You've spent weeks, maybe months, grinding through zones. Your fingers are tired, your Transcendence Power is finally looking decent, and then it happens. Your browser cache clears. Or maybe you're just tired of the laggy web version and want to move your save over to Steam. Without your Clicker Heroes import codes, all that progress—the Hero Souls, the Ancient levels, the painstakingly leveled-up Outsiders—is just gone. It's a gut-wrenching feeling that every veteran player has feared at least once.
Honestly, the save system in Clicker Heroes is a bit of an artifact from a different era of gaming. It doesn't rely on a fancy cloud login for everything. Instead, it uses a massive string of encoded text. It’s ugly. It’s long. But it's the most reliable way to ensure you never lose your progress.
Why You Actually Need Clicker Heroes Import Codes
Most people think "Save Game" does all the work. It doesn't. While the game tries to keep a local cookie of your progress, cookies are notoriously fragile. If you use a cleaner like CCleaner or just clear your history to fix a bug, your 200th Ascension goes poof.
That’s where the manual export comes in. When you click that "wrench" icon in the top right and hit "Export," the game copies a huge block of gibberish to your clipboard. That gibberish is your lifeblood. You need to paste that into a Notepad file or a Google Doc immediately.
Moving between platforms is the other big reason. Maybe you started on ClickerHeroes.com but realized the Steam version handles high-zone lag much better. You can't just "log in" and see your heroes. You have to physically take the code from the web version and paste it into the "Import" section on Steam. It’s a literal bridge between different worlds of the same game.
The Anatomy of a Save String
Have you ever actually looked at one of those codes? It's a Base64 encoded string. It’s not meant for human eyes. It contains every single variable in your game state: how many times you’ve clicked, your current gold (usually represented in scientific notation like $1.500e120$), and the exact seed for your next mercenary recruitment.
If you try to edit this manually in a text editor, you’ll likely break it. The game looks for a specific checksum at the end. If the math doesn't add up because you tried to give yourself an extra billion Rubies, the game will simply refuse to load it.
How to Properly Use the Clicker Heroes Import Codes Feature
It sounds simple, but people mess this up constantly. First, open your game. Look at the top right corner. You'll see a little wrench icon. Click it.
A menu pops up. You’ll see "Save," "Import," and "Export."
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- Click Export.
- A dialog box will appear saying your game save has been copied to your clipboard.
- Don't just close the game. Open a text file. Paste it.
- Check the start and end of the string. It usually starts with something like
7a9...and ends with a long sequence of characters.
Now, to use it elsewhere, you go to the new instance of the game, click that same wrench, and hit Import. A big empty box appears. Paste your code there and hit "Okay." The game will refresh, and if everything went right, your heroes will be right there waiting for you.
Common Problems and How to Fix Them
"The code isn't working." I hear this all the time in the Discord and on the subreddits.
Usually, it’s a formatting issue. If you accidentally copied a single extra space at the beginning or end of the code, the game won't recognize it. Or, worse, if you sent the code to yourself via an app that "auto-formats" text (like some mobile messaging apps), it might have changed the capitalization or added a hyphen. Base64 is case-sensitive. One tiny 'a' instead of an 'A' and the whole thing is trash.
Another weird quirk: version mismatch. If you are trying to take a save from a very old version of the game (like v0.17) and put it into the current version (v1.0e12), it usually works because Playsaurus built in "backward compatibility." But going backward? Trying to put a modern save into an old version of the game? That’s a recipe for a crash. The old code doesn't know what "Transcensions" or "Autoclickers" are.
The Ethics and Risks of Save Editing
If you search for Clicker Heroes import codes, you’ll inevitably find "Save Editors." These are third-party websites where you paste your code, change your gold to "Infinity," and then generate a new code.
Look, it’s a single-player game. You aren't "hurting" anyone. But you are definitely hurting your own experience. The entire loop of Clicker Heroes is the dopamine hit of finally hitting a new milestone. If you use a modified code to jump to Zone 1 million, the game becomes boring in about five minutes.
More importantly, save editors can be buggy. Since the "e12" update, the math behind the game became significantly more complex. Many old save editors haven't been updated. If you use an outdated editor, it might strip out your "Ancient Souls" or mess up your clan participation, effectively soft-locking your account from future updates.
The "Read-Only" Save Trick
Here is a pro tip that the high-level players use. Before you do something risky—like spending 500 Rubies on a pack of Timelapses or trying to push for a new HANT (Highest Area Not Transcended)—export your code.
Think of it as a manual "Save State." If your gamble doesn't pay off, or if you realize you wasted your resources, you can just re-import that code you saved five minutes ago. It's technically "save scumming," but in a game that takes years to play, it’s a survival tactic.
Moving Between Mobile and Desktop
This is the big one. Can you move saves between your phone and your PC?
Technically, yes, but it’s a massive pain. The mobile version (iOS/Android) and the PC version (Steam/Web) often run on slightly different build versions. More importantly, the UI is different. While you can sometimes get an export code out of the mobile version, the platforms don't always talk to each other nicely.
Most players recommend picking a "main" platform. If you want the most stable experience with the fewest bugs when using Clicker Heroes import codes, Steam is the gold standard. It handles the massive numbers of the late game better than any browser ever will.
Dealing with Cloud Save Sync Issues
Steam Cloud is supposed to be your friend. Sometimes, it’s your worst enemy.
You might open the game on your laptop and Steam asks: "Use Cloud Save or Local Save?" If you choose wrong, you could overwrite a week of progress with a save from last Tuesday.
Always trust your manual export code over the cloud. If you have a text file with your code from this morning, it doesn't matter what Steam Cloud does. You are bulletproof. Make it a habit. Export every time you transcend. It takes five seconds.
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Actionable Steps for Protecting Your Save
Stop relying on the game to remember who you are. The browser is not your friend, and the cloud is fickle.
- Create a "Clicker Heroes" folder on your desktop or Google Drive.
- Export your code every single time you finish a major milestone (like a Transcendence or a deep push).
- Label the text files with the date and your "Highest Zone Ever." (e.g.,
CH_Save_Jan18_Zone50k.txt). - Verify your code by pasting it into a "Save Organizer" or just another browser instance to make sure it loads correctly before you close your main game.
- Keep a "Clean" backup. Before you ever touch a save editor or a calculator, make sure you have a version of your code that is 100% "legit." If the editor breaks your file, you'll be glad you have the backup.
If you follow these steps, you'll never be one of those people posting on Reddit about how they lost three years of clicking. Your progress is only as secure as your last export code.