Backup and transfer
A finished Printy setup is worth keeping. Einstellungen → Konfiguration writes it to a single file and reads it back.
Worth doing once a setup is right, and worth doing again before updating.
Exporting
Section titled “Exporting”Konfiguration exportieren asks where to save and writes a JSON file containing:
- every watched folder, with all its settings,
- the notification mode, the two start options, and the default interval for new folders,
- the version that wrote it, and when.
What is deliberately left out
Section titled “What is deliberately left out”| Not exported | Why |
|---|---|
| Job history | Machine-bound, large, and meaningless elsewhere. |
| The record of seen files | Belongs to the folders on that machine. |
| SumatraPDF and pdfium paths | Absolute paths of the source machine. A wrong pdfium path is worse than none: it is treated as an error rather than falling back, so importing one could stop printing on the target machine outright. |
| Alles pausieren | Importing a configuration must never silently stop the target machine printing. |
| The theme | A per-machine preference. |
The file is plain JSON and readable — nothing in it is secret, but it does contain your folder paths and printer names.
Importing
Section titled “Importing”Konfiguration importieren picks a file and then asks how to apply it. Nothing is changed before you answer.
Hinzufügen und aktualisieren
Section titled “Hinzufügen und aktualisieren”Folders in the file are matched to existing ones by path. A match is updated, anything new is created, and every other local folder is left alone.
This is the safe choice, and the right one for pushing a change to a machine that already has folders of its own.
Alles ersetzen
Section titled “Alles ersetzen”Local folders that are not in the file are removed, so the machine ends up with exactly what the file describes.
Before you confirm, Printy counts what would actually be lost and says so — how many folders, and how many waiting jobs go with them. Files on disk are never deleted; only Printy’s records of the folders go away.
What happens to a folder that cannot work here
Section titled “What happens to a folder that cannot work here”The folder paths and printer names in a file come from another machine. D:\Scans may not exist here; “HP LaserJet Empfang” may not be installed.
Printy checks each folder against this machine as it imports. A folder whose path is missing or whose printer is not installed is imported switched off, and the result screen names it and says which of the two is wrong.
This is the important part: nothing fails silently. The alternative — importing a folder as enabled and letting it fail on every check — would fill the history with errors and look like Printy was broken.
Fix what it named, enable the folder, and it runs.
Format versions
Section titled “Format versions”The file records the format version it was written with. A version this build cannot read correctly is rejected with an explanation rather than partially applied.
Using it as a backup
Section titled “Using it as a backup”The export covers your configuration, not your history. For a full backup, copy the database file itself — Einstellungen → Erweitert → Datenbank shows where it is. Close Printy first so it is not written to mid-copy.
For moving a setup to another machine, or for getting back to a known-good state, the export is the better tool: it is small, readable, and checked against the target machine instead of assuming.