1. Preserve what you have
Protect an existing export or preserve the phone that still contains Simply Plural and its local data.
Simply Plural data recovery
Your Simply Plural data may still be recoverable.
If Simply Plural still exists on your phone and still shows your System, preserve that phone. Do not uninstall the app, clear its data, or factory-reset the device.
We have successfully recovered structured Simply Plural data from a Samsung Galaxy S24+ after shutdown, without relying on an existing Simply Plural export.
There are now two paths to preserving your Simply Plural data.
Path A — You did not export before shutdown
If Simply Plural still exists on your phone and still shows your System, preserve the phone. On a Samsung Galaxy S24+, we have successfully recovered the locally stored structured data using Samsung Smart Switch and converted it into validated JSON.
Do not uninstall Simply Plural, clear its app data, or factory-reset the phone before attempting recovery.
Path B — You already have a Simply Plural export
Keep that export private, backed up, and somewhere you control. It remains the simplest path for applications that already support Simply Plural imports.
What we recovered
The Samsung Galaxy S24+ recovery produced structured Simply Plural JSON data rather than screenshots or screen-scraped text.
The recovered local data included:
- Member records and profile data.
- Fronting history and timestamps.
- Custom fields.
- Privacy buckets.
- Channels.
- Friends and friend settings.
- System and user information.
- Additional locally cached Simply Plural records.
Avatar recovery is still under investigation. The structured member records retain avatar identifiers, and we have also recovered recognizable Simply Plural-related source images, but we do not yet have a complete machine-readable mapping between those images and individual member records.
What to do now
- If you already have a Simply Plural export, keep it private, backed up, and somewhere you control.
- If you did not export and Simply Plural still exists on your phone, preserve the device and do not clear the app data.
- Keep recovered JSON, Smart Switch backups, and other recovery files private.
- Keep Simply Plural data out of public GitHub repositories, paste sites, screenshots, and public support threads.
- Do not send your export, recovered JSON, or app backup to Needs of the Many / PluralBridge.
What we learned after shutdown
Simply Plural can retain structured local System data on the phone after the servers are gone.
On a Samsung Galaxy S24+, we successfully recovered that data from a Smart Switch backup,
extracted simply.db, and converted it into validated UTF-8 JSON.
We are documenting the recovery process, publishing the technical details and scripts, and continuing work on avatar recovery. We do not yet know whether the same acquisition path will work on non-Samsung Android phones.
Recovery instructions and script
The confirmed Samsung Smart Switch recovery procedure and supporting command script are published in the PluralBridge repository.
These materials are intended to let recovery happen locally. Do not send your recovered Simply Plural data to Needs of the Many / PluralBridge.
For plural-app developers
If your application already supports Simply Plural imports, we want to work with you on a second path for users who did not create an export before shutdown.
Needs of the Many / PluralBridge will publish the technical documentation, recovery scripts, data-format findings, and reference implementation needed to support this recovery path. Users should not need to send their private System data to us.
PluralBridge is developed under the GNU General Public License v3.0. Recovery code and documentation that we publish will include the applicable copyright, license, and attribution notices.
2. Recover your data
Use the confirmed recovery procedure where it applies and keep the resulting files under your control.
3. Choose where it goes next
PluralBridge will support recovered data, and we welcome other plural-app developers supporting it too.