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