How To Create A Full Backup Of Your Android Phone Without Root

Android includes a built-in way to back up and restore the contents of your phone or tablet. All you need is a computer and a device running Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich) or later. This feature isn’t exposed in Android’s user interface for a reason, so you should consider it experimental.

Installing the Android SDK

We’ll need to use the adb (Android Debug Bridge) command to perform a backup or restore. This command is included with Google’s Android SDK, which you can download for free.

First, you’ll need to install Oracle’s Java Development Kit, which the Android SDK requires. Download and install the 32-bit version – the Android SDK wants the 32-bit version, even if you’re using a 64-bit version of Windows.

Next, download and install the Android SDK from Google. If the SDK informs you that it can’t find Java, you may have installed the 64-bit version of the JDK – ensure you install the 32-bit version.

After the SDK is installed, open the Android SDK Manager from your Start menu (search for “SDK Manager”).

Enable the Android SDK Platform-tools checkbox and click the Install button to install the platform tools package, which contains adb. If you see an error, you may need to run the SDK Manager as Administrator. (Right-click the SDK Manager shortcut in your Start menu and select Run as Administrator.)

Device Setup

You’ll need to enable USB Debugging on your Android device – you can do this from the Developer Options screen in Android’s settings.

Backing Up Your Device

You can now use the adb backup command to back up your device. To back up everything, run the following command:

adb backup -apk -shared -all -f C:\Users\NAME\backup.ab

This backs up all your installed apps (APK files) and shared storage (SD card) data to the C:\Users\NAME\backup.ab file on your computer. Replace NAME in the command with your Windows username or provide another location for the backup file.

After running this command, you’ll have to agree to the backup on your device. You can also encrypt the backup with a password here, if you like.

Restoring a Backup

To restore your backup in the future, run the following command:

adb restore C:\Users\NAME\backup.ab

You’ll be asked if you want to do a full restore – this will replace the data and apps on the device with the ones from your backup. If you encrypted the backup with a password, you’ll have to enter the password to restore it.

Hopefully this feature will be given a convenient button in Android’s interface in the future. Let me know down below if you would like to see a video tutorial