Why must I never uninstall Buildsnapper or clear its data?

The golden rule

Never uninstall or reinstall the app, and never clear its data — your photos live on the device, inside the app's own storage.

"Turn it off and on again" is fine. "Delete it and reinstall it" is the single most destructive thing you can do to this app. Uninstalling removes the app's storage container, and with it every photo that has not yet been sent in a report. For Part L evidence — photos of insulation and details that are now closed up behind plasterboard, screed or brickwork — that can literally mean excavating to retake the shot.

Exactly what is at risk

Inside the app's on-device storage live:

• Every captured photo for every plot (the copies the app builds reports and photo archives from)
• Appendix PDFs you attached to plots — these have no other copy on the device at all
• Generated report PDFs (recoverable — they can be regenerated — but still deleted)

Cloud records (your project names, plot lists, report history) survive an uninstall, which makes the loss deceptive: reinstall and sign in, and your projects all reappear — but with missing photos where the images used to be.

The specific actions to avoid

• Uninstalling / deleting the app (both platforms) — deletes the app container and everything above.
• Android: Settings → Apps → Buildsnapper → Storage → Clear Data / Clear Storage — identical effect to an uninstall, without removing the icon. Never do this, and never let a phone shop or well-meaning relative do it.
• The app's own Settings → Clear App Data — this is a real feature for genuinely finished devices, and it deletes photos, reports and appendix PDFs after two explicit warnings. Do not use it as a troubleshooting step.
• Deleting Buildsnapper photos from your phone's photo gallery — the gallery copies are your safety net (they carry the location data and full resolution). Freeing up space by bulk-deleting camera photos can destroy that safety net.
• Factory-resetting or wiping the phone before a proper migration to a new device.

What is safe

• Updating the app from the App Store or Play Store — photos survive updates; the app is specifically built to find them again after every update.
• Signing out and back in — never touches photos.
• Restarting the phone — harmless.
• Sending reports — sending is what gets your evidence off the single device: the report PDF and a photo archive are stored where your assessor can reach them.

If something seems broken

Whatever the symptom — photos not showing, app crashing, reports failing — change nothing and contact support, choosing "Evidence at risk on site" if evidence is at risk today. Nearly every "my photos are gone" case turns out to be a display issue with the photos safely on disk. An unresolved problem is recoverable; deleted evidence is not. If anyone else is helping you with your phone, show them this article before they touch it.

Already uninstalled before reading this? Stop there — do not reinstall again, do not tidy the gallery — and read photos after a reinstall: copies of your evidence usually survive, and there is a recovery route.