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On your iPhone or iPad. The app periodically saves colonies locally and includes a second copy in its private files. Device backups may also include app data, depending on your backup settings. Save and recovery behavior is still being tested; keep exported copies of important colonies.

For extra peace of mind, export a colony now and then (Settings → Export save) and keep the file in Files or iCloud Drive.

Set up the new device from a backup of the old one (iCloud, a computer, or Quick Start), and your colonies come across with the app.

Or move them yourself: on the old device open the colony and choose Settings → Export save, send the file (AirDrop, Files or Mail), then on the new device choose Settings → Import save and pick it. A valid export imports as a new colony. Keep the original file until you have checked that the imported colony is correct.

Not unless you want it to. By default it waits, paused, exactly where you left it, and a welcome card offers to carry on.

To let it keep living, open Settings → While you're away. When you come back it catches up (a day for every half hour away, up to a month, or a day for every ten minutes, up to three months) and shows what happened while you were gone. You can stop the catch-up at any point.

Sounds start after your first tap in the game. Check that your iPhone isn't in silent mode (the switch or the Action button on the side), and that Settings → Sound is on in the game. There is no music, by design: only the land, the nests and the ants, so you can play your own music alongside.

Running a living colony is real work, and speed multiplies it: at 25× a colony day passes every half second. Play at 1× to 5× when you are just watching, and pause when you put the device down. Pause before leaving the app when you want to keep the colony at a particular point.

Open My colonies (under More on iPhone). Start a new colony there, open any colony you have kept, or rename, copy, export or delete one. Use the library to return to a saved colony.

Observer is for watching: the automatic feeder supplies food, everything is visible, and the colony makes its own choices. Colony Keeper puts you in charge: you feed the colony, learn about its neighbours only as its scouts find them, make its choices and can chase optional goals. Switch any time in Settings; nothing is reset.

The colony panel lists what matters right now (protein running low, a crowded farm, a nest under attack) and taps through to where it is happening. Feed by hand, plant trees on the colony's land, or as Colony Keeper send food or workers to a struggling nest. If the royal line dies out completely, a new queen arrives some days later and founds a new dynasty in the old nest.

No. Ant Laboratory has no accounts, no ads, no analytics and no tracking, and your colonies never leave your device unless you export them. See the privacy policy.

Once the app is released, purchases will be handled by Apple. You can request a refund at reportaproblem.apple.com, signed in with the Apple Account you bought the app with.