Back up Android Apps with oandbackup

Dmitri Popov

Productivity Sauce

Nov 21, 2013 GMT
Dmitri Popov

Titanium Backup is not the easiest app to master, but it's loaded with useful features and does the excellent job of backing up apps and settings. The only fly in the ointment is the fact that Titanium Backup is a closed source commercial app. If this is a deal-breaker for you, or you prefer something less complicated, then oandbackup might be right up your alley. This app offers a simple way to back up apps and settings on rooted Android devices. Besides the root access, oandbackup also requires that BusyBox is installed on your Android device. Since oandbackup is available only through the F-Droid catalog, you have to install the F-Droid app as well.

When you launch oandbackup, it scans the device for installed apps and presents them as a list. To back up a single app, tap on it and press the backup button. Obviously, scrolling up and down the list of all installed apps is not the most efficient way to find apps you want to back up. Fortunately, oandbackup features find and filtering capabilities that make it easier to quickly locate the desired apps. In addition to backup, oandbackup supports other actions which can be accessed by long-tapping an app. The uninstall action removes the app from your device, while the disable and enable actions remove the app without uninstalling it and re-activate it.

Compared to Titanium Backup, oandbackup is decidedly light on features, and it lacks useful functionality like the ability to save backups to cloud storage services. But if you are looking for a no-frills open source backup app that does the job with a minimum of fuss, oandbackup deserves a closer look.

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