[Feature]: Encrypted backup and restore of messages and contacts

[zakeer-career]

Problem / motivation

Messages and contacts live only on the phone that holds them. Losing or replacing the device means losing the conversation history and the contact list, with no way to carry them to a new phone.

Proposed solution

A backup of messages and contacts that can be restored on another device, encrypted end to end so the backup file is unreadable without the user's own key.

Alternatives considered

No response

Scope and mesh impact

• Changes the CBOR wire format
• Changes store-and-forward custody / convergence
• Changes the end-to-end crypto envelope
• None of the above / not sure

Additional context

Filed through the bug form as: "Brother, can we backup our Message contacts etc? e2ee?" A maintainer reshaped it into the feature template; the ask is unchanged.

[github-actions]

Thanks for the report, @zakeer-career.

This is an automated completeness check, not a maintainer’s verdict. The bug form was filled
in, but 6 items are missing the detail needed to act on it:

1. The device model

"ghhg" names the OS but not the hardware.
Knit drives Wi-Fi Aware and Bluetooth LE directly with no Google Play Services layer in
between, so radio faults are usually chipset- and vendor-specific — a bug on one SoC often
does not exist on another. The model narrows this far more than the Android version does.

The marketing name is enough. If you have a shell:

adb shell getprop ro.product.model
adb shell getprop ro.board.platform

2. The Knit version or commit

No version number or commit SHA was found. Settings › About shows the version; if you built
it yourself, the commit SHA you built from is what identifies it.

3. A real answer for "What happened"

The form says "hhh", which restates the question rather than answering it.
Describe what you actually saw: a system "Knit keeps stopping" dialog, a silent drop back to the
launcher, a frozen screen, an ANR? Every time, or intermittently? Does it get past the permission
prompts first? Those all point at different code.

4. A real answer for "What you expected"

The form says "u", which restates the question rather than answering it.
Say what should have happened at the moment it went wrong, specifically enough to tell a wrong
outcome from a right one — e.g. "the chat list should have stayed open".

5. A real answer for "Steps to reproduce"

The form says "f", which restates the question rather than answering it.
Numbered steps someone else can follow from a fresh install. Real mesh behavior usually needs two
or more physical devices to show up at all, so say what each device was doing.

6. A real answer for "Summary"

The form says "i", which restates the question rather than answering it.
One or two sentences describing the defect.

---

Reply here with whatever you can get — this check re-runs on your comment and clears itself, and
partial answers still help. Knit is a best-effort hobby project shipped as-is, so a report that
cannot be reproduced generally cannot be fixed.

Tagged needs-info: with no reply it goes stale in 10 days and closes 4 days after that. That is not a
dismissal — a comment reopens it at any point.

_{Maintainers: /recheck re-runs this; removing the needs-info label stops it on this issue for good.}

[zaventh]

Thanks, @zakeer-career. I've reshaped this into a feature request so it's tracked properly.

An encrypted backup and restore of messages and contacts is planned. The backup would be sealed with a key only you hold, so the file stays unreadable anywhere it lands, and it would carry your history and contacts to a new phone. There's no ETA, but this issue will be updated when it ships.