How do you change the directory path used for the Project Backup?
It’s currently putting under the project directory as: -backups
I’d like to put it outside of the project directory so that I can zip up the project directory without including the backup files.
My best guess is there is currently no option in KiCad to do that. You can set some parameters for creating the backups in: … / Preferences / Preferences / Common / Project Backup, and if there was a possibility to set the location of backups, then I would expect it to be at that location.
There is however: Project Manager / File / Archive Project, which makes a zip file of the project and this does not add the backup directory. It also excludes other (temporary) files from the project backup. I do not use that function myself, because I do not know exactly what it does, and what it does or does not backup. Just now I had a short peek at the KiCad user manual, and it did not clarify this issue. It could be that it includes a fixed list (or algorithm) for things to include in the backup.
For a more elaborate backup strategy, KiCad does not concern itself much with it, but assumes you use GIT or similar, and such programs are highly configurable.
I was surprised reading it as I backup all my KiCad projects daily and don’t remember seeing KiCad backup files.
I think I switched off making backups by KiCad so long ago (probably in 2017) that I forgot about it.
If you take care yourself of backups than switch KiCad backups off in Preferences-Common and you will not have these files.
Good to know KiCad keeps this persistent during mayor updates 
But I like the intermediate method myself. I make my own backups whenever something significant happened in a project (and document the change), while having the automatic backups is a nice precaution for when KiCad crashes or other *&^%$#@! things happen.
But also, on the extreme end. If you look at https://github.com/Architeuthis-Flux/Jumperless/tree/main/Hardware/KiCAD then it has three revisions listed, and each revision has a kicad auto backup directory with a bunch of auto generated backups. It also has zip backups on other locations, and kicad-sch-bak files in the git repository. You could call it a “triple redundancy”, but it’s not effective use of GIT I’ll assume there is still a learning curve to go though for him.
I always tell KiCad to use my previous configuration.
I’m not familiar with github at all. I don’t know what to look at when I opened that link.
I backup daily all my work don’t analyzing what I have done today. So when I have a month break in using KiCad (often happens) then there are 30 backups containing exactly the same KiCad contents.
Thanks. Archive sweeps up all the files in the KiCad project directory, even if they are not part of the project. And it will include old backup directories (from before you renamed the project). However, it does correctly skip the current project -backups directory.
It would be nice if it DateTime stamped the archive file by default (there’s be a config for this).
And this late breaking news … Archive skips zip files.
I do manage my own backups. But do want these automatic ones. I just want to control where they go.
I always .gitignore all my backups but it is true that having a local backups outside of the project would be great.
KiCad does backups even though I do not save the board/schematic. Which is great if I am working on it but makes mess in git when I just open the board and just look into it or use it as reference. I always end up with dirty repository and I need to check for changes if it was the backups or whether I did some actual work…
Integrating python as a scripting language in the schematic editor is already planned, but I have not checked it’s status for years and don’t know a time scale.
Maybe it would be nice to have scripting abilities in the KiCad Project Manager too. Configurable buttons that do custom actions, combined with maybe triggers such as file saves. This would allow more integration of GIT and/or any other backup strategy.
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