What a backup holds
Your playlists (with their addresses), the channel list you built (hidden and kept groups, the order), your favourites, your parental lock and its PIN, your recordings list, your settings, and where you stopped in what you were watching. It never holds your licence — that belongs to your account, and each device takes a seat on it — nor your other profiles, because their own favourites and locks would not be coming with them.
Because it holds your provider’s address with its credentials, treat the file as you would a password.
Take a copy
- In Lumen·TV: Settings → Backup & Restore → Take a copy.
- The device shows a code. Scan it with your phone: it opens a page on
lumentv.app/backup/…. - On that page, either Download the file (it lands in your phone’s downloads), or Keep it in my account — signing in first if you are not.
The code lasts ten minutes and works for this copy only; the page shows what the copy holds and when it was taken. Take it again in the same place makes a fresh one.
Why keep it in your account
- A file on a phone is lost with the phone. A copy in your account is there from any phone, on the day the device dies.
- Your licence keeps one backup per device it covers, and three versions of each, so a wrong press can be undone. Without a licence, one.
- Restoring is one scan, with nothing to find or paste.
- It goes when your account goes. Nobody at Lumen·TV opens it.
Put a copy on a device
- On the new (or reset) device: Settings → Backup & Restore → Restore from my phone. It shows a code.
- Scan it with your phone. Signed in, the page lists the backups kept in your account: pick one. Or, from your account page, under Backups, enter that code beside a backup and press Send to TV. With a downloaded file instead: on the page the code opened, choose A backup and pick the file, or paste its text.
- The device lists what the copy carries and asks Apply this backup? before changing anything.
A backup restores into the profile that is active. Switch profile first if it is not the one you mean. If that profile’s parental lock is on, the restore keeps that lock and its PIN rather than the ones in the backup.
The new device still needs its own seat on your licence: when it shows the paywall, scan its code and sign in with the same account. See the troubleshooting matrix if it does not unlock.
When it says something is wrong
Could not send the copy. Nothing has changed on this television.
The copy was made on the device but our server could not be reached to pass it to your phone. Check the network (troubleshooting matrix, step 2) and press Take it again.
This copy is too large to send
This copy is too large to send: N characters, and a copy can hold M. Nothing was sent. A copy carries every playlist with its address, every favourite and the channel list you built, and there is a ceiling on its size. Remove a playlist you no longer use, or trim the favourites, then take it again.
This profile could not be read, so no copy can be taken. Nothing has changed.
The device could not read the active profile’s settings to copy them. Quit the app (Settings → Quit Lumen·TV), open it again and retry; if it stays, write to us with the support code from Settings → About.
This does not read as a Lumen backup, and nothing will be changed.
What arrived — a file you picked, or text you pasted — is not a Lumen·TV backup, or is cut short. Pick the
lumen-backup-….json file itself, unedited, or send a copy kept in your account instead.
It carries nothing this profile does not already have.
The backup holds the same playlists, channel list and settings as the profile you are restoring into. Applying it would change nothing, which is usually a sign of the right backup on the wrong profile, or the backup of this very device.
This profile’s parental lock is on, so a restore keeps it and its PIN
… — the lock a backup carries is not applied. By design: a restore cannot be used to remove a parental lock. The rest of the backup is applied. To take the backup’s lock instead, turn the lock off on this profile first (its PIN is needed), then restore.
“Code expired”
Codes last ten minutes. Start again and the new one will be on screen. Take a copy, or start the restore, again for a new code.
Keeping a file you downloaded
Downloaded the file on the day and made an account later? On the account page, under Backups, choose the
lumen-backup-….json file and press Keep it in my account. The service reads it as a backup and keeps only what a
backup holds — nothing else in the file is stored, and a file that is not a Lumen backup is refused. It then works like
any kept copy: send it to a device from its restore code.