Back Up & Restore

Save your settings to a file, restore them anywhere. Bring your setup to another Mac or back after a clean reinstall. Credentials are never in the file, but custom-command text, blocked titles and artists, and your public Twitch channel name are. Share a backup only when you're comfortable sharing those settings.

What gets backed up

Your preferences. Things like:

• Custom bot commands (triggers, replies, aliases, cooldowns, permissions)
• Song Request rules and blocklist (limits, cooldowns, command names, blocked titles and artists, vote-skip)
• Stream Widget look and ports (theme, layout, colors, server port)
• Discord Rich Presence options (buttons, playlist, idle and pause behavior)
• Your public Twitch channel name, so WolfWave can offer to reconnect it
• Everything else: notification toggles, History & Stats options, appearance, dock visibility

What does NOT get backed up

Credentials, private account IDs, and per-Mac access. None of this goes into the backup:

• Your Twitch sign-in (OAuth access and refresh tokens, plus your resolved user ID)
• The Stream Widgets overlay and Stream Deck control tokens
• System permissions, like Apple Music control and notifications

These secrets live in the macOS Keychain, or macOS grants them per Mac, so they never get written to the file. The configured public Twitch channel name is the only account field included. A backup is a JSON file you can open and inspect. After importing on a new Mac, you may need to re-grant access (like Apple Music control) the first time WolfWave asks.

Export

1. Open Settings → Advanced.
2. Click Export Settings under Back Up Settings.
3. Pick where to save. The file is named wolfwave-settings-<date>.json.

Import

1. Open Settings → Advanced.
2. Click Import Settings and choose a backup file.
3. Review. A sheet shows how many preferences will be restored.
4. Decide on Twitch. If the backup had Twitch connected, you choose:
   • On: WolfWave stages your channel, asks you to sign in to Twitch again, verifies that the channel exists, then commits it with the new account (your sign-in credentials were never in the file).
   • Off: Twitch is skipped. Everything else still imports.
5. Click Import.

It merges, never wipes. Importing adds your preferences in. It won't delete settings missing from the backup, and it won't touch a connection you leave switched off.

System-backed preferences take effect during import too. WolfWave updates its appearance and update settings immediately and asks macOS to apply Launch at Login. If macOS rejects that login-item change, WolfWave keeps the real system setting and tells you instead of showing a switch that did not take effect.

A file it can't apply safely is refused whole, not partly restored. That covers a backup saved in an older, unsupported format, and one holding custom commands with a blank, duplicated, or clashing trigger, or with cooldowns outside what the sliders can set. You get a message saying so, and nothing changes. Individual values that are merely out of range are skipped instead, and the review count tells you what will actually restore.

Move to a new Mac

1. Old Mac: Export Settings.
2. Copy the file over. AirDrop, iCloud Drive, a USB stick, anything.
3. New Mac: install WolfWave, then Import Settings.
4. Reconnect Twitch: turn it on in the review sheet and sign in once. Done.

Sync with iCloud

Turn on "Sync with iCloud" in Settings → Advanced (or during setup) and the same backup travels by itself. WolfWave keeps a copy of the export above in your iCloud account and every Mac with the switch on picks it up. Nothing extra leaves the Mac: same file, same rules, so logins, tokens, and permissions never sync, and a synced Mac still asks you to sign in to Twitch once.

• Opt-in, per Mac. The switch itself doesn't sync. A new Mac starts with it off; flip it on and the cloud copy is applied right away.
• Newest wins. If two Macs change settings at the same time, the later change overwrites the earlier one as a whole. Sync a stream Mac and a desk Mac, not two people.
• Stored in your iCloud, not ours. It lives in iCloud Key-Value Storage under your Apple Account. Turning the switch off stops syncing but leaves the copy there.
• Changes show up within about a minute, depending on iCloud.

Good to know

• Reconnecting Twitch always means signing in again, because your login is never part of a backup.
• Permissions don't carry over. macOS grants them per Mac, so re-grant access (like Apple Music control) after importing.
• Newer-version backups ask you to update WolfWave before they'll import.
• Listening History stays put. Your play log and stats are personal data, not settings, so they're not in a settings backup.
• Hand-edited values are checked before import. Unsafe ports and queue limits are skipped, and the review count includes only preferences WolfWave can restore.
• Blocked titles and artists are cleaned on the way in. Blank and duplicate entries are dropped and spacing is trimmed, but the date you added each one is kept.
• Your channel name is tidied on both ends. Export and import normalize it the same way the connect screen does, so a stray space or a pasted URL fragment doesn't become a channel that never connects.