AndroidDC 1.3.0 - backup and restore

A phone backed up to this PC, and put back again - in both windows.

What a backup holds

Tick each part on its own:

Part	What it holds
Phone files	Everything under /sdcard Android lets adb read: photos, videos, downloads, documents, and Android/media, where messaging apps keep pictures
Apps	The APK of every app you installed, splits included
Contacts, messages, call log	As the phone has them now
Settings and the app list	settings list, getprop, the installed packages and a device report, as text

Each backup is its own folder, named after the phone and the time, holding plain files and a manifest.json that says what is in it. No archive, no password, nothing to unpack.

What cannot be in it, and why. Android does not let adb read what is inside an app - chats, game saves, an app's own settings - unless the phone is rooted. adb backup, the old route, has returned almost nothing since Android 12, and Android/data and Android/obb have been closed to adb since Android 11. No tool without root gets past that, and this one says so rather than pretending.

Putting one back

• Restore files asks first when the phone already has some of them: write over them, send only the rest, or stop. Afterwards the gallery is told to look again.
• Install ticked apps lists the backup's apps with the ones this phone lacks already ticked, and installs each in one call, splits included.
• Restore contacts adds only the contacts the phone does not have, matched by name and number. Messages and the call log are saved to read but never written back: Android gives adb no way to write them.

It can be watched and stopped

• A Cancel button stops a backup or a restore where it is - adb is stopped mid-file, and everything already copied stays.
• The bar means something: the size of a folder on the phone is read first, so it fills as that folder is pulled.
• A phone unplugged halfway is recognised at once and the run ends there, instead of failing file after file.
• However it ends - finished, cancelled, or the phone gone - the log says so and a notification appears by the clock. A backup that did not finish is marked not complete in its manifest and wherever it is opened.

Where

Advanced > Backup in the classic window, the Backup page in Nova. Both use the same engine, shared/Backup.ps1.

Getting started

1. Turn on USB debugging on the phone and plug it in.
2. Download this release (Source code, zip) and unpack it.
3. Run get-upstream.ps1 once to fetch scrcpy and gnirehtet, checked against SHA256.
4. Double-click androiddc.vbs or androiddc-nova.vbs, or run start-menu.vbs to open them from the Start menu.

See CHANGELOG.md.