How to Back Up and Restore Flipper Zero With Qflipper

If your Flipper Zero stopped working tomorrow, how much would you actually lose? Your dolphin’s level, every XP point you earned, your Bluetooth pairings, your device name and all the little settings you tuned over months. Qflipper, the free desktop companion app from Flipper Devices Inc., saves all of it in under a minute with a single backup file.

Backing up is one of those jobs everyone postpones until something breaks. With Flipper Zero, that something usually arrives as a failed firmware update, a corrupted install, or a device that suddenly refuses to boot. A fresh backup made with Qflipper turns a potential disaster into a five-minute restore job. This guide walks you through the whole process: what gets backed up, what does not, how to create the file, and how to restore it when you need it most.

What Qflipper Actually Backs Up

Here is the part most people get wrong, so let’s get it straight first. A Qflipper backup covers the internal storage of your Flipper Zero only. That includes:

• Your dolphin level and XP progress
• Device settings, including your Flipper’s name
• Bluetooth pairing data
• Saved remotes, RFID tags and NFC cards, but only the ones stored in internal memory (when no microSD card is inserted, everything lands in internal storage)

The backup is saved as a single .tgz archive, which is just a compressed tarball. You can open it on your computer with any archive tool if you ever want to peek inside, though in practice you will always restore it through Qflipper rather than by hand. The file is small, usually well under a megabyte, so there is no excuse not to keep several copies around.

What the Backup Does Not Cover

This matters more than the list above. Qflipper does not back up your microSD card. The firmware databases, the apps and plugins you installed, your captured sub-GHz signals, your infrared remotes collection, your custom dictionaries: none of that lives inside the .tgz file.

Why? Because the card is removable storage, and Qflipper treats it that way. The backup routine reads the device’s internal flash and nothing else. If your card holds anything you care about, copy its contents to your computer separately. You can pop the card into a card reader and drag the files over, or use Qflipper’s file manager tab to download the folders you want to keep. Think of the microSD card as a second backup job, not an afterthought. Plenty of people have restored a backup perfectly, then realized their entire signal collection was gone because it lived on the card.

How to Back Up Flipper Zero With Qflipper

You need Qflipper 1.3.3 or newer installed on your computer, and your Flipper Zero connected over USB with a data-capable cable. A charge-only cable will not work for this. The whole process takes about a minute.

• Step 1: Open Qflipper and connect your Flipper Zero via USB. Wait until the device information appears on screen, which confirms the connection is live.
• Step 2: Click the Advanced controls tab.
• Step 3: Click the BACKUP button.
• Step 4: Choose a folder on your computer where the backup should be saved. Pick somewhere you will actually find again, like a dedicated Flipper backups folder, not your Downloads folder where it will drown.
• Step 5: Click BACKUP once more to confirm. Qflipper reads the internal storage and writes the .tgz file.

Do not unplug the cable while the progress bar is moving. When it finishes, rename the file right away with something meaningful, like flipper-backup-2026-10-15.tgz, so you can tell your backups apart months later. Then copy it somewhere safe. A backup that exists in exactly one place is barely a backup at all.

How to Restore a Qflipper Backup

Restoring is the mirror image of backing up. You will reach for it after a failed firmware update, when setting up a replacement device, or when your Flipper’s internal data gets corrupted and starts misbehaving. The steps are simple:

• Step 1: Connect your Flipper Zero via USB and open Qflipper.
• Step 2: Go to Advanced controls and click RESTORE.
• Step 3: Select the .tgz backup file you want to restore from.
• Step 4: Click RESTORE, then CONTINUE to confirm. Qflipper writes the data back to internal storage and reboots the device.

When the Flipper comes back up, your dolphin, settings and pairings return exactly as they were on the day you made that backup. One warning, though: restoring overwrites your current internal data. If you earned XP, saved new remotes or changed settings after the backup date, those newer changes will be gone. So restore deliberately, not casually. And if you are restoring onto a replacement device, remember the microSD card contents still need to be copied over separately.

Using the Qflipper CLI for Backups

Prefer the terminal, or want to automate your backups? Qflipper ships with a command-line tool that can do the same backup and restore jobs without the graphical interface. You will find it at:

• Windows: <Program Files>\qFlipper\qFlipper-cli.exe
• macOS: qFlipper.app/Contents/MacOS/qFlipper-cli
• Linux: ./qFlipper-*.AppImage cli

Run backup <directory> to create a backup in the given folder, or restore <directory> to restore one. This is genuinely useful if you manage several Flippers, or if you want a scheduled task that backs up your device every week without you thinking about it. The CLI produces the exact same .tgz format as the graphical app, so files are interchangeable between the two.

Mistakes That Ruin a Perfectly Good Backup

Most backup failures are not technical. They are human. Here are the ones I see repeated on the forums:

• Assuming the microSD card is covered. It never is. Copy the card separately, every time.
• Keeping the only copy on the laptop you are about to wipe. Put backups on an external drive or cloud storage too.
• Restoring a months-old backup over a healthy device and wiping out weeks of progress. Check the file date before you hit CONTINUE.
• Unplugging the cable mid-backup. A half-written .tgz is useless. Let the progress bar finish.
• Never testing the file. After your first backup, open the .tgz with an archive tool just to confirm it is not empty or corrupted. Thirty seconds of checking beats finding out during an emergency.

When Should You Make a New Backup?

A backup is a snapshot, and snapshots go stale. Make a fresh one:

• Before every firmware update, without exception
• Before switching to custom firmware
• After earning a big chunk of XP or adding a lot of saved remotes
• Before lending your Flipper Zero to a friend
• Once a month, as routine maintenance, if you use the device regularly

Each file is tiny. There is no reason to be precious about how many you keep.

Conclusion

A Qflipper backup is the cheapest insurance your Flipper Zero will ever get. One minute of your time, one small file, and total peace of mind the next time a firmware update goes sideways. Make the backup before you need it, keep a copy of your microSD card alongside it, and you will never have to rebuild your dolphin’s progress from zero again.

Read next: Qflipper File Manager: Complete Guide to Managing microSD Files, How to Update Flipper Zero Firmware With Qflipper, Unbrick Flipper Zero With Qflipper DFU Recovery