Sordid backstory

In the context of 240127-2101 Checklist for backing up an android phone, I wanted to back up my TrackAndGraph data, for which I a) manually created a file export, and b) just in case created a backup through Google Drive/Sync/One/whatever

I then forgot to move the backup file :( but fear not, instead of a clean start I can then use the Google Drive backup of all apps and that one specifically — but it was missing.

It was present in the google backup info as seen in the google account / devices / backups interface, but absent in the phone recovery thing during set up.

Installed it through Google Play again, still nothing, did a new phone factory reset, still nothing.

Googled how to access the information from device backups through google drive w/o a device: you can’t.

Was sad about losing 6month of quantified self data, thought about how to do it better (sell my soul to Google and let it sync things from the beginning?) and gave up

Then I installed the excellent Sentien Launcher through F-droid (was not part of the back up as well, but I didn’t care) and noticed it had my old favourites.

Aha. Aha.

Okay. I see.

TL;DR

Android 13, Samsung phone.

• To use a google drive/one/… backup after a factory reset, after the reset click “I don’t have my device”, it’ll ask you to log in AGAIN to your google account
  • it will require 2FA from the phone you don’t have, I had to use one of the recovery codes because it didn’t allow sending an SMS
• Then you can enable some or all of the apps, but the list will contain only the ones you installed from Google Play. Which will be a subset of the list of ALL apps that you see through the web interface.
• To recover info about some apps you got from F-Droid, YOU HAVE TO REINSTALL THE APP FROM F-DROID.
  • TrackAndGraph from Google Play didn’t sync, TrackAndGraph from F-Droid had all my data!
• To the best of my understanding, you don’t have any control about the backups from non-google-play apps, they will get automatically the info from your old phone/sync..
• Not all apps from F-Droid will be part of the backup, some forum I can’t find said that many of the apps there opt out from this explicitly because they consider the google drive backup thing inherently insecure.