Manus AI Data Deletion: Back Up Before Aug 23

Manus posted a short note on August 11 telling part of its user base that their work is about to be erased. The Manus AI data deletion covers everything certain accounts generated on or after December 29, 2025, and it runs from 8:00 a.m. on August 23 through August 24, 2026, Singapore time. If your account is on that list, the backup tool shuts at 7:59 a.m. SGT on August 23, and you lose access to the account entirely until a restoration portal opens two days after that. None of this was a product decision; a regulator pulled Manus out of Meta, and the deleted data is part of the settlement.

Why Manus is deleting anything at all

Meta bought Manus in December 2025 for a reported US$2 billion. Beijing blocked that deal on national security grounds, and according to the South China Morning Post, Meta is now unwinding the acquisition more than three months after the intervention. Manus, which launched in March 2025 as an agent that browses the web and writes reports on your behalf, goes back to standing on its own.

The December 29, 2025 cutoff is not arbitrary. It is the boundary of Meta ownership, which means the data facing deletion is precisely the data created while Manus belonged to Meta. The company's own phrasing is "to comply with regulatory requirements in specific jurisdictions," and it has not named which requirements or which jurisdictions. That vagueness is the most frustrating part of the notice, because it is also what makes it hard to work out on your own whether you are in the affected group.

How to tell whether the Manus AI data deletion hits your account

Manus says it will notify affected users two ways: in the app and by email. If you registered with an Apple ID or a Facebook account, the company does not have your email address, so the in-app notification is the only signal you will get. Unaffected users receive an in-app notice as well, telling them there is nothing to do.

There is no published rule you can check yourself. The help documentation sorts users into Type A, Type B, and Type C without explaining how to work out which one you are, so the notification really is the only reliable test. Log in and look. Do not assume silence means safety, particularly if you signed up through Apple or Facebook and have never given Manus an email address.

The deadline in the timezone you actually live in

Manus publishes its dates in Singapore time, which is where this catches people out. The backup window closes at 7:59 a.m. SGT on August 23, and the company's own conversions put that at 1:59 a.m. CEST on August 23 and 7:59 p.m. EDT on August 22.

Read that last one again. In the United States the cutoff lands on Saturday evening rather than Sunday morning, so anyone planning to sort it out over the weekend has a day less than they think. Deletion itself runs from 8:00 a.m. SGT on August 23 through August 24. Restoration opens at 8:00 a.m. SGT on August 25, which works out to 2:00 a.m. CEST on August 25 and 8:00 p.m. EDT on August 24. All of these figures are as of 2026-08-12 and come from Manus directly.

The Facebook login trap that fires before you can back up

Buried in the backup guide is a prerequisite that will lock some people out before they ever reach the backup tool. If Facebook is your only sign-in method, you have to add another one first. Manus shows this in the app:

Facebook Login will no longer be available after 23 Aug 2026, 8:00 (SGT) as Manus resumes operating as an independent company. To keep access to your account, connect another sign-in method below.

The help center is blunter about it: if you are currently logged in using only Facebook, you must add an alternative login method or email address in your account settings before you can back up your data. Google, Microsoft, and Apple all appear as options in that dialog.

Two failure modes stack here. Facebook-only accounts have no email on file, so they never receive the warning email, and those same accounts are the ones whose login method disappears. If you know someone who set Manus up through Facebook and has not opened it in a month, tell them.

What the backup actually hands you

Manus splits it into two packages. The Task Data Backup holds your tasks, the files those tasks produced (websites and slides among them), and your configuration; Manus estimates these run anywhere from tens of megabytes to tens of gigabytes, with a 4GB ceiling per package and automatic splitting above that line. The Account Info Backup applies to Type C users only, stays under 10MB, and arrives as an email attachment.

The company strongly recommends exporting straight to Google Drive or OneDrive over OAuth rather than downloading locally, which is sensible when the payload can reach double-digit gigabytes on a home connection. Use the web or desktop version; the guide says so explicitly, and a phone is the wrong tool for a multi-gigabyte transfer regardless.

One detail worth acting on: the tool supports repeat backups, and anything you create after your last export will not be in it. If you keep working through the next ten days, run it again the night before the window closes.

Team accounts run on a separate track. Both the backup guide and the restoration guide carry their own dedicated Team sections, so if you administer a Manus workspace rather than a personal account, the steps your members follow are not the ones above. Settle who is doing the export before the 22nd. A shared workspace where everyone quietly assumes somebody else pressed the button is the obvious way to lose a month of output.

The two days your account simply is not there

Once the backup window shuts, affected users cannot get into Manus at all until the restoration portal opens roughly 48 hours later. Not degraded, not read-only. Gone, then back. Manus is not charging affected accounts between August 11 and August 23 SGT and has promised welcome-back bonuses after restoration, which is a decent way to handle something it did not choose.

An agent that runs your recurring work is infrastructure, though, and infrastructure you can be locked out of on a published schedule needs a fallback for those two days. That is the shape of gap MoClaw was built for: a hosted cloud AI computer that stays up on its own account, so a freeze on one vendor's login does not take your Tuesday with it. It sits alongside whatever you already run rather than replacing it.

Restoring on or after August 25

For Type A and Type B users the restoration tool appears automatically on the Manus homepage the next time you log in; you upload your most recent Task Data Backup and your tasks and files come back. Type C users generate and download the Account Info Backup first, then handle task data.

What Manus has not documented is the failure path. Nothing in either guide says what happens if your backup turns out to be incomplete or missing a package that got split at the 4GB line. Open your Drive or OneDrive folder and confirm the files are actually there before August 23, rather than trusting that the export button did its job.

What this episode says about where your work lives

This is not really a Manus story. A regulator in one country ordered a change to a corporate structure, and users on other continents lost eight months of work as a downstream consequence. No outage, and nobody's bug. If your agent history, generated sites, and configuration all live inside a single vendor account, the ownership of that vendor is part of your risk surface, and you get no vote in it.

The useful response is not to abandon Manus, which handled the notice period about as well as it could have. It is to stop having exactly one place where the work happens. We have written before about what Manus actually gives away for free and cheaper routes to the same kind of agent work; the reason to read those this week is a different one from usual. It is not about saving money. It is about not having a Tuesday's work sit behind a single login that somebody else controls the schedule of. Whatever second place you pick, the test is whether you can pick the work back up from a different device on August 25 without waiting in somebody else's restore queue.

Key Takeaways

• The Manus AI data deletion runs August 23-24, 2026 (SGT) and covers data created on or after December 29, 2025 by affected accounts.
• Back up before 7:59 a.m. SGT on August 23, which is 7:59 p.m. EDT on August 22 and 1:59 a.m. CEST on August 23.
• Facebook-only logins must add another sign-in method before the backup tool will work, and those accounts never receive the warning email.
• Affected accounts stay inaccessible from the backup cutoff until restoration opens at 8:00 a.m. SGT on August 25.
• Task backups cap at 4GB per package and split automatically; export to Google Drive or OneDrive, and run the backup again if you keep working.

FAQ

What is the Manus AI data deletion?

It is the removal of all data generated on or after December 29, 2025 by a subset of Manus accounts, scheduled for August 23 through August 24, 2026 (SGT). Manus attributes it to regulatory requirements tied to its separation from Meta.

Is Manus shutting down?

No. Manus is returning to independent operation after Meta unwound its acquisition, and the company says it will keep serving its existing users. Only data generated on or after December 29, 2025 by affected accounts goes.

How do I know if my Manus account is affected?

Check your in-app notifications and your email. Manus messages both groups, and unaffected users receive an in-app note confirming no action is needed. Accounts registered through Apple ID or Facebook get the in-app notice only, because Manus holds no email address for them.

Will I lose my Manus subscription or credits?

Manus says affected users are not charged between August 11 and August 23 SGT and will receive welcome-back bonuses after restoring. The company has not published specifics on credit balances, so check the in-app notification for your own account. Our breakdown of what the alternatives cost covers the pricing side.

What happens if I miss the backup deadline?

Data covered by the deletion goes at 8:00 a.m. SGT on August 23, and Manus has not offered any recovery path afterward. The backup tool supports multiple runs, so exporting early and then again on August 22 is the safe pattern.

Can I keep working while my account is frozen?

Not in Manus. Affected accounts are inaccessible from the backup cutoff until 8:00 a.m. SGT on August 25, so anything time-sensitive has to run somewhere else for those two days. A hosted setup such as MoClaw keeps scheduled runs firing while the Manus login is frozen, which is the one thing a locked account cannot do for you.