Backup and restore
One Postgres dump backs up the whole instance.
Everything is in the one Postgres database: accounts, drawings, images, and
share links. One dump backs up the whole instance. Also keep a copy of your
.env.
Back up
From the directory containing docker-compose.yaml:
docker compose exec -T db sh -c 'pg_dump -U "$POSTGRES_USER" -Fc "$POSTGRES_DB"' > excaliself-$(date +%F).dumpRestore
Restore with the app stopped. This replaces the current data:
docker compose stop excaliself
docker compose exec -T db sh -c 'pg_restore -U "$POSTGRES_USER" -d "$POSTGRES_DB" --clean --if-exists' < excaliself-2026-10-13.dump
docker compose start excaliselfRestore into the same or a newer version of the app: it migrates the data on start. An older version cannot read a newer dump, because there are no down migrations. Take a dump before each upgrade: restoring it is the safe way back to the older version.
On Coolify
Run the same commands against the db container from the server’s shell, with
docker exec and the container name from docker ps.