What does Buildsnapper back up, and what lives only on my phone?

The honest picture

First, the golden rule this all rests on: never uninstall or reinstall the app, and never clear its data — your photos live on the device, and what follows explains exactly which copies exist where.

Always in the Buildsnapper cloud

• Project and plot details — names, addresses, builder/client details, which sections are complete, photo records (the metadata: location, date, description — not the images themselves)
• Report history — which reports were sent, to whom, when
• Sent report PDFs — stored at send time; your assessor keeps access via the portal
• Sent photo archives — the ZIP of a plot's photos uploaded when you send a report

This is why signing in on any device shows your projects — and why that can be misleading: the lists come back everywhere, the photo images do not.

Only on your phone (until sent)

• Captured photos — stored in the app's documents (the Documents/SavedImages folder inside the app's private storage)
• Appendix PDFs attached to plots — these have no gallery copy and no cloud copy until a report is sent (they are merged into the sent report PDF)
• Generated report PDFs you have not sent — recoverable by regenerating, so low-stakes

The phone-level safety nets, per platform

iOS

• The app's documents (photos, appendix PDFs, reports) are included in iCloud backups, computer backups and device-to-device migration.
• The full-resolution gallery copy of every capture — written with its location — is in your Photos library, and follows your Apple ID if iCloud Photos is on.

Android

• Device-to-device transfer (new-phone setup, cable/wi-fi) carries the app's complete evidence store.
• Google's cloud backup does NOT include the photos — deliberately. Android caps per-app cloud backups at 25 MB and a backup over the cap fails entirely, so the app excludes the photo folders to keep the rest of the backup working. Do not rely on a Google account restore to bring photos back.
• The full-resolution gallery copy of every capture — written with its location embedded — lands in your gallery, and is backed up to your account if Google Photos backup is on. This is the real cloud safety net on Android; it is worth checking now that it is switched on (Google Photos → profile picture → Backup).

The one-sentence versions

• "Are my photos in your cloud?" — Not until you send a report. Sending is what gets evidence off the device.
• "If my phone died right now, what survives?" — Everything sent, everything in your phone's own backups, and the gallery copies if photo backup was on. Anything unsent with none of those exists only on the phone.

What we will never tell you

You will never hear from Buildsnapper support that "your photos are backed up to our cloud" as a blanket statement — unsent photos are not, and pretending otherwise is how evidence gets lost. When in doubt about a specific plot, send the report: it is the strongest backup there is.