How to Update Alight Motion Without Losing Projects (2026 Guide)

Updating Alight Motion should be routine: open your app store, tap update, and everything — projects, elements, settings — should still be there when it finishes. In most cases, that is exactly what happens. But updates sometimes go sideways: an interrupted download, an accidental reinstall, or switching to a different copy of the app. And because Alight Motion stores your projects only on your device, those are the moments when work can disappear for good.

This guide explains what actually puts your projects at risk during an update, what to back up before you touch anything, how to update the safe way, and what to do if your projects look missing after an update — in the order you should try things.

Why updates can put projects at risk

Here is the key fact, straight from Alight Motion’s official Help Center: your projects are stored exclusively on your device. They are not saved to your Alight Motion account, and signing in does not back them up. That means:

• A normal update — the new version installed over the old one — keeps your app data, including projects. This is the safe path.
• Deleting the app and reinstalling it deletes all of your projects and elements permanently.
• Clearing the app’s data in your phone settings has the same effect as deleting the app.
• Switching between different copies of the app — for example, from the official app to a third-party or modified version, or the other way around — usually requires uninstalling one copy first, which wipes that copy’s data.

So the update itself is rarely the danger. The danger is anything that removes the app or its data while you are trying to update.

Back up your projects before updating

Alight Motion’s official backup workflow uses Project Packages: open a project, tap the Export icon in the top-right corner, and choose “Project Package.” The app uploads the package and gives you a link and a QR code — store these somewhere safe, outside the app. Later, opening the link or scanning the QR code lets you import the project back into the app, on the same device or a new one.

That is the official method. A few practical extras are worth doing alongside it:

• Export finished or nearly finished work as a regular video too — a flattened video cannot be edited further, but it is a copy of your result that survives anything. See our export troubleshooting guide if exports are failing.
• Back up the projects that matter most first. If you have dozens, start with the ones you cannot redo.
• Note which version of the app you are on before updating, so you can tell what changed if something breaks.
• Do not rely on signing in: per the official docs, signing in to Alight Motion does not save your projects.

Warning: treat every uninstall, data-clear, or factory reset as project deletion. If any troubleshooting step tells you to “just reinstall,” back up first — even when you are in a hurry. Our crashing guide keeps reinstall as a last resort for exactly this reason.

Update the safe way

1. Make sure you have backups (see above) — at minimum, your most important projects.
2. Connect to stable Wi-Fi and make sure you have enough free storage for the download.
3. Update through your official app store (Google Play on Android, App Store on iPhone or iPad) — tap Update on Alight Motion’s listing. Do not uninstall the app first.
4. Let the update finish completely before opening the app.
5. Open Alight Motion and check that your projects are listed. Give thumbnails a moment to regenerate.

What changes during a normal update: the app’s code and features. What does not change: your projects, elements, and settings — those live in the app’s data, which a normal update leaves alone. If you want background on what updates include, see Alight Motion Update: What’s New & How to Update Fast.

Projects missing after the update? Try this first

Do not panic — and do not reinstall yet. Work through these in order:

1. Force-close the app and reopen it. Project lists and thumbnails sometimes fail to load on the first launch after an update.
2. Restart your phone, then open Alight Motion again.
3. Check your free storage. If the phone is nearly full, the update may have completed badly — free up space and check again.
4. Make sure you updated the same copy of the app you were using. If you had two installs (official plus third-party) or switched sources, your projects may still be in the other copy — check there before doing anything destructive.
5. If only one project looks broken while others open fine, the issue is project-specific, not update-related. See our XML import error guide if it involves an imported preset, or the crashing guide if that one project will not open.

If the whole project list is empty and you have confirmed you are in the right copy of the app, your backups are now the recovery path: use your saved Project Package links or QR codes to import projects back.

App-wide vs project-specific: tell them apart

This distinction saves a lot of wrong turns:

• App-wide: every project is affected — the app crashes on launch, nothing in the project list opens, or the whole list is empty. Focus on the app itself (storage, the update, the install).
• Project-specific: one project misbehaves while the others work. The app and your other projects are fine — the problem is inside that project (a heavy composition, a broken imported preset, missing media). Treat it individually instead of reinstalling the app.

What to try before destructive fixes

If the app is misbehaving after an update, work from least to most destructive:

1. Restart the app and the phone.
2. Free up storage.
3. Find the matching guide on the troubleshooting hub — crashing or freezing, export failures, or install errors.
4. Only as a last resort: reinstall — and only after you have backed up with Project Packages and exported videos. Remember the official warning: deleting and reinstalling permanently removes the projects and elements stored on the device.

A special note on third-party or modified copies of the app: updates outside the official stores can behave unpredictably, and moving between official and modified versions usually means uninstalling one of them. Read Is Alight Motion Mod APK Safe? before going down that road.