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Ask HN: How do you backup your Android?

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Re: Ask HN: How do you backup your Android?

#141

Post by xuki »

josephcsible wrote: post #135
xuki wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a feature, not a bug. Apps like banks or Signal don't want to get backed up as it's a security risk if someone could just duplicate the authentication.

The owner of a phone should be able to back up all of the data on it, regardless of the wishes of anyone who doesn't own said phone.

I don't disagree, but I vote with my wallet. If the owner of the phone doesn't agree with that, they could stop using the phone/apps. Similarly the biometric data also doesn't get backed up or transferred over to a new phone. That's a product decision and I'm just explaining why things are done that way on iOS.

Re: Ask HN: How do you backup your Android?

#143

Post by bestouff »

hollow-moe wrote: post #29

Using the LineageOS built-in backup tool : Seedvault and upload it to my nextcloud server. Didn't have to use it to restore yet so no real idea how good the restoration is. I also have automatic pictures/video upload to nextcloud and contact/agenda sync with DAVx5.

SeedVault is a trainwreck. Backups sometimes fail, restores very often fail. It's time this thing gets a rewrite.

Re: Ask HN: How do you backup your Android?

#144

Post by Timshel »

vroomik wrote: post #127
udev4096 wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stop using F-droid. It is insecure and shouldn't be the primary way of installing apps. Stick to Aurora Store or Play Store

Could you elaborate on that? Do you mean bigger possibility of apps containg malware or what?

The handling of the project appears quite troubling, the whole board resigned last year: https://gitlab.com/fdroid/admin/-/issues/447

Re: Ask HN: How do you backup your Android?

#145

Post by kasabali »

dismalaf wrote: post #90
Krutonium wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It backs up... Photos, basically? With an iPhone you can take a complete image of the device, and never lose a file again. With Android, solid chance you'll never migrate to a new phone and not lose stuff. It's such a fucking shitty thing that doesn't need to be.

I've gone through like 5 Android phones back to back. Photos, documents, emails, installed apps, contacts... It's all seamless and works, literally just with Google's defaults. What do you think you lose?

App data. Play store simply reinstalls the apps but they're in a clean state. Some apps supposedly back up and restore their data from Google cloud but that's rare.

Re: Ask HN: How do you backup your Android?

#146

Post by solardev »

sunaookami wrote: post #121
solardev wrote: post #4

I just let Google handle it with the built in backup: https://support.google.com/googleone/answer/9149304?hl=en&co...

This never once worked for me with app data. I always have to set up apps from scratch.

What is app data? I guess maybe everything I use is already in the cloud anyway, so I never noticed that?

Re: Ask HN: How do you backup your Android?

#147

Post by graemep »

Azerty9999 wrote: post #57
mgbmtl wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My device is not rooted, but I use Syncthing as well. I mainly sync my photos and my TOTP tokens (Aegis). The rest I don't care about. I used Nextcloud sync in the past, but found it unreliable.

Synchthing on Android is End of life, alas https://forum.syncthing.net/t/discontinuing-syncthing-androi...

I did not know that.

Its a definitely problem for me.

Re: Ask HN: How do you backup your Android?

#148

Post by karteum »

datavirtue wrote: post #81
alyandon wrote: post #6

The only data I care about on the phone already gets backed up by Google and is then exported regularly via Google Takeout. I don't live on my phone so I tend not to generate much of any value on it other than random pictures of things. Prior to Google automatically backing up everything, I used Titanium Backup.

I didn't know about Google Takeout despite having searched for a way to get my photos out years ago. Blows me away.

Beware when relying on Google Takeout for e-mail backup if you have old e-mails in other encodings than utf-8 : it permanently breaks some characters, which are replaced by 0xEFBFBD (that issue does not occur when doing backup with IMAP or GMVault)

Re: Ask HN: How do you backup your Android?

#149

Post by struanr »

drio wrote: post #61
Azerty9999 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Synchthing on Android is End of life, alas https://forum.syncthing.net/t/discontinuing-syncthing-androi...

Yes, very sad. Two alternatives exist: 1. Syncthing-Fork ( https://github.com/Catfriend1/syncthing-android ) - Works just like the official app. Install from F-Droid or GitHub. Single developer but active. 2. Syncthing in Termux - Run the actual Syncthing program in Termux. Takes more setup but uses the standard version. The fork is easier to use, while Termux needs more setup but gives you the standard Syncthing exp…

I have been using Syncthing fork since before the official app was discontinued, and can vouch for its quality. My favorite feature is that it allows conditional pausing of folders based on phone state, such as if the phone is charging or connected to WiFi. Just be warned that the version on Google Play was no longer updated last time I checked (Googles fault), so you're better downloading releases from the Github repo.

Re: Ask HN: How do you backup your Android?

#150

Post by beagle3 »

seszett wrote: post #25
beagle3 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would you trust a restore of those “do not back up” data you have a copy of? Or is this for inspection only?

I just restored my backups a few weeks ago when I bought a new phone. It doesn't work for all apps (I knew it, it's far from the first time I do that) but I am satisfied with the results. It does help sometimes for retrieving some data manually by digging through the backup files (used it recently for retrieving all invoices from a service that were otherwise only available one by one through a painfully complicated…

My use case would be to get my WhatsApp database…. Anyone knows if it restores properly?

(Useful even if not … WhatsApp search is abysmal, the db file is much more useful)

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