Backup Download Tasks With Export

Your tasks represent real work: curated URL lists, dialed-in filename templates, watermark configurations you spent time getting right. They live in your browser’s local storage, which is convenient until you reinstall, switch machines, or clear data. The defense is simple and worth doing: backup download tasks by exporting them, so a snapshot exists outside the browser.

Export Tasks is your backup

In Bulk Image Downloader From URL List, the Export Tasks function doubles as both a sharing template and a backup snapshot. It writes your tasks to a UTF-8 CSV with a header row. That file is portable, human-readable, and easy to stash anywhere you keep important files. Because it is plain CSV, you can also peek at it or version it without special tooling. The same export you would hand a teammate is the same file that protects you.

What the snapshot actually captures

A good backup is only useful if it captures the parts you would hate to rebuild. When you backup download tasks via export, the CSV schema includes more than just URLs:

The task URLs themselves, with semicolons separating multi-value cells.
Custom filenames, so your naming work survives the round-trip.
The watermark-enabled flag, recording which tasks stamp images.

That coverage is the point: you are not just saving a list of links, you are saving the configuration around them, the parts that took the longest to set up.

Custom filenames deserve a special mention here. The names you build with the Filename Constructor, including any list you loaded from a .csv or .txt file, are stored with the task and ride along through export and import. That means a backup preserves not only what you download but exactly how each file will be named, so a restored task produces identical output to the original without you re-importing a name list by hand.

Why backup download tasks matters for where your data lives

Tasks and settings sit in chrome.storage.local, while uploaded task files go in IndexedDB. Both are tied to the browser profile on that machine. A reset of the extension, performed by removing and reinstalling, preserves your license but clears tasks. So if you ever need to reset to fix something, an export taken beforehand is what lets you come back without losing your setup. Treating the export as a routine way to backup download tasks turns a scary reset into a non-event you barely notice.

Restoring and moving between machines

Recovery is the mirror image of backup: import the CSV and your tasks come back, custom filenames and watermark flags intact. The same mechanism moves your setup to a new computer. Export on the old machine, import on the new one, and you are working with the same tasks in minutes. A sensible cadence is to export after any significant change, and definitely before a reinstall or a big cleanup. It costs seconds and saves the hours it would take to reconstruct everything by hand.

There is a workflow benefit beyond pure safety, too. Because the export is a clean, structured CSV, it is also a template you can edit outside the browser and feed back in. Want to spin up ten near-identical tasks for ten domains? Export one, duplicate the rows in a spreadsheet, tweak the differences, and import the result. The same file that protects your setup becomes the fastest way to scale it. Keep a dated copy of each export and you have both a recovery point and a record of how your tasks evolved over time.

Backups are boring right up until the moment they save you. Get the extension from the Chrome Web Store and make it a habit to backup download tasks before anything can go wrong. Keep a dated CSV in a folder you actually remember, and re-export whenever you finish a big round of edits so your snapshot always reflects your latest setup.