Comment by dspillett
1 day ago
It has certainly been locked down a bit. This makes easily backing up all your data using some techniques harder/impossible.
I can't include podcasts in the backup I do via rsync via termux anymore, unless I switch to an app that uses a shared storage area instead, as termux can not longer read app directories only its own and shared storage. You have to rely on each app that used app-local storage to have its own backup method. Not that I really care from the podcast PoV, hence I've done nothing about it, but it is a sign of apps being better sandboxed at the filesystem level than they used to be.
That's doesn't make sense either - not an android iser or dev but shouldn't there be a system level backup interface. Even if its storing the app-local storage as an opaque blob with a label?
Sounds logical, but it doesn't seem to be the case. The backup options are "Photos/Videos" "phone data" and "both". I don't think phone data includes all app-local data. Contacts, calendar entries, and such, get synced but that isn't due to a global backup process that is the Google apps syncing with your Google account. Other apps could do that with the right integrations, but not all have the option and either have no backup or backup by syncing to their own service or an external option like an S3 compatible store.
It is somewhat disjointed.
When I last changed phones, between phones from the same manufacturer both running recent Android versions, the "copy apps, settings, and data" process didn't include all app data either so I need to take extra steps.
I don't think there will be any big push to address the matter, because for the vat majority of users it isn't a big issue: most of their data is synched to various services anyway and that which isn't wouldn't be particularly missed if lost. There are very few app dealing with important data that are local-only.
I tried switching from iOS to GrapheneOS a while back.
From what I can tell, Google intentionally broke Android’s backup subsystem in order to force people on to their non-E2E encrypted cloud storage.
It makes me sad that, in practice, Android somehow manages to give people less control over their devices than iOS.