It's a way for you to save your data as a file that you can then import later.
To download a save file, go to the "Import & Export Data" tab. Keep everything checked if you want to keep all your data, but you may want to uncheck Stream Settings & ID on Top 50 to avoid sharing your Nightbot code, and uncheck API updates if you use credentials in your API settings to avoid sharing those if you plan on sharing the save with someone else. After that, just press the "Export Data" button!
To import a save file, use the "Import Data" button below, or on Top 50, the "Load Save (From Top 50 Save)" file input, and select your file. If you get prompted about a partial import, it is because you either left some boxes unchecked or the save file doesn't contain everything (e.g. was exported with a few boxes unchecked, or from a different counter/older version). Press "OK" if you want to merge with what you already have, keeping everything that isn't imported. "Cancel" will RESET everything that isn't imported.
.txt instead of .json should work. Note that the save file can be imported into Livecountsedit perfectly fine as a .txt file. Note that save files created after June 4, 2025 use the MIME type text/plain despite being a .json file in order to get around this issue.
The exact details on how each option works are a bit advanced if you don't know coding, but you can use one of the mixerno.space presets. Make sure you configure the YouTube channel ID, or create new counters with ID field set to the corresponding ID on Top 50. You can convert a YouTube username to an ID using this tool. Alternatively, you can go to the channel's about page by clicking the "...more" in the description, scrolling down to the bottom, clicking "Share channel," and then clicking "Copy Channel ID."
If you use the "Force updates" option, the counter will be the real sub count, otherwise, you can make your own estimations for abbreviated YouTube counts. All single user counters and compare counters come with an "overestimation leeway" option to specify how much to bring the count down by if you overestimate. For example, if your count hits 101M but the API still says 100M, you can use a 10% leeway to drop it down to 100.9M, or a 20% leeway to drop to 100.8M. Using a 0% leeway will drop to 100,999,999.
Also, remember to save your API settings! They don't get saved automatically.
We used to have a button to automatically import them, but we removed it due to copyright concerns. You can find community-made lists like this one or copy from a save file shared in our Discord server.
Make sure you set the fire icon gain type to "Hour", and add them in order from highest to lowest so they take priority in the correct order.
Watch this video by MDM himself for the exact rates:
Mean and standard deviation gains offer an option for a (possibly) more realistic count growth. For example, instead of being confined to a minimum and maximum gain, you add a mean value, and the standard deviation controls the spread. It is a normal, aka Gaussian distribution, so values closer to the mean are more likely.
For example, if your mean is 20 and your standard deviation is 5, most gains should be within 5 (or 1 standard deviation), so 15-25.
As a rule of thumb, around 68% of the time you get a gain within 1 standard deviation (so 15-25 in the example), 95% within 2 standard deviations (10-30), and 99.7% within 3 standard deviations (5-35).
Even if you use min/max gains, the total gain after a long period of time will be approximately normally distributed thanks to the Central Limit Theorem, so we also use this to simulate offline gains and to estimate gains with our gain calculator. Who knew that we would use actual statistics when talking about "YouTube Stats"?
There are two ways of determining gain in Livecountsedit, and those are observed gains and set gains.
Observed gains will look at the actual counter moving and take an average of some values (the number of points to sample can be changed using the "Calculate gain rate as average of" option) to estimate the gain rate of a channel. You should use this if your counters are being influenced by external means like API updates, or if you want to account for the randomness of the gains to make it more interesting.
Set gains, which is what the fires and differences will use if you uncheck the use observed gains option, will simply literally look at your gain settings and calculate the true average gain rate using that. You should use this if you want your effects to be accurate to your settings, don't want them changing around randomly, and aren't using API updates.