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Can you back up directly to your PC or Mac?

To make a backup and download it to your PC (or an external USB drive attached to your PC), you can do this in two steps:

  1. Press the ‘Backup Now’ button on the UpdraftPlus dashboard
  2. When the backup has completed, click on the ‘Existing Backups’ tab, and download the backup from there.

Sometimes customers ask if it is possible to skip step 2 – i.e. can UpdraftPlus automatically send the backup to your PC/Mac?

This is possible, but only if you set up software on your PC to automatically synchronise a remote cloud storage service with your PC/Mac. e.g. Send your backup to Dropbox, and use the Dropbox application on your PC to automatically sync your Dropbox with your PC/Mac. Or send your backup to Google Drive, and use the Google Drive application on your PC/Mac to automatically download what’s in your Google Drive.

It’s not possible for a website (such as your WordPress website, of which UpdraftPlus is a part) to automatically send backups to your computer directly – there is no general-purpose technology which exists to achieve this. Therefore, it’s necessary to use some sort of particular helper application, like in the previous paragraph.