How to transfer data from old android phone to new?

January 4, 2022 11:25 PM

I used the default phone setup to transfer data from my Pixel 3a to my new Pixel 6. Much of my data is missing. What now?

Things that I've immediately noticed are missing:

• All apps installed from sources other than the Play Store.
• Configuration/login sessions/etc for almost all of my apps.

I made the mistake of transferring my Signal account over (using Signal's tool for that), and then realized that it's going to take me hours to transfer everything over manually, and some very important stuff (like LINE) appears to have transfer mechanisms that are completely broken for mysterious reasons. So, for the moment, I have to carry around two phones, which I'm unhappy about.

What can I do about this? Is there some app or program that will actually transfer things correctly? I'm comfortable using adb — can I just use adb to copy the app data directories from my old phone to my new phone?

posted by wesleyac to Computers & Internet (2 answers total)

Response by poster: Looking on the internet it seems like this is a known limitation that Android just doesn't tell you about???

My question still stands, though — is there any way to transfer data from apps that "don't use Android backup"?
posted by wesleyac at 11:38 PM on January 4, 2022

The apps' individual settings and such can't be transferred over because of security settings. Android itself does not let "third-party" apps access data stored by other apps, yet Android system itself does not offer such backup and restore capabilities, at least, not without jumping through hoops.

If you root your device, you can use Titanium Backup, which then can use root privileges to save all the data and thus, transfer them to other devices.
posted by kschang at 5:44 AM on January 5, 2022 [2 favorites]