "created with a newer version of Pillow"
Update Pillow on the device you're importing onto so it's at least as recent as the device that created the backup.
Cancel import is greyed out
Cancellation is intentionally disabled while Pillow is writing data to your library, to avoid leaving things in a bad state. The button comes back when each step is at a safe stopping point. If the import is well underway, the safest option is to let it finish.
Duplicates appear after a Merge import
The Merge flow tries to skip anything that already exists on this device. In rare cases, two records that look the same to you may differ in some internal detail and end up imported as duplicates. Delete the extras manually if needed.
Tips
Save a small audio-free backup somewhere off-device every so often as a quick safety copy — these are typically a few megabytes and easy to email to yourself.
Big audio backups transfer best over Wi-Fi via AirDrop or iCloud Drive.
Keep at least one backup outside iCloud (for example, in another cloud storage app) so you have a copy that doesn't depend on your Apple ID.