A tour of the app
The seven pages in the rail, where your account is, the notification-area icon, and the shortcuts that reach everything.
On this page
GBM AI has seven pages, listed down the left: Home, Jobs, Restore, Ask Genie, Activity, Find and Settings. There is no menu bar. Your account sits at the bottom of the same rail, and the icon in the Windows notification area works while the window is closed.
Home#
The top of Home answers one question: is everything protected? It shows one of these:
| What it says | When |
|---|---|
| All 6 jobs healthy | every job's last run completed |
| Requires attention | a job failed or has not completed for a while; Details and Retry now are beside it |
| a live panel | a backup or restore is running |
| Nothing is protected yet | you have no jobs; Create your first backup starts one |
| The background agent isn't running | the agent is stopped; Start agent starts it |
Under it are three figures: Jobs, On destination (how much your backups hold) and Next run. Then three tiles: Backup (Start wizard), Restore (Browse backups) and a box where you can type to Ask Genie. Last come your Backup jobs, with Run on each row, and Recent activity, with Open report on each run.
Jobs#
Every job: what it backs up, where, its type and schedule, how much it holds on the destination, its Last 14 runs as coloured blocks, and an On switch. Turning a job off stops its schedule and deletes nothing. The chips above the list narrow it: Needs attention, Scheduled, Encrypted, Local, Network, Cloud.
Click a job for its own page, with four tabs: Overview, Runs, Schedule and Files. Files searches everything that job has ever backed up. See What a backup job is.
Restore#
Pick a job on the left, then a point in time on the right, and click Browse. Tick what you want back and choose where it goes. Restore works in every edition, always. See Restore a file or folder.
Ask Genie#
Describe a backup in a sentence. Genie drafts the job, a dry run shows what it would do without writing anything, and you save it, change it or discard it. It needs a sign-in. See What Ask Genie does.
Activity#
Every backup and restore, newest first, with its result, how long it took and its log. Search it, filter it to Failures, With skips or Restores, and export a support bundle. See The Activity page.
Find#
One search box over every file in every backup, answered from an index on this PC, so it works with the backup drive unplugged. See Searching every backup you have made.
Settings#
Eight pages: General, Backup defaults, Schedule & power, Notifications, Exclusions, Network & credentials, Advanced and About. See General settings and the other Settings articles.
Your account and edition#
At the bottom of the rail:
- The button above your account reads Upgrade on a trial, on Free and on Home, and Editions & store once Pro is activated. It opens Editions & store.
- Below it, the account card shows your email, or Not signed in, and your edition, for example Pro trial · 12 days left.
Click the account card. The menu has Language, Theme, Account & licences, Upgrade (or Editions & store), and Sign in or Sign out. Account & licences opens the page with your edition, licence, devices and sign-in.
The notification-area icon#
The GBM AI icon in the Windows notification area (the tray) is a small program of its own. It starts when you sign in to Windows and starts the background agent, so schedules run after a restart. The icon's two blocks take turns while a backup or restore runs. An amber dot means something needs your attention; a grey icon means backups are paused. Hover it for the state, the last backup and the next one.
Click the icon to open GBM AI. Right-click it for the menu:
| Menu item | What it does |
|---|---|
| Open GBM AI | opens the window |
| Pause this backup · Stop this backup | only while a backup runs |
| Back up now ▸ | runs one of your jobs now |
| Pause scheduled backups ▸ | holds every schedule for 1, 4 or 24 hours; see Pausing scheduled backups |
| New backup… · Restore files… · Ask Genie… · Settings | open that page |
| Update to … | appears when a new version is ready to install |
| Keep the computer on | appears during the countdown after a backup that sleeps or shuts down the PC |
| Quit | closes the icon only |
Closing the window closes the app, not your backups: the background agent keeps running and the schedules keep firing. Quit on the icon closes the icon only: Backups keep running in the background. The icon comes back the next time you sign in to Windows or open GBM AI. To hide it, turn off Settings ▸ General ▸ Show GBM AI in the notification area.
Shortcuts#
| Keys | What they do |
|---|---|
| Ctrl+K | the command palette: type a job's name to run, edit or restore from it, a settings page to open it, or an action such as Check for updates |
| Ctrl+N | new backup |
| Ctrl+J | Jobs |
| Ctrl+R | Restore |
| Ctrl+Shift+A | Ask Genie |
| Ctrl+, | Settings |
| Ctrl+F | the search box on a page that has one |
| F1 | the help article for the page you are on |