Where is my novel?
Here:
C:\Users\<your name>\Documents\Plotloft\projects\
One .plotloft file per project, named after the project's title.
It's an ordinary file in an ordinary folder. Copy it, email it, back it up,
put it on a USB stick. Plotloft has no server and no account, so there is no
other copy of your novel anywhere — which is the point, and also the
responsibility.
The fastest way to get there from inside the app is , which opens that folder in Windows Explorer.
What's in the folder
opens Documents\Plotloft,
the top level. Here's everything you'll find inside it and what each part is
for.
| What | Where | What it is |
|---|---|---|
| Your projects | Documents\Plotloft\projects\ |
One .plotloft file per project. This is your writing. If you only ever back up one thing, back up this folder. |
| Automatic backups | Documents\Plotloft\backups\ |
Timestamped older copies, one subfolder per project. See below. |
| Everything else | Documents\Plotloft\library.json |
Your project list, drafts, tags, and app settings — the things that aren't the manuscripts themselves. |
| Your licence key | %APPDATA%\Plotloft\license.json |
Kept away from your manuscripts on purpose: it belongs to this machine, not to your writing. Copying your Documents folder to a new PC won't drag a licence along with it — you just enter your key again. |
Documents and not somewhere hidden?Because you should be able to find your own novel without our help — and without our app. If Plotloft vanished tomorrow, these files would still be sitting there, and they're plain JSON inside, so anything that reads text can read them.
Filenames follow the title
A project called My Novel is stored as
my-novel.plotloft. Rename the project in Plotloft and the
file is renamed to match. If two projects would end up with the same filename,
the second gets -2.
The filename is only there for your benefit — Plotloft identifies a project by an id stored inside the file. So renaming the file yourself in Explorer won't confuse it or lose anything.
When does it save?
Constantly, and there is no Save button. Every edit is written to disk within about half a second. That's why the app has no "unsaved changes" warning when you close it — there's nothing to warn about.
Two details that matter more than they sound:
- Writes are atomic. Plotloft writes to a temporary file, forces it to disk, then swaps it into place. A power cut mid-save leaves you with the previous version intact — never a half-written, unopenable project file.
- Closing the window flushes first. Anything still in that half-second window is written before the app exits.
Automatic backups
While you're actively editing a project, Plotloft copies the previous version aside before overwriting it — at most once every 10 minutes, and it keeps the 10 most recent copies per project. They live here, in a subfolder named after the project's internal id:
C:\Users\<your name>\Documents\Plotloft\backups\<project-id>\2026-07-19T14-32-08-114Z.plotloft
The filenames are timestamps, so sorting by name sorts by age. Ten backups at ten-minute intervals covers roughly the last couple of hours of a writing session — enough to undo "I deleted the wrong act an hour ago," not enough to be an archive.
They protect you from mistakes, not from a dead drive, a lost laptop, or a ransomware infection. For that you need a copy that isn't in this folder — see keeping a real backup below.
Restoring one
Open the project, then click in the toolbar. Your own save points are listed first; underneath them, under Automatic backups, is every copy Plotloft has kept of this project — newest first, each one showing how long ago it was written and how it differs from what's on your screen right now (, , and so on).
- Open makes that backup the outline you're working on. Before it switches, your current work is saved as a draft named "Unsaved work — before …", so changing your mind is one more click. Nothing is overwritten that you can't get back.
- Keep as draft copies it into your own drafts. Backups age out — ten per project, then the oldest is deleted — so this is how you say "not this one" about a version you want to keep for good.
If you'd rather work with the file directly — to send it to someone, or to
compare two versions side by side — then backups\ gets you there, and
brings one in as a
new, separate project, leaving your current version untouched.
Keeping a real backup
Two ways, and they answer different questions.
One project, one file
In the editor, use and save it wherever you like. This is the file to email to yourself, hand to a writing partner, or drop in cloud storage. Opening it later on any machine brings the project in as a new project.
Everything at once
From the project dashboard, open . That's every project, draft, note and setting in a single
file named plotloft-library-backup-2026-07-19.json. To restore it,
use on the same screen
— note that this overwrites matching projects, unlike opening a single
project file.
Plotloft has no sync service. It doesn't need one to get your work onto a
second machine: if Documents is already covered by OneDrive,
Dropbox, Drive or your own backup tool, your projects are already going with
it. Just don't edit the same project on two machines at once — nothing merges
the two, and last-writer-wins is how people lose an evening.
When saving goes wrong
Disks fill up, antivirus locks files, folder permissions get strange. If a save fails, Plotloft does not quietly drop it. A dark red strip appears along the bottom of the window:
Plotloft can't save right now — the disk is full. Your edits are held in this window and saving is retried automatically. Keep the window open, and put a recovery copy somewhere safe.
Everything in that message is literal. Your edits are still in memory and are still being retried every few seconds, and the banner disappears by itself the moment a save succeeds. Three things to do, in order:
- Don't close the window. It's holding the only copy of your recent edits.
- Click "Save a recovery copy…" in the banner and save it to a different drive or folder — a USB stick, another disk, anywhere that isn't the place that just failed. This path deliberately bypasses the normal saving machinery, so it works even when the usual one doesn't.
- Then fix the cause — free up disk space, or let the antivirus release the file. Plotloft picks up on its own and the banner clears.
If the app crashes, or you quit anyway
If Plotloft ever hits an error it can't recover from, you get a full-screen message with the same "Save a recovery copy…" button, plus an honest line about whether your work made it to disk.
And if you quit while a save is still stuck, Plotloft writes an emergency copy by itself before exiting, and tells you where it went:
C:\Users\<your name>\AppData\Roaming\Plotloft\recovery\plotloft-unsaved-<timestamp>.plotloft
To bring one of these back in, go to the dashboard and use .
Before 0.5.3 that picker only listed .json files, while
recovery files are named .plotloft — so the folder looked empty.
If you hit that, switch the file-type dropdown in the corner of the dialog to
All files. Your recovery file was always fine; only the
filter was wrong.
Quick answers
Can I move the projects folder somewhere else?
Not yet — the location is fixed at Documents\Plotloft for now.
You can export individual projects anywhere you like, and choosing your own
project location is on the list.
I moved to a new computer. What do I copy?
The Documents\Plotloft folder, in full. Install Plotloft on the
new machine, put the folder in the same place, and enter your licence key — it
isn't tied to hardware and there's no activation limit.
Can I open a .plotloft file by double-clicking it?
Yes, if you used the installer. A file already in your projects folder opens in place; a file from anywhere else is brought in as a new project, so opening something someone sent you can never overwrite your own work.
What's actually inside the file?
JSON — a version stamp, the project's id, and your board. Readable in any text editor, which means your work is never trapped in a format only we understand.
Nothing I do in the demo is saved. Is that a bug?
No — the demo deliberately keeps nothing. It's the whole app with the disk disconnected, so you can build a real board before paying, and closing the tab clears it. Everything on this page describes the app once it has a licence key.