Are my blackbox logs deleted when Blackbox Explorer is archived?

No. Archiving a viewer has nothing to do with the files on your computer or SD card. A .bbl or .csv log is a plain file that stays where you saved it. What changes is which app still opens it and receives fixes. The format is still written by Betaflight and still documented in the Betaflight source.

Will Blackbox Explorer stop working on 1 December?

An archived repository is frozen, not switched off. If you already have the app, it keeps running as it does today. What you lose is new releases, bug fixes and support for future log headers. Treat it as a viewer you keep for old footage, not as the tool you rely on for next year's flights.

What can I use instead to look at a blackbox log?

For raw frame-by-frame inspection, the Betaflight Configurator's blackbox tab and the archived Blackbox Explorer still work with the formats they know. For measurement, use a tool that computes the spectrum and the step response rather than drawing the traces: PIDtoolbox for offline analysis, or Easyquadtune if you want the measurement plus a before/after tune and a CLI script.

Is the .bbl format going away too?

There is no announcement that the format is going away. The viewer and the format are separate: Betaflight still writes blackbox data, and the field definitions live in the firmware source. The practical risk is a newer header field that an archived viewer does not recognise, not the file becoming unreadable.

What should I export before December?

Keep the original .bbl or .csv files, not screenshots. If you have notes or tuning decisions worth keeping, export them to a spreadsheet or text file and store them next to the log. A screenshot proves what a chart looked like; the log is what lets you recompute the number later.

Easyquadtune See a log measured end to end

Blackbox workflow

Blackbox Explorer is being archived on Dec 1 – what now?

The viewer is being archived. The format is not. Your logs are ordinary files, and the measurements inside them are still the same measurements. What changes is which app you open them in, and how much you should rely on it for future flights.

1. What "archived" actually means

Betaflight's standalone Blackbox Explorer is being frozen and archived on 1 December 2026. The project's own announcement is the source to read: the Blackbox Explorer repository and the Betaflight release notes that link to it. Archived means the code is kept public and read-only: no new releases, no bug fixes on the main branch, and no new log fields added by future firmware.

It does not mean the app you already installed stops opening. It means the version you have is the version you keep. For old footage that is fine. For a quad you are still tuning, it means the viewer stops tracking the firmware.

Archived is not deleted. An archived repository stays readable, and an installed app keeps running. The thing you lose is the maintenance, and maintenance is what makes a viewer understand a header written after it was frozen.

2. Your logs are not going anywhere

A blackbox log is a file on your SD card or disk. It is written by the flight controller, not by the viewer. Betaflight still writes blackbox data, and the field definitions still live in the firmware source. So:

The .bbl and .csv files stay readable by every tool that already reads them, including the copy of Blackbox Explorer you have.
Old logs do not need re-exporting to stay useful. Keeping the original file is the export.
A newer firmware header may add fields an archived viewer does not know. That is the realistic failure mode, not the file going blank.

The practical advice is boring and effective: keep the original log, name it with the date and the tune that produced it, and keep a note of what you changed afterwards. A screenshot of a chart cannot be recomputed. The log can.

3. What still opens a log

Tool	Good at	Watch out for
Blackbox Explorer (your installed copy)	Frame-by-frame inspection, raw traces, exporting CSV	Frozen. No fixes and no awareness of future header fields.
Betaflight Configurator	Downloading a log from the FC, and basic blackbox viewing	It is a configuration tool first; it does not produce a tuning decision.
PIDtoolbox	Offline spectrum and step-response analysis with full control	You still have to read the charts and decide what to change.
Easyquadtune	Measuring the log, scoring whether it can support a tune, and writing a before/after CLI	It is not a frame-by-frame trace viewer. Use it for the decision, not the footage.

None of these replace the others cleanly. A sensible split is: keep a frozen viewer for raw inspection, and use a measuring tool for the tune. The mistake is treating a viewer as a tuner, which it never was.

4. What to do before December

Keep the installer you have. Save the release you actually use, so a future machine can still run it. A frozen tool is only useful if you still have the binary.
Export the logs you care about to CSV if you need portability. CSV is larger but readable by more tools than a binary log. Do this for the flights whose tuning decisions you want to revisit, not for all of them.
Write down the PID and filter values for each log. They are in the header, but a short note beside the file makes an old flight readable in ten seconds instead of ten minutes.
Re-check your workflow. If your process was "open the viewer, look at the traces, guess a change", the archive is a good reason to replace the guess with a measurement.

5. Why this is a tuning problem, not a viewer problem

A trace viewer shows you the gyro line. It does not tell you whether that line overshot its own settled level, whether the log had a clean step to measure, or whether the noise peak you are looking at is frame resonance or prop noise. Those are measurements, and they are what a tune is built from.

So the useful question after the archive announcement is not "which viewer replaces Blackbox Explorer". It is "what measures the log". Easyquadtune does that in the browser: it scores the log before tuning from it, labels the step response Chart-ready, Partial or Not safe, and refuses to raise gain on a chart that cannot show tracking. If the log is not good enough, it says so instead of producing a confident script.

Questions pilots actually ask

Are my logs deleted when the viewer is archived?

No. The logs are your files. Archiving the viewer does not touch them.

Will the app stop working on 1 December?

No. An archived project is frozen, not switched off. Your installed copy keeps running; it just stops receiving fixes.

Is the .bbl format going away?

There is no such announcement. The viewer and the file format are separate things. The risk is an unrecognised new header field, not an unreadable file.

What should I export first?

The original log, then the PID and filter values that produced it. A screenshot is the least useful artefact because it cannot be recomputed.

Where this comes from

Betaflight Blackbox Explorer repository — the project itself, with its own archive notice and release history.
Betaflight: Blackbox logging and usage — what the log records, logging rates and dropped frames.
Betaflight Configurator — the configuration app that also downloads logs from the flight controller.
Header field definitions — why a frozen parser and a new firmware header can disagree.

Turn the log into a measurement before the viewer freezes

Upload a Betaflight .bbl or .csv and get the spectrum, the step response per axis, a log-quality verdict and a before/after CLI. The first log is free per browser.

Analyse your log Or read a full sample report first

Questions about your own log? Ask in the Discord — a small, manual community where logs get a second pair of eyes.

More guides: how to read a blackbox log, wobble on hard stops, overshoot vs droop, frame resonance vs prop noise, I-term relax, dips in fast turns, when a log is not good enough.

Easyquadtune is not affiliated with the Betaflight project. Any example here is illustrative of the tool's output, not a tune for your aircraft. Always fly responsibly and perform an initial hover test in a safe environment after any tuning change.