Backup of application data using allowedBackup in manifest

For devices running Android 6.0 (API Level 23) and above, android introduced an impressive but rather cautious feature called allowedBackup. This can be found under the application tag in Android Manifest file and accepts a boolean value.

allowedBackup allows a developer to get the app data and store it on Google Drive under a private folder which is limited to 25MB per app, this saved data does not count in the overall Drive quota that is provided by Google and the previous data is deleted every time a new data is written in it for that particular app.This data can’t be read by the user or any other app that is there on the device.

This service allows you to copy your persistent application data to remote cloud storage, in order to provide a restore point for the application data and settings. If a user performs a factory reset or converts to a new Android-powered device, the system automatically restores your backup data when the application is re-installed. This way, users don’t need to reproduce their previous data or application settings.

If this attribute is set to false, no backup or restore of the application will ever be performed, even by a full-system backup that would otherwise cause all application data to be saved via adb. The default value of this attribute is true.

By default, Auto Backup includes files in most of the directories that are assigned to your app by the system:

Backups occur automatically when all of the following conditions are met:

Limitations of allowedBackup

A user cannot retrieve this stored data but only until the debugging is not enabled by the user, if it is then it can be extracted from the device using the adb tool even if the device is not rooted. Nowadays a lot of people enable their debugging mode to test various features on their smartphones and this creates a back door to extract the app data from any device. This attribute should be used with a cautious mindset and it is not recommended if your app handles certain payment gateways or if it stores any payment related information in it. If you want to disable this attribute then set the android:allowBackup=”false” as by default it is set to true. Android Studio certainly gives a warning if this attribute is not mentioned but that can many times be ignored by the developer.

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