Creating Full Backups of your Android Smartphone Without Root Access

In this blog post I will explain how you can create a full backup of your Android smartphone, even if you don’t have root access.

“Become” a Developer

The first step is to activate the developer options in your system settings menu. To do that, locate the build number in your device info menu. This is usually located somewhere under Settings -> Device Info. Once you located it, you have to tap the build number seven times in order to unlock the developer features of your phone.

Enable USB Debugging

Once you unlocked the developer mode, there is a new menu in your settings called Developer Options. Find this menu and enable USB Debugging.

Install the Android Debug Bridge

The next step is to install a tool called adb (Android Debug Bridge). It is part of the Android SDK (Software Developer Kit). The problem is that the current version as of the time of writing (1.0.32) is unusable due to a bug (see bug report). As soon as this bug is fixed, you can dowload the SDK Command Line Tools from the official download page or install a current version using Homebrew.

Update March 9th, 2017: Tested again with version 1.0.36 (Revision 0e9850346394-android), and the backup works. However, an app blocked the backup process. After uninstalling the app, the full backup was successful.

Connect Your Device

After you installed a working version of adb, you can check the connection between your device and your computer. To do this, you need to locate the adb executable file in your SDK installation or your extracted folder. Open a terminal and type the following command:

/path/to/adb devices

where /path/to/adb must be replaced with the absolute path to the adb executable. Mac users can drag and drop the adb file from the Finder into the terminal in order to insert the complete path automatically. This should result in an output similar to:

List of devices attached 
3204226a921e227d    device

Make the Backup

If your device is connected, you can perform the backup with the following command:

/path/to/adb backup -all -apk -shared

This starts a backup process including all apps (-all), APK archives (-apk) as well as the internal and external storage data (internal memory and SD cards, -shared). If you don’t need all of this data, you can skip the correspondent parameter.

After issuing the command, you will be asked to confirm the backup operation on your smartphone. You can enter a password to encrypt your backup, which I recommend. Note that the backup process can take a long time depending on how much data is persisted on your phone. The process should result in a large file called backup.ab which is stored in the current folder (if you did not navigate to another directory: in your user home folder). If you want the backup to be stored elsewhere, you can supply the parameters -f <path> specifiying the target file path.

If the file is empty or contains only 41 bytes (when using no password) or 549 bytes (when using password) then you have a buggy version installed and need to get an older version (see previous sections).

Restoring Backups

Backups can be restored using the command

adb restore /path/to/backup.ab

5 thoughts on “Creating Full Backups of your Android Smartphone Without Root Access

  1. I have exactly the 41 Bytes – Problem, how can I fix it,
    what to I have to change?
    I’ve got Android 4.0.3 by the way,
    Thanks in advance!

  2. You have to use version 1.0.31, just as I described in my post. The latest version does NOT work and will produce the 41 Bytes file.

    • Do you know why it only works on v. 1.0.31? Seems that ‘bug’ should be fixed on newer versions. I’ll give it a shot on android platform tools v. 25.0.3 / adb v. 1.0.36

  3. This is happening to me on adb 1.0.36 – but only with some apps (I backup apps separately). Can’t find the reason to this. On stock Nexus 5X with March security updates, not rooted…

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