A small desktop tool for keeping periodic backups of your Elden Ring saves while you play. It runs in a window, watches for the game process, and copies your save file to a folder you pick, on whatever interval you want.

I wrote the first version of this in raylib a while back for a single save file. This is the rewrite — same idea, but with multiple save profiles, so my vanilla save, my Seamless Co-op save and my randomizer save can each have their own schedule and their own destination without fighting over the same folder.

• Watches for eldenring.exe. Auto-backups only fire while the game is actually running; when it's closed, the loop pauses.
• Manages one or more profiles. Each profile points at one save file (.sl2, .co2, .rd2) and one destination, with its own interval and its own cap on how many backups to keep.
• Finds your save files for you. On Linux it walks your Steam libraries to locate the Proton prefix for Elden Ring; on Windows it looks under %APPDATA%\EldenRing. If neither finds the file, there's a browse button.
• Restores from any previous backup. Before overwriting the live save it takes a pre-restore snapshot of the current file and keeps it for a week, so if you restore the wrong one you haven't lost anything.
• Config is one JSON file at ~/.config/ERSaveBackup/profiles.json on Linux, or %APPDATA%\ERSaveBackup\profiles.json on Windows.

You need:

• Odin — a recent release.
• Skald — the Odin GUI framework this app is built on.
• A Vulkan loader — comes with recent AMD / NVIDIA / Intel drivers on both Linux and Windows. If vulkaninfo works, you're fine; otherwise install the Vulkan SDK.
• Windows only: MSVC build tools (launch the build from an "x64 Native Tools" command prompt or a Developer PowerShell so cl.exe is on PATH).

Clone Skald next to this repo:

parent-dir/
├── Skald/
└── ERSaveBackup/

Then on Linux / macOS:

./build.sh          # compile to ./build/ersavebackup
./build.sh run      # compile and launch

Or on Windows:

build.bat           :: compile to build\ersavebackup.exe
build.bat run       :: compile and launch

If you keep Skald somewhere other than ../Skald, point GUI_PATH at your checkout — export GUI_PATH=/path/to/Skald on Linux, or set GUI_PATH=C:\path\to\Skald on Windows.

The Windows script also copies SDL3.dll out of Odin's vendor\sdl3\ and drops it next to the built .exe; without it, the binary won't start.

1. Launch the app. The profile list on the left will be empty on first run.

2. Click + New Profile. The dialog lists every Elden Ring save file it found on your system — pick one, name the profile, point it at a destination folder, set an interval and a max backup count, and hit Create.

   

3. Open Elden Ring. The header flips to Elden Ring: running once the app sees the process, and auto-backups start ticking on your interval. When the game closes they pause again.

4. Back Up Now takes an immediate backup regardless of game state — useful before you do something you're not sure about.

5. Restore… opens a list of every backup for the selected profile, newest first. Click Restore next to the one you want. The app takes a pre-restore snapshot of the current live save, then overwrites it.

   

• The green tick next to a profile in the list means auto-backup is armed for that profile — auto-backup is enabled and the interval is greater than zero. It doesn't mean a backup is happening right now; actual copies only fire while eldenring.exe is running.
• Don't restore while Elden Ring is running. The app blocks this on purpose: copying over a save file the game has open is how saves get corrupted.
• Pre-restore snapshots (*_prerestore_* files in your backup folder) don't count towards the per-profile max-backups cap, so restoring doesn't push older normal backups out. They auto-delete a week after they were taken.
• Timestamps in filenames are in your local time, not UTC. Your OS timezone is used.
• Closing the window stops all backup loops.

• The Odin language and its standard library.
• Skald — the Odin GUI framework this is built on.
• The old raylib version of this tool, which this replaced.

MIT — see LICENSE.