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instant Cloud Game Saves ​

INFO

This tool is distro agnostic, you can take ins and the way it manages dotfiles anywhere you like. It even works on Android and Steam Deck!

Game save management you can trust.

Like git for game saves.

Feature highlights ​

  • Never lose saves again
  • Support for most cloud storage providers via rclone
  • Deduplicated save history with rollback feature
  • Smart multi-device features
  • Support for emulators, wine and native games.

Quick start ​

TLDR; ​

bash
ins game init # create a game save repo in the cloud
ins game add  # add a game to be synced
ins game sync # sync game saves with the cloud

# --- on other device

# after having set up the repo
ins game setup # set up an existing game on a new device

Installation ​

This requires the following to be installed

  • ins (obviously)
  • restic
  • rclone
  • fzf

Arch ​

bash
yay -S ins restic rclone fzf

Cloud storage ​

Create an account at pcloud or any other cloud storage provider which supports rclone.

Initialization ​

bash
ins game init

This will ask you to select a your cloud storage provider configured in rclone and will create a folder for your game saves.

Adding a game ​

sh
ins game add

Comand reference ​

ins game --help ​

This has built in help for all commands and subcommands, often times, this is all you need.

ins game init ​

This allows selecting which location to back up your game saves to and configures all ins game commands to use that location.

ins game add ​

Add a new game to by synced. This will ask you for a name and the location of the game save on your device. The game save can either be a file or a directory. When selecting a directory, all of its contents will be synced. Adding a new file in that directory will also make it part of your game save.

ins game setup ​

Set up an existing game on a new device. This will let you select a game from your existing cloud saves and add it to your local device. It will suggest where to put the save files, but you can also select a different path. You can keep the same game in different directories on different devices and they will still maintain connection. Games are identified by their name only.

ins game sync ​

Synchronize all your games with the cloud. This feature smartly adjust its behavior. If a game has no new saves, and the cloud already contains the most recent save, then the game will be skipped. If a game has a new save which is not yet backed up into the cloud, then it will upload the new save. If the cloud has a newer save then your local save will be overwritten by the newer save.

ins game backup <gamename> ​

This uploads the save for the selecte game to the cloud.

Configuration ​

ins game has two main configuration files.

  • ~/.config/instant/games/games.toml
  • ~/.config/instant/games/installations.toml

games.toml ​

This contains a list of all games and their names and other metadata. This can be synchronized between different machines using tools like ins dot, yadm, chezmoi, git or anything else you like. This file is intende to be identical across all your machines.

installations.toml ​

This contains information about how games are set up on your specific device. It should not be synchronized across your devices, as the information here is device specific. It contains the path where a game save is located, or how to launch a game on the specific machine it is on.

It can be used to make machine specific overrides for your games. As an example, a game might have a different launch depending on your hardware or operating system or keep its save files in a different location.

How does this work ​

Your game saves are kept in a restic repository whic in turns uses rclone to store its repo in the cloud. This means they are deduplicated, their integrity can be verified, and their history is kept.