Backing up your phone these days has gotten a lot easier than back then. Last time, at least in the early days, backing up meant connecting to a computer or manually transferring your files onto a separate drive, then copying them back in. These days, it’s all done in the cloud, but even then, it’s not perfect. The good news is that in a future Android update, Google could make phone backups better by actually saving your downloads.
Android phone backups will soon save downloads
According to the folks at Android Authority, they have discovered a potential change Google is making to the way your phone backups. Right now, phone backups will save the more “important” stuff, like your photos, calendar events, apps, contacts, and passwords. But what about downloaded files?
For some, these files are important because they might need it again later. Unfortunately, the default backup system doesn’t save your downloads. But according to Android Authority, they discovered an option in the Google Play Services version 25.32.31 beta that lets users enable the backup of downloads.
These downloads might come from apps such as Chrome, where you might have downloaded a PDF document or APK file, for example. By enabling this option, it will be included in your backup. Android Authority speculates that this will most likely end up using Google Drive to manage your storage. However, we can’t be 100% sure since the feature isn’t live yet.
Also, the post points to interesting wording in the app, suggesting that maybe it only backs up documents. Not all downloads.
Manually backing up
If this is the first time you’re hearing about the fact that your phone backups don’t consist of downloads, you’ll want to manually back it up for now. You can do this very easily, just copy the folder and files you want to save onto your PC or the cloud. Then when you have your new phone, or if you’re restoring your phone, copy it over manually later.
It’s a few extra steps. But it might be worth doing if you want to make sure that you don’t accidentally delete something you might need later.
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