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Backups

By default TiXL saves a backup of every user project every 3 minutes. Each backup is a zip archive of the project files.

Backup contents

TiXL has two backup modes, controlled by the Enable Minimal Backup checkbox in Settings:

  • Full backup — every project file except build output (bin/, obj/), exports (Export/), rendered videos (Render/), image sequences and screenshots. Includes binary assets (textures, meshes, audio).
  • Minimal backup (default) — only source-code-shaped files: .csproj, .cs, .t3, .t3ui, .hlsl, .json, .txt. Skips binary assets. Much smaller zips, but if you lose the original project folder the assets are gone too — keep your Assets/ under separate version control or backup.

The first backup of a project is always full, regardless of the toggle, so you have at least one complete snapshot on disk.

Minimal-mode backups carry a -minimal suffix in their filename so you can tell them apart at a glance:

#00042-2026_04_27-15_30_22_123.zip          ← full backup
#00043-2026_04_27-15_33_45_201-minimal.zip  ← minimal backup

Deduplication

If a fresh backup is byte-identical to the previous one, TiXL drops it and just refreshes the timestamp on the existing archive. Files that external tools rewrite without changing their content (e.g. Assets/shadertoolsconfig.json) are excluded so they don't defeat the dedup.

Backup locations

Since v4.2

In TiXL every user project has its own backup folder:

<your-project-folder>/.temp/Backup/

The .temp folder is excluded from git and is safe to delete at any time.

v4.0

Backups were stored in 

<HomeDir>/AppData/Roaming/Tixl/Backup/

Before v3.9 (Tooll3)

In all backups were kept in .t3/backup.

How to restore a backup

Each zip archive is a complete copy of the project's source files (and assets, if it was a full backup). To restore one manually:

  1. Close TiXL.
  2. Open <your-project-folder>/.temp/Backup/ and pick the zip you want to restore. Filenames carry an index and a timestamp, e.g. #00042-2026_04_26-15_30_22_123.zip. The -minimal suffix marks reduced backups.
  3. Delete the project's bin/ and obj/ folders so stale build output does not clash with the restored sources.
  4. Extract the zip directly into <your-project-folder>/, overwriting existing files.