I recently migrated from a Fairphone 4 running /e/OS 3.1.1 - Official (Android 14) to a Fairphone 6 running /e/OS 3.1.2 - Official (Android 15) and would like to share my experience using SeedVault for backup and restore.
Seedvault is an opensource tool that is available on most Custom ROM based on LineageOS. It enables an encrypted back-up and restore service.
So, let’s go on how it did work in this case:
Applications
All my apps were successfully restored from the SeedVault backup (stored on my SD card).
However, in about 70% of cases, I had to reconfigure the apps manually (login, settings, preferences…).
Wi-Fi
Quite unexpectedly, all my Wi-Fi passwords were restored automatically on the Fairphone 6.
I am not sure whether this was handled solely by SeedVault or also by the Murena account synchronization (which can back up some system settings), but in any case, it saved me a lot of time!
Launcher settings
Visual configurations (wallpaper, app layout, home screen setup) were not restored. This seems to be a known limitation of SeedVault.
Conclusion:
SeedVault made the migration fairly smooth.
Some time is still needed for manual reconfiguration, but the essentials (apps, data, Wi-Fi) came through.
The full recovery of Wi-Fi networks was a very positive surprise.
Hopefully, this feedback will be helpful for others planning to migrate to a newer (or between two different Android versions on /e/OS).
Not in my case described above, since I unchecked documents and files. The reason is that all my media and documents are stored on my SD Card, so I could keep them in my new device (I put back my SD card in my FP6).
But I think you can back up those files if you check “Back-up my files”. Then I guess, it will take much more time…
Thank you for sharing this. So well, for me, home-screen and launcher settings were not restored. But in my case it’s a minor detail. Overall, SeedVault has saved me a lot of time.
Recently I have ordered a large pen drive that should cover my phone storage size. Therefore I will try it. Once I have this information available I will share it with you.
I have my pen drive and was testing is for some days with my Samsung device.
Most of the time the backup fails.
Some apps are not included (Browser, OpenKeychain & Mail: “App didn’t allow backup”, some app reported: “Backup quota exceeded”, Local contacts: “App reported no data for backup”, KDE Connect: “App reported no data for backup”, Others apps reported: “Not backed up as it wasn’t used recently”, which seems to be issue of the apps)
It is possible to include data. Even from external storages. However, since I was not able to finish a backup (it takes long and drains the battery a lot) I cannot give a qualified statement if it might work to restore the data.
The version in eOS 3.1.1. is 15.6. The latest version of seedvault is 15-5.7 - 2025-08-12. It improves:
I don’t know if these changes would affect the above-mentioned issues I faced.
In summary, currently I don’t think the that the integrated seedvault is an option to reliably backup and restore.
I was assuming this. Therefore, I launched them (there is even a link in seedvault) but it did not change something noticeably. Overall, the backup failed most of the time. I will continue to evaluate it. After all it would be great to have this feature working.
Yes, but in meanwhile I have e/OS 3.1.4-t-20250915526530-official-FP3 installed running on Android 13. Seedvault is still not working. My question is, are there any informations about that?
Seedvault is hidden in official builds before A14. If no OTA is offered, you’ll need to sideload to upgrade. Then you’ll get upstream Seedvault and it’s visible in the Settings.
ok. thx. Is there experience, how long it will last till there will be a OTA offered? (I am not the crack for rooting an being sure not to loose data;-))
Applications
Conclusion: