MEGATHREAD - First Hand Experiences with Seedvault

gonzalo

Viewpoint0232 thank you a lot for such clear report, very useful.

chinook

Viewpoint0232 awesome report, thank you.

Vexinor

I'm using GOS about 3 years. This is my second time using SeedVault to move to other phone. That experience moving from 6 to 8 was bad but I don't remember details so I'm posting now because it's fresh. This is what I'm experienced moving from 8 to 9 now:

On old phone, I reset the SeedVault key, and deleted all backups I had before. I put freshly formatted new USB stick to do manual backup. I have about 110 Apps and backup of System + Apps + data (without File backup enabled) was about 6GB big. Backup was unsuccessful with errors. I tried one more time with success, BUT integrity check of backup failed! (I do properly ejecting USB stick any time I use it). So I formatted backup, regenerate encryption key again and did backup again. Integrity check success this time. So, in future, I'll can't trust auto backup to be made properly. Have to do it manually with integrity check as additional step :(
New phone is with freshly installed GOS in initial setup state. I restored backup from this setup state. After restore:

Whole launcher not restored. Icons on home screen missing. There is only stock ones. Wallpaper missing too.
The icons from top panel isn't in order I had in my old phone.
Dark theme of settings was restored
All apps except one was installed successfully.
Permissions was mess. Most of the time, permission was restored OK, but few apps had more access to various things as in my old phone like microphone, or file access. Way off was network and sensors permission. Those two was given to every app by default. You have to review every permission for every app. That's very time consuming.
Battery optimization not restored
Wifi credentials restored OK
Call Log missing completely
Contacts restored only 76% (1028 of 1352)? WTF???
Some settings were restored, some not.

So, I several times tried to restore again separate things one by one.

When Tried to restore contacts, I thought I have all of them + about 150 more as duplicates. Did I had all? Can't trust. I had to manually deleted Contact storage and restore contacts again to 1351 of 1352. One contact missing for sure. Or maybe several was missing with several duplicates? I can't know without manual comparison. So I deleted Contact storage again and this time, I exported manually contacts from old phone and import vcf file to new one without any issue. 100% of contacts finally.
After restoring Call Logs again, they appeared this time. I know that Logs have stupid 2k entry limit, so I saw only about 2 months in past.
When restored system settings again, this time wallpaper, icons and widgets was restored successfully. Also top panel had arranged icons exactly right.
System theme were restored, but battery optimization wasn't which reminds me to still need for checking of all settings :(
App permissions were restored better. Still lost file access and special permissions for every app, sensors access was corrected, but network access was still be granted to all apps.
About apps data. All 5 games I have, has restored and I can continue where I left on old phone, but Signal, Viber, Nextcloud, bank apps, call log apps, 2FA app were not. I had to manually walk and backup all of apps that had export/import function to restore those. Some apps were restored, some not. I feel like less useful apps has bigger chance to be restored successfully and vice versa.

With manual hard work for few hours I have most of my old data transferred to new phone. (I had to backup and restore also my other 3 profiles manually).
After this experience I realized two things.

If I would be in situation that I regularly backed up my old phone and I lost or damage it, and only I'm left with is SeedVault data, then not only that I were had way less data, but there is also chance that SeedVault backup can be actually damaged. So, I need to regularly backup data manually from all apps possible and every time verify integrity of backup.
I can't recommend this OS to anyone anymore who isn't heavily tech savvy because for security&privacy, there is also this price.

SeedVault is announced to be fixed, or renewed for long time. Everyone has different priorities. My opinion nobody asked for is that backup/restore on OS that giving you feel that device you should own you actually own, is the most essential thing and every new feature and fix should be built on top of this basic SeedVault function even if can be complicated I can't even imagine. However priority #1 of this project is more about data security than data safety so there we are. Apart from that with several other issues I have, I still want to using this OS and I'm thankful for its existence. Thank you developers for your hard work.

Vexinor

Vexinor
Beware from export/import implementation of contacts. I said that I transferred 100% of contacts through vcf file.
Later, I noticed fault and I'm still frustrated several months later, today. I actually have 100% of contacts (Hurray for me. right?)...but while importing vcf, you can't trust the GOS that it show the right count of contacts either. The import vcf function shows my 1352 contacts count, but that is only how many contacts are there as unique and that's not right either. I lived with that I have all contacts correctly transferred and as time passes, I add several more, time to time I edited the old ones thinking everything is good and then the breakthrough incident appeared when I wanted to edit another old contact. I found one particular and clicked the pencil to edit and GOS showed unexpected pop up: "Choose contact to edit:" where was that same contact listed several times! WTF? I had that vcf file I exported several months earlier and I started to probing it with python what's inside. There wasn't 1352 contacts as I expected, but over 3000! One contact was unique, other was there several times. OK, minor bug, I thought. I started to create python script to de-duplicate that but, God, that was mess. I still don't have any clue how to identify the duplicity. The contact that appear in GOS as duplicity, one had note, other don't or had part of it, one had 3 numbers, other duplicity two with third missing. Total mess. If unique contact have 8 duplicates and you want to look on number, or note, you can't notice that you looking on several duplicates at once. GOS somewhat shows all that duplicates at once and it looks right as single contact until you want to edit. Now my script has 400 lines of code and I'm far from finishing it because I want to compare other entries like photo data and so on but I found out that photos was also re-processed and there is also unique contact that have same looking photo, but photo is stored as different photo data and I can't distinguish which one is original. I'm also pissed because GOS show me that contact have several duplicates, but there is no function how to select particular one to delete it. I'm close to give up, and manually rewrite all of it that will take many hours.

taivlam
considering that faults starts to appear mainly while restoring or after restore, your post is actually not useful at all.

Grapi

Here is how I handle my backups:

I manually go through all apps and use their export functions to save relevant data.
At this stage, a helpful tool is AppListBackup, which creates a list of all installed apps. This makes it easier (though still manual) to reinstall them on a new device if needed.
Once all app exports are complete, I use RAR for Android to archive the entire file system (essentially the full user profile). RAR is the only archiving tool I've found that consistently preserves timestamps on folders and files, which is crucial for comparing backups, restoring data, and maintaining version integrity.
I then copy the finished RAR archive to my PC for safekeeping.

This method ensures you retain both your app data and all personal files (photos, documents, etc.) from your phone.

Hope this helps someone out there.

loofy

Grapi

appreciate the lead on RAR for Android. i've been having issues finding a solution to preserving timestamps and this sounds like the solution. cheers.

LeslieFH

I just used SeedVault to restore my GOS settings on Pixel 9 Pro from a Pixel 7 Pro, I made a local backup, copied it to an USB stick and restored on the P9P.

It restored about 2/3rds of apps, I had to reinstall the rest from Google Play Store, call history was not restored, text history was restored, also ringtones/notification sounds were not restored which is a bit annoying. Moving WhatsApp and Signal required their own built-in backup features, of course, but generally the amount of manual configuration I still have to do is quite large.

Overall, not great even compared to stock Google transfer facility, and doesn't hold a candle to Titanium Backup with root, but of course root privileges are a security risk. I thought a built-in backup tool should be able to have elevated privileges, though, unlike a third-party app.

frightfulremodeler

I did this a while ago, so my memory is a bit spotty, but I'll share what I do know. I backed up and restored when upgrading devices. I remember having heard that seedvault was bad and being happily surprised that it was relatively painless, other than being painfully manual. (I couldn't just connect it to my laptop to drag-and-drop. I had to set up the phone, import the backup, and restore from there.) I was upset that it respected apps' wishes not to be backed up, which makes backups more complicated than they should be. I despise the idea of someone else telling me what I can and can't do with a phone I own. I also didn't have call history save, a disappointing but ultimately not missed issue. The biggest pain is that most (if not all) settings weren't kept.

The bottom line is that it worked as advertised, with some annoying caveats.

I would like to see an incremental backup system that backs up the entire phone, like a drive mirror for user data, with the option to restore down to per-app or -file selectively. I'd also like to see file-based backups (instead of directory-based) and the ability to send the file to any app (that accepts files being shared).

naibed

Bought a Pixel tablet and wanted to use seedvault to restore the backup from my phone. Tried the following options:

connecting phone -> tablet
connecting phone -> laptop
Attempting to use KDE Connect to export the hiddden seedvault folder from phone -> tablet (didn't allow it)

None of these worked. I've been manually setting it up. Used neostore to export a list of installed apps from my phone. It installed some apps, crashed a few times, tried to reinstall the same apps repeatedly and then refused to install new apps. I fell back to F-Droid to manually installed the remaining apps.

One idea that I didn't implement but may have worked is that the file explorer I used (prism file explorer) allows for compression of folders, so I might have been able to compress the hidden folder, share it via KDE Connect and then decompress it in the root android folder and restore the back up that way?

Regardless, score one more for team "seedvault is mediocre"

mar2112

Just this evening I backed up one phone and used the backup to restore to a phone I wiped. Both phones are the same model with same os version.

I wanted to restore all settings and a subset of the apps. During Seedvault restore I selected the apps I wanted to restore and I selected the option to restore settings.

The result was less than satisfactory. Not all settings were restored and Seedvault ignored my app selection and it tried to restore all apps. About 6 apps failed to be restored. I had to manually restore those 6 apps and then delete about 30 apps I didn't want on the second phone.

Sparronator9999

I recently used Seedvault to back up my phone while re-installing GrapheneOS on the same device, with it set to save backups on-device so they could be transferred to a computer over USB. I restored the backup after setting up the phone, as I wasn't able to copy the files back to the phone until setup was finished. To answer all your questions:

The most frustrating part of the backup process was not being given the recovery key the first time I set up Seedvault, probably because I started setting it up for regular backups then just... forgot to finish setting it up. Oops. This ended in me copying my phone backup to my computer over MTP twice, which takes a long time because of the backup's file count.
I believe the only apps unable to be backed up by Seedvault were Molly (fork of Signal), Element X (official Matrix client), and my banking app. Molly has its own backup system (which went smoothly), and the banking app's data is all online anyways (I logged out before backing it up, then logged back in after restoring it). Element X I didn't set back up due to lack of use.
I did not use the "Backup my files" feature, instead electing to copy the folders directly between my phone and computer.
The most annoying part when restoring was MTP again, while waiting for the files to copy back to the phone. Also maybe my phone stopping partway through re-installing APKs when the screen turned off? Not sure if that is a Seedvault problem though, or if one of the APKs was particularly bloated.
The only app that failed to restore was a custom build of the Android port of melonDS. The game save data isn't stored in the app data anyways, so all that was lost was the app settings. Many system settings were also not restored, either at all or just incorrectly. The custom ringtones and notification sound settings were possibly incorrectly restored due to me having some custom ones that weren't present on the phone at restore time.
Every app that had non-default permissions granted (notifications, etc.) before restoring needed them re-granted, many of which didn't ask again and required me to manually do so through Settings. Otherwise, the only apps that required user input were the ones that didn't back up automatically, and Gadgetbridge, which crashed when trying to open it for the first time post-restore (luckily I made a backup of its data separately before restoring the phone).
I have never used another backup utility on Android before (as I only started using the OS last year), so can't really compare to them. However, iTunes' backup utility restored everything perfectly every time I transferred data to a new phone, with the only exceptions being signing back in to an Apple ID post-restore, and maybe some other minor details I'm missing (the last of these transfers was a fair few years ago now, so can't really remember).

To the person that mentioned K9 Mail needed data restored manually, as a user of Thunderbird (which to my knowledge is the exact same app with different branding), it worked for me out of the box upon restoring, with no extra setup needed apart from re-granting notification permissions and background usage (for push email notifications).

Developer-Dude

I gave up using Seedvault a while back (only attempted it twice). I decided to give it another go since I really don't have any backups of my phone at all. Anyone notice that Seedvault seems to work better at backing up data since QPR1? It seems to work better for me. But seriously, GrapheneOS needs a reliable backup restore solution. I know this has been talked about for years. But really. A backup restore app is part of an OS, and quite essential. I'm not complaining, just stating how important this is. I like to learn app building and coding for fun. I'm definitely not an expert, but if I have time to learn how, I'd be interested in building a backup restore app (FOSS) that could work on GrapheneOS. Possibly a bookmarks and tab backup restore app for Vanadium too. Don't know if I'll ever do this, but its something I might look in to. I have built basic apps in Python, but I don't know a whole lot about FOSS Android development (yet). If you have pointers on it, let me know. Like I said, I can't promise any of this, but if I ever do make nice backup restore apps, I'm sure it would (hopefully) solve a lot of problems with Seedvault

de0u

Developer-Dude If you have pointers on it, let me know.

To understand many aspects of the problem, maybe start by reading the SeedVault source, and reading the Android documentation for the system facilities that SeedVault uses.

Developer-Dude

Out of curiosity, could SeedVault be installed on my Motorola Moto G Play or does it have to be integrated into the OS?

Also, SeedVault seems to work pretty decently on QPR2. I've started using it again to back up my phone. I don't trust it to completely restore my phone, but it seems to work a lot better now - it doesn't say "backup failed!" anymore.

Novaliss

Developer-Dude it doesn't say "backup failed!" anymore.

🥳💃🎯

That's the spirit!

I so want that feature to 'just work'. I will test the crap out of it when shifting main device.

de0u

Developer-Dude Out of curiosity, could SeedVault be installed on my Motorola Moto G Play or does it have to be integrated into the OS?

Accessing/replacing the settings/data of all apps is highly privileged. SeedVault works only as a privileged system application.

Developer-Dude

Novaliss I so want that feature to 'just work'

It seems to honestly back up everything flawlessly so far! Except files (which are Beta), get stuck halfway, but I back up my files and photos to Proton Drive anyways, so thats no big deal. But everything else is working amazingly. I'm surprised - and happy! 😀

DeletedUser720

Is three a way to restore profile's seedvault backup info private space? Could not find how to search in this particular thread.

DeletedUser720

DeletedUser720 ok, so the answer is - yes.
one needs an app like AppManager in private space in order to start full Settings app that is otherwise not accessible. Then, usual procedure.

It's great SeedVault exists!

Developer-Dude

Will SeedVault backup my Duress PIN, or would that have to be reset when I get a new phone?

userofgos

Developer-Dude no it does not. I just did a Factory reset to start fresh for the new year. Duress didn't carrier over. I think it makes sense why, since the password/pin and fingerprint also don't carrier over.

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