I am in the process of moving my devices away from /e/OS to LineageOS for microG. As part of this process I did quite a lot of work backing up my user-installed apps and my setting, then restoring / migrating them to new ROMs and to different devices. In fact, I didn’t need the backups: once I had the new ROMs built correctly, I was able to successfully ‘dirty flash’ them over my existing custom /e/OS builds. But I tried anyway, to get some up-to-date experience of which solutions work best.
Results
- TWRP backup of data partition
- All user installed apps, with all their data. Ignores the ‘Backup not allowed’ flag
- ‘All or nothing’ not possible to restore individual apps
- Successfully restored / migrated: to a new ROM on same device, to different devices (by copying the backup from one device to another)
-
Android Backup and Restore Tools (ABRT)
- Most apps and most of their data backed up. Ignores the ‘Backup not allowed’ flag
- Some apps lose their data, particularly those that store acount data in Account Manager. For these apps, you will need to re-enter account details in the app, or create new accounts in Account Manager
- Some apps keep stopping after restore / migrate. Can be fixed by clearing storage. Affected apps for me are: OS Maps, Element
- Can restore specific apps, without affecting other apps
- SeedVault
- Respects the ‘Backup not allowed’ flag, so some apps will not be backed up at all, or will be backed up but with no data. You will need to install them, and set them up from scratch. These include BBC Sounds, News, Sport & Weather, Ebay, Element, WhatsApp, Garmin Connect, Twidere, Messenger, Magic Earth, OpenKeychain, Telegram FOSS
- Does not backup settings for some apps (e.g. Lawnchair)
- Some apps which claim to have been restored, don’t actually start (BRS Golf, XDA Forums)
Conclusions
- If it works for your use case, then TWRP backup / restore of data partition is the most effective at duplicating your current setup on your new ROM or your new device. (In this case, there’s a good chance that ‘dirty flashing’ will also work, and the backup won’t be needed. Worth doing though, just in case
) - If you have a computer (or a VM) running Linux, and your device / ROM supports rooted debugging (i.e. it’s not a
stable/e/OS build), then ABRT is nearly as good. It has the advantage of working with individual apps rather than with the entire data partition - SeedVault is really limited, and only fit for use if no other alternative exists for your ROM / device. After restoring / migrating, you will need to test the apps that claim to have been backed up, an reinstall any that don’t actually work