How to transfer your PrayerMate data to a new device

Syncing your data to the cloud

If you want to keep your PrayerMate data safe at all times backed up in the cloud automatically, the best thing to do is to “sign in” to the app. Go to PrayerMate’s “settings” page (a cog button whilst praying – at the top on Android or in the bottom tab bar on iOS). There you should find a “Create an online account/sign in” option (it will say “My Account” instead if you are already signed in). Sign in and wait for the sync progress to reach 100% (this could take a while if you have a lot of data).

Syncing to a second device

If you wish to then sync this to a second device, the best thing is to start with a fresh PrayerMate installation on that device – if you already have it installed on the second device then consider uninstalling it and reinstalling. On the very first screen when you launch PrayerMate afresh it should give you a cog button in the top right with the option to sign in and sync. Again, you’ll have to wait for progress to reach 100%, which could take a while due to the decryption that has to take place.

Export/Improt via Dropbox

It is also possible to transfer your PrayerMate data via Dropbox. Here’s a step by step guide of how to do it.

Step 1: Export your data from your old device

Open up PrayerMate on your old device, navigate to the app’s main “Settings” menu (accessible whilst praying), and choose the “Export data” / “Export to Dropbox” setting. You’ll need to log in with your Dropbox credentials if you haven’t already (and possibly you’ll first need to set up a Dropbox account)

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If you want any photos you’ve attached to people to be transferred, choose the “Export with photos” option:

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It may take a while to upload all of the photos, and you’ll see a little progress indicator whilst you wait. Once it’s complete you should see confirmation:

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Step 2: Import your data on your new device

It’s then time to switch over to your new device. Download PrayerMate if you haven’t already. Then go to the app’s main “Settings” menu again, and this time choose “Import data” (N.B. on some newer 64-bit Android phones Dropbox isn’t directly integrated with PrayerMate – but if you choose “Import from another app” you can use the separate Dropbox app if you’ve installed it, and browse to the folder “Apps/PrayerMate” within your Dropbox). After you’ve logged into Dropbox, you’ll be presented with a list of files in your PrayerMate folder. Look for the one with today’s date:

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If you exported photos on the first device, make sure you choose “Import with photos” on this second device too:

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Again, you may have a bit of a wait, but eventually you’ll be presented with confirmation of how many categories and subjects were imported:

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“Can’t establish a reliable data connection to the server” syncing Android phone with Google account

My wife was trying to sync her data from her old Android phone to a Google account so she could transfer them to a new Android phone. Whilst trying to add her Google account to her old phone, she kept getting this error message:

Can’t establish a reliable data connection to the server. This could be a temporary problem or your SIM card may not be provisioned for data services. If it continues, call Customer Care.

Annoying, huh? Search the internet and you get forum thread after forum thread of people having the same problem over years. Many people seemed to suggest that the only solution was to do a hard factory reset, losing all of your data in the process which totally defeated the object!

Hilarious, then, to discover this super simple solution:

“Just try signing into the YouTube app with the account you want to sync and it will automatically add it to the list of your accounts. Kapish!”

Sure enough, that instantly fixed the problem in a matter of seconds. Amazing!

Using PrayerMate in your small group

PrayerMate is a great tool to help you pray regularly for your small group. If you’ve not discovered them already, there’s a couple of features to help you in this, and even more in the pipeline for future releases.

At the end of our small group meetings, we always share our prayer requests with each other. If you’re anything like me, your instinct is to type them straight into a subject in PrayerMate. But then what? Naturally, you want to actually turn to pray for them, right there and then! Open up the subject you’ve just set up, then on iOS there’s a little up arrow button by the subject details, or on Android there’s a “…” button in the top right. Press this, and you’ll get the option to pray for them straight away.

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You can also email out the prayer points to your group using this same up arrow button. iOS lets you create a “group” of contacts in your address book, which you can easily access from PrayerMate, or I find it easiest to email them to myself and then forward the email to the rest of the group when I’m at my desktop.

Getting Started with PrayerMate for Android

A Beginner’s Guide to PrayerMate for Android

What is PrayerMate?

PrayerMate is an app for Android and iOS that helps you be more faithful in prayer. Enter the people and causes you care about, grouped into lists of your choosing, and every day PrayerMate will pick a selection of these subjects for you to pray through, one at a time.

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Your first prayer session

The very first time you open PrayerMate, it will create a few default lists for you – my friends, my family, and so on. It will also create a small number of default subjects, for example the Lord’s Prayer. Since you only have a small number of subjects in the system, for now you’ll be shown roughly the same set of subjects every time you run the app – which may get a little repetitive!

Creating new subjects

To get started, I suggest you dive right in and start creating some subjects to pray for. I started off with each member of my family (on the “My family” list), some close friends (on the “My friends” list), and some organisations and countries around the world that I care about (on the “World mission” list). The simplest way to create a new subject is to press the “+” button at the very top of the screen, select which list you want to add to, then type in a name for your subject (e.g. “Mum & Dad”). When you’re done typing press the “Done” button in the top right.

Now when I open up the app, I’ll still be shown the Lord’s prayer, but I can now swipe it to the left to see my first family member, and swipe again to the left to see one of my friends, then swipe left again to see a world mission item. Each time I swipe to the left I’m telling PrayerMate that I’ve “prayed” for that item, so that next time I fire up the app I’ll be shown a different item from that category instead.

Managing your lists

As well as being able to pray through a selection of items that PrayerMate chooses for you each day, you can also access all of your subjects at any time by pressing the “Lists” button at the very top of the main screen. You can swipe sideways to find a list, or press any entry on the initial “Lists index” to jump straight to a list.

At the bottom of the “Lists index” you will also find some special lists: the archive, your recently prayed subjects, and a “Books” gallery of downloadable prayers.

How items are scheduled

PrayerMate’s default mode is to show you no more than one subject from each of your lists every time you open the app, up to a maximum quota that you set using the “+”/”-” buttons on the first “Coming up” slide. Within each list, it will always show you the item that you prayed for least recently – so over time you’re guaranteed to get through all of the subjects in your list. If you want a bit more control, you can also manually adjust the number of items from each list that you’ll be shown from the settings screen for each list. For example, you might want to pray for one family member each day and three friends. To access a list’s settings menu, tap the “Lists” button at the very top of the screen, scroll sideways to the list in question, and tap its settings button (it looks like a cog). There you can switch on the “Manually set items per session” setting.

If you’re anything like me, you’ll probably feel that some of your lists are more important than others – for example, you want to always pray for your family every day, but you mind less about not praying for a world mission item every single time. Switching on the manual items per session setting on a list tells PrayerMate that it should always do its best to show you items from this list. But use it sparingly! It works best if only one or two lists are configured in this way.

Other features

You’ll probably find it helpful to make specific notes against each subject giving you some ideas about what to pray for them. When looking at a prayer subject, press the edit button in the top right (it looks like a pencil in a box) and you can then start typing any text you want to into the largest box that appears (it should say “tap to add details…”).

Many people have said that they find it helps them to pray for people more if they attach a photo to their entry. You can do this by editing a card and then tapping the circle that appears.

PrayerMate also allows you to set an alarm, reminding you to pray at a set time every day. You can do this through the “Reminders” page accessed by pressing the alarm clock at the very top of the main screen. Set a time, and you’ll then get a prompt saying “Time to pray?” at that time each day.

Advanced scheduling

As well as the default scheduling mode described above, PrayerMate also allows you to set some slightly more sophisticated scheduling rules. On a specific subject you can change the scheduling mode, to either default (which you now know about), by date (where you pick a specific date from a calendar on which you want to pray for this subject) and day of the week (where you can choose one or more days of the week on which you want to pray, e.g. Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays). You can do this by pressing a subject’s settings button (it looks like a cog) and then changing the “Scheduling mode”.

You can also set an ‘auto-archive’ date on subjects. Once this date has passed, your subject will be moved into the archive, so that you’ll no longer be asked to pray for it. You can always get access to archived items at a later stage through the “Archive” menu on the options page.

See also: PrayerMate Frequently Asked Questions

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A video introduction

You may find this handy video that the Chapel Life has put together useful:

PrayerMate App from ChapelOutreach on Vimeo.

PrayerMate iOS Frequently Asked Questions

PrayerMate Logo 1Following are some frequently asked questions about the PrayerMate app for iOS.

Can I sync my data between two devices?

Yes – go to the app’s “Settings” page and you can choose the “Create an online account / sign in” option.

Is there a desktop version of PrayerMate?

There is not currently any official desktop client for PrayerMate, but if you export your data from the app’s “Settings” page then you can load it into this unofficial community tool by Dean Montgomery, make your changes, and then load the data back in to the app.

How do I edit cards? What happened to the pencil icon?

In the latest update you don’t need to press the pencil icon to edit cards, just tap the card to edit.

Can I increase the font size?

Yes, you can do this from the app’s settings page.

Is there a way to temporarily pray every day for a special event?

There’s instructions here on how to pray daily for a special event.

How do I remove a reminder alarm?

On the reminders page, you can swipe any alarm to the left to reveal a “Delete” button.