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Titanium Backup HOWTOs

This section describes the specific and basic jobs methodologies.

1. How to make your first backup WITHOUT root:

Before beginning, you need to setup your ADB and have your device detected. You must also running Android version 4.0 and above. Also, make sure you have a file manager installed. Our favorite is the ES File Explorer.

  • Connect your device and make sure its listed with the following command: 
    adb devices
  • Run a FULL backup with the following command: 
    adb backup -f FullBackup.ab -apk -all
  • This will create a “package” called “FullBackup.ab” on the current location in your command prompt. This is your backup package.
  • Now you can root your phone.
  • Once finished rooting, insert the “FullBackup.ab” package on your sdcard
  • Hit the menu button and look for “Extract from ADB backup” option. This will prompt you to search for the file. Use the file manager that you installed earlier and navigate to the directory and select the FullBackup.ab file.
  • Now restore like as if the backup was made with Titanium Backup. Don’t forget to make a fresh copy of the backup using Titanium Backup. You’re Done!

2. How to make your first backup on rooted device:

  • Verify that Titanium Backup has started without warning and that your busybox is OK
  • Click the Backup/Restore tab
  • Click Menu (the button), Batch
  • Click “Backup all user apps”
  • Let it run, then go back
  • Individually backup the system data you want. That is most green-colored items. This will be bookmarks, call log, calendar, launcher, WiFi, etc.
  • Now your backups are in the “TitaniumBackup” directory on your SD card.

3. How to restore your backups on a new phone, or after installing a ROM (if you wiped your phone):

  • Download Titanium Backup from Market
  • Click the Backup/Restore tab
  • Click Menu (the button), Batch
  • Click “Restore all missing apps + system data”
  • Reboot your phone
  • It’s done ! The only thing you may have to adjust is usually your wallpaper/widgets.

4. How to use the multi-user “data profiles” feature (Pro version, TB 4.0.0 or above):

Important note: This feature is able to overcome the single-user nature of Android to some extent, and is (of course) awesome, but it will not turn your Android OS into a fully fledged multi-user entity. The feature is meant for apps that don’t use background services and don’t sync their data with a server. Ideal candidates are games, note taking apps, prank apps and many others. Itmay also work with some apps/games that access online services, as long as you use a different online account on each profile. Don’t use this feature with system stuff such as SMS/MMS. If you’re unsure about an app, feel free to try it in multi-profile mode with unimportant data for a while.

  • Create the data profiles you want:
    • In the Overview screen hit “Switch profile” then “Create a new data profile”.
    • If your goal is to have separate “Angry Birds” high scores, repeat the previous step to create one profile per player.
  • Click on “Switch profile” and activate the profile that matches your current data. For example, if you played the game already, you’ll want to activate your own profile now, so that the current data gets assigned to that profile in the next step.
  • Switch to the apps list
  • Make the app(s) multi profile aware. For each app:
    • Long-click on the app
    • Click on “Enable multiple profiles for this app”. Your current data for that app will be moved into the profile you activated in the previous step.
  • Create a profile switching widget (optional):
    • Hit the “HOME” button
    • Long-click on the background
    • Click on “Widgets”
    • Choose “Titanium Backup (Data Profiles)”.
    • The widget is on your background now. Every time you want to switch the active profile, just click on the widget.

5. How to do an advanced system data restore (the most difficult case, where both data migration and manual data tinkering are needed)

  • Restoring “Memo 1.0” data (com.sec.android.app.memo) from SGS to SGS2
    • First of all, just to be safe: Launch Titanium Backup Pro and wipe data for the Memo app
    • Launch the Memo app once, which will create an empty database (and default settings) automatically
    • Switch back to Titanium Backup Pro
    • Enable “System data migration” in the Titanium Backup preferences (because Samsung’s Memo database format has changed)
    • Restore “data only” for your Memo app
    • Yay! Now your memos are restored to your new (previously empty) Memo database. However, some data columns (which didn’t exist in the older Memo database) have the default value, which makes the new Memo app believe that every memo was deleted. Awesome work Samsung! Anyway, here’s how to fix it:
      • Open a shell and run the following:
      • su
/data/data/com.keramidas.TitaniumBackup/files/sqlite3 /data/data/com.sec.android.app.memo/databases/Memo.db
UPDATE memo SET delete_flag = 'false', locked = 'false', synch_t = 0;
    • Close the shell and launch the Memo app.
    • Your memos should appear now !

6. How to export an app’s data to a Google Docs spreadsheet, Excel or OpenOffice Calc

  • Install the Google Docs app from Android Market
  • Install the IMDb Top 250 app from Android Market – Oops! It doesn’t exist in the Market anymore.
  • Launch Titanium Backup
  • Long-click on the “IMDb Top 250” app and hit “Explore”.
  • You’ll see a database named “top250”. That database contains a table named “films” which has 250 rows. Click on that “films” table.
  • The column selection dialog opens. De-select the “utitle” column which we don’t need and leave the others checked. Hit “OK”.
  • A file named “top250 – films.csv” is create in the “Download” folder on your SD card now.
  • Now you get to choose where you want to export that CSV file to. You can either hit “BACK” and later open the file yourself, or otherwise:
    • Hit “GMail” for sending the data to a PC so you can then open it with Excel or OpenOffice Calc.
    • Hit “Docs” for uploading the data to Google Docs (use this for this example).
    • Note: If the CSV file isn’t in the format you need, hit MENU -> Preferences -> “CSV File Format Preferences” in Titanium Backup.
  • Google Docs opens automatically. Choose “Convert file to Google Docs document” (otherwise it would get uploaded as a text file) and hit OK.
  • A few seconds later, you’ll get an “Upload to Google Docs complete” notification. Click on it, which will open Google Docs.
  • In Google Docs, click on the top document in the list, which is the one you just uploaded.
  • A spreadsheet will open, which contains 250 rows (one per movie). For every movie you have:
    • the date of the movie
    • the link to the IMDB review (without the http://imdb.com(external link) prefix)
    • the movie’s ranking on IMDB
    • “TRUE” or “FALSE” (indicates whether you’ve seen the movie or not)
    • The name of the movie
  • As you’re seeing the spreadsheet, you can edit rows or click on any column header to order the rows by it. For example click twice on “Col D” to bring all movies you have already watched to the top of the list. The power of spreadsheets is now yours!