v0.3.2 - Search

Before you update

• Your settings, your vault and your saves are kept when you update. A vault from v0.3.0 or
  v0.3.1 opens as it is, nothing to upgrade.

What is new

Search (Organizer tab, Search...)

• Finds text anywhere in the vault: save file names, notes, labels and comments, and what the
  saves hold - bases and the galaxy each one is in, ships, archived ships, companions, the
  freighter, multi-tools, settlements, expeditions, the current galaxy.
• In: narrows it to one field. Pick Base galaxy and type a galaxy name to see which
  save files have bases there; with a field picked and nothing typed, it lists all of them.
• Each result says where to look - a live slot such as S9 or X4, else Vault -
  and which versions it is in. Double-click a result to show it in the table.
• Bases, ships and the like come from the content index. A version it has not read yet is not
  searched for them, and the window says how many those are.

Compare from the table

• Open a save file, Ctrl+click two of its versions, press Compare... in the toolbar.

Back up all live folders now (File menu)

• Backs up every live folder - Steam, GOG, Xbox - in one go, each under a dated label, no
  questions. A folder without saves is skipped; if one fails, the others are still backed up
  and the result says which.

Downloads

• Windows: NMSSaveVault-Setup-v0.3.2.zip - extract it and run NMSSaveVault.exe (or
  install.bat for shortcuts). The launcher is the Python Software Foundation's own signed
  program, renamed; that signature is Python's, not a signature over this app.
• Linux / Steam Deck (x86_64): NMSSaveVault-v0.3.2-linux-x86_64.tar.gz - still young, so
  back up your saves by hand first.
• macOS (Apple Silicon): NMSSaveVault-v0.3.2-macos-arm64.tar.gz - never run on a Mac yet.
  Back up your saves by hand first, and please report how it went.
• Xbox / Game Pass and GOG stay Windows-only.

v0.3.1 - GOG

Before you update

• Your settings, your vault and your saves are kept when you update. A vault from v0.3.0 opens
  as it is, nothing to upgrade.

What is new

GOG (Windows)

• GOG writes the same save format as Steam, byte for byte, into its own folder:
  %AppData%\HelloGames\NMS\DefaultUser. The app now finds that folder by itself and shows it as
  a live source named GOG.
• GOG slots read G1 to G15 on the board. On the command line, write gog:7 or G7.
• Moving a save between GOG, Steam and Xbox works like a move between two Steam accounts, with
  the same "another account" confirmation.
• Emptying a GOG slot shows the steps for GOG Galaxy, and the app warns that GOG's cloud saves
  may put a save back into an empty slot.
• Already on v0.3.0? Press Rescan once so the GOG folder shows up.

Not yet tried on a real GOG install. If you play on GOG, please try it against a copy of
your save folder first, and tell us how it went.

Epic Games Store: no Epic version of No Man's Sky is known, so there is nothing to support
there yet.

Downloads

• Windows: NMSSaveVault-Setup-v0.3.1.zip - extract it and run NMSSaveVault.exe (or
  install.bat for shortcuts). The launcher is the Python Software Foundation's own signed
  program, renamed; that signature is Python's, not a signature over this app.
• Linux / Steam Deck (x86_64): NMSSaveVault-v0.3.1-linux-x86_64.tar.gz - still young, so
  back up your saves by hand first.
• macOS (Apple Silicon): NMSSaveVault-v0.3.1-macos-arm64.tar.gz - never run on a Mac yet.
  Back up your saves by hand first, and please report how it went.
• Xbox / Game Pass and GOG stay Windows-only.

v0.3.0 - the Organizer

Before you update

• Back up your save folder by hand first, as always before a big update.
• Older versions cannot open a vault this version has upgraded. A brand-new vault made by
  v0.3.0 is in the new format from the start. If you use the same vault on several PCs, update
  every PC to v0.3.0 first.
• Your settings, your vault and your saves are kept when you update.

What is new

The Organizer tab (Ctrl+1; the old view is still there on Ctrl+2)

• Every save file is one line, whether it is live or only in the vault. Open a line to see all
  its versions.
• Live markers show which Steam or Xbox slot holds each save. Columns show what is in the save:
  story and Atlas progress, bases, ships, freighter, companions, play time, galaxy and more.
• Filter chips (Live, Vault only, Steam, Xbox, On both, Has note, Pinned, No backup yet,
  Expedition), Find, sorting and a column chooser.
• No backup yet marks a version that exists only in a live slot, so you know what a
  backup would save.

Moving saves

• Move to live, Replace with, Swap and Keep a copy in the vault now. You can
  also drag a version onto a slot.
• The save being replaced always goes into the vault first. Every move is checked, and put back
  exactly if anything is wrong. Each move has its own Undo.
• The app never empties a slot. Where a slot would end up empty, it shows you the steps to do it
  yourself.
• A move that was interrupted (power cut, crash) is finished or put back the next time you start
  the app.
• After you play, the app checks whether Steam Cloud or Xbox sync put the old save back, and
  tells you.

Steam <-> Xbox

• You can now move a save between Steam and Xbox / Game Pass in Move to live. The save data is
  copied unchanged, only the small info file is converted, and you confirm once because it is
  another account. The game takes ownership of your bases at your first save there. Tested in
  the real game in both directions.

History, Compare, Notes

• History shows how a save file's versions follow each other and what changed between them
  (bases, ships, progress, galaxy, ...).
• Compare puts two versions side by side.
• Notes: a note per save file (every earlier revision kept), and a label, comment and lock
  per version. Notes live in the vault, never in your saves.
• Pin a save so the app never suggests its slot for another save.
• If the app linked two saves wrongly, you can say where a version comes from, or Combine or
  Split save files. All of these can be undone, and none of them touches a save.

Smaller vault

• Tools > Vault upgrade moves an existing vault to the new format once: each file is kept
  only once, so a backup that changed one slot costs one slot, not the whole folder. A full copy
  of your vault is made first, and Undo the vault upgrade goes back.
• Tools > Free old backup folders then gives the disk space of the old folders back, after
  a full check. It shows what it would free and asks first. Every backup stays listed.
• Import of another vault that is already in the new format (for example a copy on a USB
  drive) adds only what is new. Importing it again adds nothing.

After a game update

• A save written by a newer game than the app knows is marked and is never moved: the app
  refuses rather than guess.
• nmsvault-cli selftest checks, without writing anything, that the app still understands every
  live save and every version in your vault.

Also

• Dark theme: on Windows the menu bar now follows the dark theme too (Alt, F10 and the
  underlined letters work as before).
• Hover a chip, marker or column title for a plain-words explanation.
• The command line has the same features: saves, versions, history, place, swap,
  keep, undo, ops, recover, note, pin, lineage, index, store, selftest.
  Run nmsvault-cli <command> --help for each. The command-line program is now called
  nmsvault-cli (nmsvault-cli.exe on Windows), so it is clear which file is which.

Downloads

• Windows: NMSSaveVault-Setup-v0.3.0.zip - extract it and run NMSSaveVault.exe (or
  install.bat for shortcuts). The
  launcher is the Python Software Foundation's own signed program, renamed; that signature is
  Python's, not a signature over this app.
• Linux / Steam Deck (x86_64): NMSSaveVault-v0.3.0-linux-x86_64.tar.gz - tried on Linux
  for this release; still young, so back up your saves by hand first.
• macOS (Apple Silicon): NMSSaveVault-v0.3.0-macos-arm64.tar.gz - never run on a Mac yet.
  Back up your saves by hand first, and please report how it went.
• Xbox / Game Pass stays Windows-only.

v0.2.8

Xbox: keep the game's new xgs save copy in step.

The game now keeps a second, plain copy of every Xbox / Game Pass save in SystemAppData\xgs, beside the familiar wgs folder. The vault only wrote to wgs, so a promote, clear, repopulate, restore or undo could leave the game holding a stale copy.

Every write now updates both, and undo puts both back. An Xbox account that has only xgs (no wgs) is now found and shown, read-only.

Windows: download NMSSaveVault-Setup-v0.2.8.zip, extract the whole zip, run install.bat. Your config, vault and saves are untouched by an upgrade.

The Linux and macOS kits are still untested on real hardware.

v0.2.7

Filter backups by save file.

A save's history used to be scattered: the same run sits in a different slot in one backup than in the next, and a rename makes its old copies look like somebody else's.

The new Save file dropdown above the backups lists every save that has a backup, under its current name and the names it had before, with its platforms, play time and backup count. Pick one - or right-click any slot or save in either pane and choose Show this save's history - and the backups narrow to every copy of that run, renamed, moved, or carried to another platform by the NMS cloud, each opened to just the slot holding it, newest first. All saves clears it.

It uses the same game-written save id as Play time, so it costs no extra decoding.

Windows: download NMSSaveVault-Setup-v0.2.7.zip, extract the whole zip, run install.bat. Your config, vault and saves are untouched by an upgrade.

The Linux and macOS kits are still untested on real hardware.

v0.2.6

Total play time.

How long have you actually played? Counting files cannot answer that: each playthrough is on disk twice in its own slot (Auto-Save and Restore-Point), again in every dated backup in the vault, and - because an NMS cloud save carries a run to a linked account on another platform - once more under a second platform entirely. On the development machine, 821 save files are 29 playthroughs.

Play time... in the toolbar, and nmsvault playtime on the CLI, fold every copy onto one row and count the highest play time of the copies, since play time only ever goes up. Identity is the game's own: the id the Steam meta carries, which is the same number the save data holds - it survives a rename, a move to another slot, and the trip through the cloud to another platform. Xbox metas leave that field empty, so an Xbox save is identified from its data instead, cached per file so the second run costs nothing. Saves older than that field are matched on their name, and the window says how many those were.

Also: pre-Waypoint Xbox saves store the whole save as one unframed block, which previously decoded to nothing. They are read now.

Windows: download NMSSaveVault-Setup-v0.2.6.zip, extract the whole zip, run install.bat. Your config, vault and saves are untouched by an upgrade.

The Linux and macOS kits are still untested on real hardware.

v0.2.5

Fix: Steam Cloud put a cleared slot straight back.

Clearing a slot deleted the saves, and the game showed them again on the next launch. Steam's Auto-Cloud manifest still lists every save*.hg it has uploaded, so a file that is merely missing locally is downloaded again at launch - nothing inside the save folder can stop that. The clear confirmation now says so, and gives the sequence that does work: turn off Keep game saves in the Steam Cloud (game Properties > General), clear the slot, launch and quit the game, turn Cloud back on.

The same comparison was quietly threatening restores, which do sync: the live file was stamped with the backup's original modification time, so Steam judged its own copy the newer one and could overwrite what had just been restored. Under Cloud a live write now carries the write time; without Cloud the save keeps the age it had.

Xbox / Game Pass was unaffected: a cleared record stays in containers.index flagged Deleted, which is the cloud's instruction to remove it.

Windows: download NMSSaveVault-Setup-v0.2.5.zip, extract the whole zip, run install.bat. Your config, vault and saves are untouched by an upgrade.

The Linux and macOS kits are still untested on real hardware.

v0.2.4

Ctrl+plus / Ctrl+minus change the font size.

The window drew at whatever size your system picked and there was no way to change it. Both keys now step the whole UI between 70% and 200% of your system size - the main keys or the numeric keypad - and the tree rows grow with the text rather than clipping it. The size is remembered in state.json as font_scale, exactly like the theme is, so the app reopens the way you left it.

Windows: download NMSSaveVault-Setup-v0.2.4.zip, extract the whole zip, run install.bat. Your config, vault and saves are untouched by an upgrade.

The Linux and macOS kits are still untested on real hardware.

v0.2.3

Fix: Clear slot refused every row you could offer it

Reported against v0.2.2, within the hour: "no matter what I try, I get this error" --
Clear empties one of your LIVE slots, so it needs a live one -- on a slot and on either
save inside it alike.

The right-click menu narrows a save row to its slot before handing it to an action, because
clearing is slot-granular. The dict it built for that carried the folder and the slot number
but not the flag saying the slot is live -- so Clear, the one action that checks it,
concluded the row was a backup and bounced it.

The toolbar button worked, which is exactly why this shipped: the tests asserted the menu
offered Clear, and asserted the handler cleared when handed a row, but never clicked the
entry to see what the menu actually passed. They now invoke the menu entry itself, for a
slot row and for a save inside it.

Nothing else changed since v0.2.2.

Downloads

Platform	File
Windows	NMSSaveVault-Setup-v0.2.3.zip
Linux / Steam Deck (x86_64)	NMSSaveVault-v0.2.3-linux-x86_64.tar.gz
macOS (Apple Silicon)	NMSSaveVault-v0.2.3-macos-arm64.tar.gz

Windows: extract and run NMSSaveVault.exe, or run install.bat to put it on the Start
Menu. Installing over an older version keeps your config.

The Linux and macOS kits are still untested on real hardware -- the save format is
identical on all three platforms, so what is unproven is the packaging and the game
detection, not how saves are read or written. Reports welcome either way.

NMSSaveVault.exe is a verbatim renamed copy of the Authenticode-signed CPython
pythonw.exe, so Windows raises no unknown-publisher warning. That is the Python runtime's
own signature, not a signature over this project's code.

v0.2.2

Clear a slot

Freeing a live slot used to mean extracting it and then deleting the files by hand, which
is exactly the moment to delete the wrong one. Clear slot does it from the app -- the
toolbar, or right-click any live slot -- and before it does, it goes looking for the most
recently made copy of that slot in the vault and compares its play time with the live
save's.

If the live save is further on, or if the vault has no copy of the slot at all, the
confirmation says so and asks again, because that gap is precisely what clearing would
cost you. The live folder never counts as its own backup, even when it is catalogued in
place -- that would answer "backed up" by pointing at the very save about to be deleted.

Like every other write, the live state is auto-snapshotted first, so Undo brings the
slot straight back.

Xbox / Game Pass clears the same way: the containers.index record is kept and flagged
Deleted, as the Xbox app itself does, so the cloud copy is told to go rather than being
re-synced back down -- and writing into the slot again un-deletes it.

On the command line: nmsvault clear <slot> [--yes].

Downloads

Platform	File
Windows	NMSSaveVault-Setup-v0.2.2.zip
Linux / Steam Deck (x86_64)	NMSSaveVault-v0.2.2-linux-x86_64.tar.gz
macOS (Apple Silicon)	NMSSaveVault-v0.2.2-macos-arm64.tar.gz

Windows: extract and run NMSSaveVault.exe, or run install.bat to put it on the Start
Menu. Installing over an older version keeps your config.

The Linux and macOS kits are still untested on real hardware -- the save format is
identical on all three platforms, so what is unproven is the packaging and the game
detection, not how saves are read or written. Reports welcome either way.

NMSSaveVault.exe is a verbatim renamed copy of the Authenticode-signed CPython
pythonw.exe, so Windows raises no unknown-publisher warning. That is the Python
runtime's own signature, not a signature over this project's code.