šŸ”„ Retiring Automatic Backups

Announcements
1

By March 31, weā€™ll be sunsetting Automatic Backups.

Hereā€™s what you need to know.

:thinking: What was it and why did it exist?

Automatic Backups periodically generated a copy of your Trakt data and saved it to connected storage like Dropbox or Google Drive.

It was introduced after a past database incident as a safeguard, ensuring users always had a recent external copy of their data if something went wrong again.

:nerd_face: Why are we removing it?

1. Itā€™s no longer necessary
Our infrastructure today is significantly more resilient, with rolling backups every 6 hours. The original risk that justified Automatic Backups is no longer present.

At the same time, the system continuously generates exports, emails, and uploads that most users never actually need. It consumes processing power for redundancy we already have built in.

2. Security
Running Automatic Backups requires maintaining broad credentials tied to third-party storage providers. Retiring it allows us to reduce that access and tighten our overall security posture.

:ok_hand: How can you export your data?

  • A faster and more user friendly ā€˜manualā€™ export process is already available in v3 via Profile > Settings > Data
  • Weā€™re also exploring ways to expose the export logic more openly, so anyone could create their own script and run exports whenever and however they prefer.

Automatic Backup was built for a different moment in Traktā€™s history.
With todayā€™s infrastructure and export tools, theyā€™re no longer necessary.

Exporting data and auto backup disappeared
šŸš€ Trakt Product Roundup ā€“ March 2026
Auromatic Backups not working
Removed movies
Why can't the JSON format data I exported from trakt be imported into trakt?
2

I get this from the redundancy angle - but removing the automation is a kick in the nuts with no API to replace it.

I use the weekly backup/export/whatever it should be called to guard me against TMDB shuffling seasons/episodes under my feet and Trakt re-binding the previous history. Just this week I noticed that all the Special episodes for Critical Role had been shuffled and I needed to go back two weeks and resync the episode watches to the new order.

Manual backups donā€™t solve this for me, Iā€™ll never remember to take this export once a week and Iā€™m sure you guys wont want me deep scraping once a week from a manual scheduled script I setup

5 Likes
3

Maybe the powers that be (@kcador ?) will reconsider for niche cases. I suspect most people use the scheduled backups in case of data loss and, as it turns out, this backup was not restorable and useless anyway.

4

So yet another ā€œperkā€ that is advertised on the VIP ā€œbenefitsā€ page has been deleted?

I really think at this point you should make it your next mission to update that page (Upgrade to Trakt VIP! - Trakt) so people can see the few remaining perks that exist for $60.

9 Likes
5

Itā€™s already been done in v3. Eight features.

7

This must be a giant sketch or a prank.

Can we have a reality check from the team?

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8

Iā€™ve been using this site for years and I am actually baffled recently and the constant misdirection.

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I will say, itā€™s amazing how much this team is able to surprise us. I will give you that.

If thatā€™s the date, I would expect it to be working properly until then. Itā€™s not.

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11

I decided to do that exercise. I just threw away a few gallons of water for this quick information, so that the Trakt team doesnā€™t have to.

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1 Like
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Yeah, English is not my first language, so I figured it just meant removing the feature at that date. If the word was meant as a ā€œphased-out termination of a productā€, like I found through a search, itā€™s even worse in the sense that users were not even given a proper notice ahead of already making the feature unusable. Thanks for the answer, dgw!

15

I think the stand out things from that are:

  • If a modification negatively impacts your access to or use of the service: The limits will negatively impact userā€™s use of the service, especially when their accounts get locked for exceeding the new limits. Not sure if this would apply for automatic backups though

  • Form of communication: Currently the only way to know about the limits are this forum and finding it on the site. Something like an email would have to go out to all users letting them know about the limits

  • Warning time: Said email would also need to be sent reasonably in advanced. (not like how they handled the recent API changes)

  • Refunds: Thereā€™s been several cases here where a user have said they were denied a refund they requested due to the recent changes to the VIP they paid for. Trakt will have to offer refunds if a user has been affected negatively by the changes. Trakt stating ā€œALL PAID SUBSCRIPTION FEES ARE NONREFUNDABLEā€ simply wonā€™t hold according to the EU law

7 Likes
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Not surprising. A few weeks ago they realized that there is no way to restore a backup, and probably itā€™s too troublesome to implement backwards compatibility for data schema changes. A general trend weā€™re seeing from the Trakt team is just to make the life of the team better, instead of their customersā€™.

7 Likes
17

Not a very inviting overview! No details, no further links like in the current VIP overview. And I fear what other VIP features (and free ones?) we will lose ā€¦?

PS: Old ā€œUnlimited Library Itemsā€ vs. new ā€œDigital archive Digital archive 0/100.000ā€ and ā€œOffline archive 0/10.000ā€ ā€¦ (I donā€™t use this feature.)

PPS: I hope this ā€œhiddenā€ forum announcement about the end of Automatic Backups is not the only way of informing the VIP users!

PPPS: Ah, new VIP deal if you buy 2 years (96 $, first 2 years for 60 $) - unfortunately only if you have a credit card. :frowning:

1 Like
18

Why do you constantly deteriorate your good service? I liked to use automatic backups.

4 Likes
19

Any news on when a replacement api will be available, so that i can script the weekly backup myself?

Would be great to have this sooner then later.

The automatic backup was one of the things that brought me to buying trakt, because i always want to have the option to have my data under my own control.

3 Likes
20

Can Trakt explain why they get higher price for even lower features now ?

Thereā€™s no point of using Trakt anymore

3 Likes