Backup And Restore Android Apps And Data
Gaspard Xenos
When you get a new phone, you have to re-configure all the apps on the new smartphone. Or you could just back up your app data from the old phone and restore it on the new one. Whether or not you've rooted your device, there's a way to do this. In this article, we'll show you how.
Without special permission (root access) it is hard to access the private directories of the old smartphone. So, unless an app provides its own configuration backup method, your app data will be lost when you change smartphones.
There's still a way to back up your app data, though. Some apps allow access to app data via a debugging interface, and this is exactly the method the Helium app uses to export your app data, even without root access, and transfer it to your new phone.
Google not only backs up photos, e-mails, contacts, and many other things, but also app data. For the majority of users, the best way to back up app data will be Google's own backup service, often enabled by default on Android.
In Google One you have an overview of your backups directly, and in the package you will find the item "Apps". This directory stores the information about which app has saved your data on Google at what time, but unfortunately it's not accessible. However, if you set up a new phone with your Google Account backup, the app data is ideally transferred to your phone immediately after automatic installation. It couldn't be simpler.
One thing is clear: The quality of Google's app data protection depends above all on the providers of the apps. App developers need to integrate the functionality properly into their applications so that Google can reliably back up and update the app data. This is not yet the case everywhere, and you may find some apps in your collection where this does not work. But over time, backup gets better and better, and it doesn't get any more convenient than Google Backup.
If you don't want to trust Google and the app developers to keep your data backed up for you, there are some alternatives for doing this yourself. One of the most popular apps for this is called Helium, described below.
Note: If your smartphone isn't detected, USB debugging may not have been properly activated. It may also be the case that the appropriate ADB drivers aren't installed on your computer yet. In the case of a Sony device, go to the Sony Developer website and get them from there. With other manufacturers, you solve the problem the same way.
Although the Play Store is lacking in freshly updated alternatives to Helium (many that allow you to back up APKs, but not app data), there's a good option from F-Droid, a repository for free and open-source software (FOSS).
With oandbackup, you can make backups of selected apps on your device and restore from those backups. The key part is that it allows you to save app data to a user-accessible location. Both backup/restore of single apps and of multiple apps are supported.
To download and run oandbackup, you'll first need to download F-Droid, and then download oandbackup from there. The app is still maintained and updated regularly, so it should work on newer versions of Android if Helium has let you down. You'll need root access for this, however, but it could be your best bet if you don't want to rely on Google.
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It appears that the reason it didn't restore automatically in my case was that there were many different devices backed up to the same Google Account, and it didn't know which "set" to use. I got a list of "sets" with the command adb shell bmgr list sets and could then use your command with the desired set like this: adb shell bmgr restore .
I'm going to post an alternative answer to my own question, in spite of having accepted the previous answer. The reason is that I have since learned, on my personal device, that the Android Backup and Restore doesn't work as well as I expected, so while that wasn't the case in the case above, this might be the case for other people finding this question.
Apparently, if restoring on a different device or even on the same device with a different OS, it won't restore anything but system data. This happened to me when I wiped my Moto X (2nd gen) to install LineageOS on it.
I'm not sure if newer versions of Android come with better Backup and Restore functionality, but for now I'm going to be using a specialised backup app (Helium at the moment) to keep my data fairly backed up, and also use that when transferring to a new device.
At first I was a bit disappointed, due to a few limitations of the app. Using the free version you can't setup a scheduled backup, so I had to start it manually every time. This, however, became extremely tedious, as you can't save a "selection" of apps to back up, and so had to scroll through all your apps each time. So I bought the premium version, so I could set up scheduled backup tasks.
But for some time this also didn't work, because the app kept losing "authorisation" or whatever it is, so I had to connect it through USB with USB debugging enabled and running the Helium desktop app every time I wanted to do a backup. And you can't just trigger a backup, only change the scheduled time until "in a minute" and wait...
Then that seemed to stop being a problem, and authorisation isn't lost any longer, even over restarts. But another problem is that the backup can't run if the screen is locked. I'd like to have the backup run automatically in the night, while my phone is charging and on WiFi, but I only wake up to a message about the backup not having been able to run, because of the screen lock. This is easier to fix, by simply tapping the message to run the backup, but means I then have to leave the phone until done.
It's started losing the authorisation all the time again, which means that the automatic backups aren't happening, and I have to re-authorise and re-schedule to "now" to trigger them. Would be great to hear from any other Helium users out there, if they have some experiences with this.
It's not losing authorisation as much, which is probably because my phone isn't restarting as much (I've got a new battery). Also, there have been some updates to Helium, so now you can save selections of apps, which is really handy if you want to update which apps you backup in a recurring backup (almost as handy as if you could edit the recurring backup's settings).
I keep my contacts on my SIM, so that's them covered (although it limits what get's stored - can't associate an email address, for instance). I also transfer my SD card from 'phone to 'phone, but am worried that if I have to reinstall an app on the new phone then it might overwrite the existing data with a new, empty data file.
I am looking for something that I can run periodically that will backup all non-system data, and let me restore it later. I understand that I can't just clone everything & restore, because of device drivers, etc, so is there something that says "ok, Android, all that stuff is yours, so I will copy the rest"?
MyPhoneExplorer for Windows, which I have been using for years, can do a full backup and restore. I used to do that in the past. After installing on desktop, see Extras Menu (Create backup, Restore backup). It also allows you to select which directories to backup etc.
This is only partly true. With a custom recovery (the most wide-spread and recommendable, which I use, is TWRP) you can perform a full backup, either as a tarball (which is the default) or as a disk image. But then, you should only restore that to an identical device (you've mentioned the reasons), or use something that can extract pieces and restore them. The latter needs root access.
There are many more solutions to this. You can find a bunch of backup apps for different purposes in my corresponding app listing, Backup & Co.. Also see on our Android sister site: How to fully backup non-rooted devices? and the other highly rated backup questions.
You can restore a new or factory reset Android phone from a Google backup during the setup process. At the Copy apps and data step, tap Next, and select Can't use old device. Sign in to the same Google account, tap on the listed backup, and select the apps and data you want to restore. Keep reading for detailed instructions, including Samsung's more comprehensive backup method.
You will have to first back up your data on your old Android phone before restoring it on a new device. There are plenty of ways to back up your device and apps you can use if you want to store your data on the cloud. The easiest option on an Android phone is to you use Google One.
Finally, Smart Switch also lets you store backups on your computer or thumb drive for future use. To start the backup process, download the Smart Switch app on your Windows or macOS computer and plug in your phone. Alternatively, connect an external storage drive directly to your device using a USB OTG dongle.
The app is designed to store the details that it asks in its first screen. After uninstalling and installing again in OS version 4.4.4, the app prompts the user to fill in the data, which is normal. However in version 6.0 the same install/uninstall sequence bring backs the data originally input.
It's because Android 6 has automatic backup. You need to tune android:allowBackup and android:fullBackupContent in your manifest tag if you don't want your data backed up or if you want to include or exclude some resources. It's not a bug.
When developing my Android app (using Xamarin), I noticed that whenever I'd re-launch the app from Visual Studio, my data would revert back to data from a few months ago. It didn't matter if I simply stopped and re-ran it from VS, or if I completely uninstalled the app and reinstalled it.
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