We strongly recommend regularly backing up your art data. All your Sketchbook data is saved on your device. So if your device is lost, stolen, or broken, or on iOS if you delete the app (and therefore all your art) by mistake, the only way to get your art back is if you have a backup in the cloud or other external storage.
It breaks our hearts when we hear from people who have lost years of their art due to a stolen device. Please back up your art.
Backing up from the Sketchbook Gallery
One way to create a backup is to export your art from Sketchbook's Gallery. Choose Sketchbook TIFF as the file type to preserve your layered art. This is a good method if you only want to back up some newer work and not your entire Gallery, or if you want to back up separate albums to maintain some organization in your archive.
Android - back up from the Files app
Sketchbook art files are .tiff files. These files contain the data for your layered art and on Android 11 and higher you can find these files in your Files app in the folder Internal Storage > Pictures > Sketchbook Gallery.
- Launch your Files app (this may be called something different depending on your device manufacturer)
- Find the folder Pictures
- Click in to the folder Sketchbook Gallery
- In this folder you will see a number of files with alphanumeric file names and the extension .tiff. These are your Sketchbook art files.
- Copy these files (do not move, rename, or delete these files) to a second location in the cloud or on an SD card.
The PNG files you see in the subfolder Sketchbook Previews are thumbnail previews for the Sketchbook Gallery. They are not your art files and there is no value to Sketchbook in backing them up. If you ever need to restore your .tiff files in Sketchbook, new previews will be created and these files will be unneeded duplicates.
If you ever need to restore a backup, you can copy these files back to your device and run the Recover Images tool by going to Sketchbook's main menu, and tapping Preferences. Scroll to the bottom of the screen and tap "Check for recoverable images".
iOS - back up from the Settings app
On iOS, all of an app's data is required to be stored inside the app's container, so you cannot navigate to this data from the Files app. Starting in Sketchbook version 6.2.4 and higher, you can create a backup of all your art files from the iOS Settings app.
- Fully exit/close the Sketchbook app
- Launch the Settings app
- Go to Apps > Sketchbook
- On the Sketchbook page, toggle ON "Export Mode"
- Relaunch Sketchbook. You'll be in Export Mode - the screen will identify the total number of sketches you have in the app, and the size of the export. Tap the Export button to proceed.
Export mode is only toggled on for the next launch of Sketchbook. After you finish your export, close Sketchbook and relaunch to be back in the drawing experience. The toggle in Settings will automatically reset itself to off.
