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Metrolist stores your entire library locally on your device — songs, playlists, liked songs, listen history, and account credentials. The backup system lets you capture all of that in a single file and restore it whenever you need.

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What gets backed up

A Metrolist backup file (.backup) contains:
  • Your local library: liked songs, albums, and artists
  • All playlists and their contents
  • Listen history and play counts
  • Search history
  • App settings and preferences
  • YouTube Music account credentials (cookies), if you are signed in

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Creating a backup

1

Open settings

Tap the profile icon or open the drawer, then go to Settings.
2

Go to Backup & Restore

Tap Backup & Restore in the settings list.
3

Tap Export backup

Tap Backup. A system file picker opens and prompts you to choose a save location. The file is named Metrolist_<timestamp>.backup automatically.
4

Save the file

Choose a folder — a cloud-synced location such as Google Drive or a local folder — and confirm. The backup is written immediately.
Keep a copy of your backup in a cloud-synced folder so it survives device loss or factory resets.

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Restoring from a backup

1

Open Backup & Restore

Go to Settings → Backup & Restore.
2

Tap Restore

Tap Restore. A file picker opens — locate your .backup file and select it.
3

Review the confirmation dialog

Metrolist shows a preview of the backup. If the backup contains account credentials, the app attempts to identify the associated Google account and displays its name and email. Review the details and tap Restore to confirm.
4

Restart the app

After the restore completes, restart Metrolist. Your library, playlists, and history are restored.
Restoring a backup can cause playback errors if the backup contains stale YouTube Music auth credentials. If you encounter playback failures after a restore, sign out of your account and sign back in to refresh your session. This was noted as a known issue fixed in v13.2.0, but old backup files created before that fix may still contain stale cookies.

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Importing playlists

In addition to full backups, Metrolist supports importing playlists from external sources.

M3U import

Tap Import online in Settings → Backup & Restore and select an .m3u or .m3u8 file. Metrolist resolves each entry against YouTube Music and lets you save the result as a playlist.

CSV import

Tap Import CSV and select a .csv file. Metrolist shows a column-mapping dialog so you can tell it which columns contain the track title, artist, and album. A live progress view shows each track as it is matched.

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Managing storage

Metrolist maintains two caches that grow over time: a song cache for streaming audio and an image cache for artwork. Manage both from Settings → Storage.
Controls how much audio data Metrolist keeps on disk so recently streamed songs load faster. You can set the maximum size to 128 MB, 256 MB, 512 MB, 1 GB, 2 GB, 4 GB, 8 GB, or unlimited. Tap Clear song cache to free that space immediately. You can also disable the song cache entirely with the Enable song cache toggle.
Controls how much artwork Metrolist stores. Maximum sizes range from 128 MB to 8 GB. Tap Clear image cache to remove cached artwork. Artwork for downloaded songs is preserved automatically when you clear the image cache.
Shows the total disk space used by your offline downloads. Tap Clear all downloads to remove all downloaded audio files. This does not delete the songs from your library — only the local audio files.
Reducing the cache size limit below the current cache size triggers a confirmation dialog before Metrolist evicts data. Check the current usage shown by the progress bar in Settings → Storage before lowering the limit.