I’ve been in a particularly “back everything up for the sake of it” mood lately, and the latest target of my fixation is messages. It’s been several generations of Android flagships since I archived anything, though, so now I’m scrambling to back up everything from 2019 and beyond.
Android was supposed to fix the way it backs up data and messages as far back as Android 8.0 Oreo in 2017. Google recently refined the mechanism when it switched to Google One, its all-in-one subscription and cloud data offering. While data backup has improved, it’s also a veritable “black box.” It’s hard to verify what’s been saved and even harder to view the data.
I’m taking backups back into my own hands, like in the Android days of yore. Actually, one of the throwback apps, SMS Backup and Restore, is still one of the best for backing up text messages, and it’s included in this guide on backing up messages in Android. I’ll also walk you through how to back up archives for secondary messaging apps, including WhatsApp and Signal, two oft-used third-party messengers.
Start with Google One
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By default, your phone uses Google One to handle backups as long as Google Messages is your default messaging app. (Samsung users can choose to use Samsung Messages instead, which backs up to the Samsung Cloud.) It’s generally a “set it and forget it” system that saves SMS, RCS, and MMS messages, call history, contacts, and device settings to your Google Drive storage. (Pictures and videos are backed up through Google Photos.)
You can check the status of this to see when it was last backed up. Open your phone’s Settings panel, then look for the backup option. If it’s your first time, you’ll get on-screen instructions to turn on backup. If not, you should be able to see what’s been backed up so far. If you’re on the Pixel launcher, scroll down to find a list of Backup details to browse. Tap to see what’s in the vault.
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At most, backup data doesn’t exceed 25 MB and doesn’t count against your Google Drive quota. (Google Photos does, but that’s effectively another product.) Only the most recent data backup is stored at a time. Anything before that is fully deleted.
Google One’s backup methodology is merely a “sync,” not a true data archive. If you accidentally delete a thread from messages, its backup would also be removed from the cloud, and you couldn’t restore it. Google makes it clear, even in its developer documentation, that backup data can’t be accessed by a user or other apps on the device. So what’s a user to do? Call upon an old faithful: SMS Backup & Restore.
Set up SMS Backup & Restore
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I’m using original Android apps like SMS Backup & Restore to facilitate full backups because it’s still the only way to easily thumb through the messages and call logs you’ve saved. The app treats your text messages as a database and stores them in XML format for parsing if needed. SMS Backup & Restore was once an indie darling, though SyncTech acquired it in late 2017, which has partly helped it endure this long.
It’s easy to set up. Download and install the app from the Google Play Store. The app is free with ads, or you can pay a one-time fee of $6 to remove them and unlock extra abilities, like more cloud storage. Then grant it access to your contacts and messages. Tap the option to set up a backup, and choose Messages. (You can also include call logs if you want.) Then, pick your destination. I back up to Google Drive into its own archive folder. Dropbox, OneDrive, and WebDAV are also options.
SMS Backup & Restore offers several backup options. For one, you don’t have to back up everything in your Messages app. You can choose to back up only select conversations. It doesn’t have to be a constant backup either. If you need to save a one-off thread, SMS Backup & Restore lets you select it and back it up to a location of your choice in XML format.
SMS Backup & Restore also lets you peruse through all that data after it’s synced. The easiest way is through the mobile app, which lets you search conversations, and through SyncTech’s web viewer, where you can upload the XML file it generates and thumb through it as if it were a messaging app on your phone. SyncTech says all processing is done on the browser and nothing is uploaded to any servers. If you’d rather not upload your conversations through the Web Viewer, you can try opening it with Excel instead. And if you’re particularly adept, there are plenty of third-party XML readers available, though they’re not all fully compatible with how SMS Backup & Restore saves logs.
WhatsApp and Signal
These days, half of my digital life is scattered among several messaging apps, most notably WhatsApp and Signal. WhatsApp is where I chat with friends who are on wifi or live halfway across the world, while Signal is where my local parents group and I keep our chats private.
What do you think so far?
WhatsApp can create a local backup on your phone’s internal storage every day at a set time. This is the most direct way to handle your own WhatsApp chat data. You’ll find your data in the WhatsApp app database on your device’s internal storage. WhatsApp can also automatically back up to Google Drive on Android devices. Unfortunately, Google started counting WhatsApp backups toward your Google Drive storage quota. But the app shows you how much room you have in your Drive account if you are backing up that way.
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If you haven’t set it up yet, WhatsApp’s backup capabilities are available under the Chats backup option in the app’s settings panel. You can select the backup frequency and whether it includes videos. You can also select whether the backups are end-to-end encrypted. (Note that this option is not on by default.) If you need to export a particular conversation, you can do so from the Chat history menu. You can then read those WhatsApp backups by exporting individual chats as text files directly from the app.
Signal is a little trickier at backup. Since it’s built on the premise of extreme privacy, it prioritizes local backup and doesn’t back up to the cloud. Only recently, in the latest beta for Android devices, has Signal added push-button backup. And it’s technically still getting its kinks sussed out.
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But you can use it if you want to. In Signal on Android, go to Settings, then scroll down to Backups. You’ll see a big Beta sign right next to it. Tap it, and from here, Signal will set you up with an end-to-end encrypted backup of your conversations. The recovery key is a 64-character code that will help you restore the backup. If you lose it, you won’t be able to recover your messages.
Signal eschews the ability to back up to a third-party service. Instead, it will back up the last 45 days of media and text messages for free. Any more than that, and you’ll have to pay $2/month for a full backup of your messages. It also grants you 100GB of photo storage.
Because these are encrypted files, they’re not particularly easy to parse through without first decrypting them and converting them into a readable XML file. You’ll also need to save the archive locally if you want to dig in. Small apps like the Signal Message Exporter and Signal Back can help with this if you are especially keen on having a readable log.
Backing up isn’t a one-and-done task. It’s something you have to get into the habit of doing. The best way to ensure you don’t lose those “receipts” is to make it a habit to check on your backups. Keep Google One, WhatsApp, and Signal’s cloud backups turned on, then set SMS Backup & Restore to run once a week, or, if you’re lighter on that app than on others, once a month.
