How Yapie's Recovery Vault Keeps Your Chats Safe Forever

Phone backups fail. Phones get lost. People delete the wrong chat. The recovery vault exists so none of that means losing your history.

#What's stored

- **Chats, chat by chat** — every message, with its sender and time. - **Edits** — earlier versions and the new text. - **Deletions** — a deleted message is captured before it disappears. - **Uploaded files** — photos, videos and documents. - **Who had access** to each chat, so data can be restored to the right people.

#What's deliberately not stored

- **Disappearing messages** and **view-once** media — the sender asked for them not to last. - **Readable secret chats** — they're end-to-end encrypted; only encrypted data ever reaches the server.

#How it's compressed

- Chats are written as monthly archives, compressed with **zstd** — first quickly as new batches arrive, then **re-compressed at maximum strength** with long-range matching once a month's archive grows. Text-heavy history typically shrinks many times over. - Every recompression is **verified** before it replaces the previous copy. - Media is stored as a **hard link** to the original upload, so keeping it costs no extra disk space; text-like files are compressed. - On top of the vault, the server takes **nightly compressed database snapshots**, kept 30 days plus one per month permanently.

#How it's protected

- The app **never deletes** vault data — not when you delete a chat, clear history or delete messages. - Only **administrators** can search, export or restore, and **every access is logged**. - The server runs in a **locked-down sandbox**.

#How a recovery works

1. You request it: **Settings › Backup, import & export › Request a recovery**. 2. Support finds the chat in the vault (even if the chat no longer exists in the app). 3. They restore it into your account as **"♻ Recovered: …"** with the full history. 4. You get a notification in Saved Messages.

You'll also see the vault's status — how many of your chats and messages are protected and when they were last saved — in the same settings screen.

#Frequently asked questions

Does Yapie really keep my chats forever?

Regular chats and files are kept in the recovery vault and aren't deleted by the app. Disappearing and view-once messages are excluded.

Can I recover a chat I deleted months ago?

Yes. Request a recovery and support restores it into your account.

Who can see what's in the vault?

Only administrators handling recovery, security or legal requests, and every access is logged.