How to Back Up All Your Android Messages

I’ve been in a particularly “save everything for fun” mood lately, and the latest target of my fixation is posts. However, it’s been several generations of Android flagships since I’ve archived anything, so now I’m scrambling to back up everything from 2019 and beyond.

Android was supposed to fix the way it saves data and messages as early as Android 8.0 Oreo in 2017. Google recently refined the mechanism by moving to Google One, its all-in-one subscription and cloud data offering. Although data backup has improved, it also constitutes a real “black box”. It is difficult to verify what was recorded and even more difficult to visualize the data.

I make backups back in my own hands, like in the Android days of old. In fact, one of the returning apps, SMS Backup and Restore, is still one of the best for backing up text messages, and it is included in this guide on backing up messages on Android. I’ll also walk you through how to back up archives for secondary messaging apps, including WhatsApp and Signal, two commonly used third-party messengers.

Get started with Google One

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By default, your phone uses Google One to manage backups as long as Google Messages is your default messaging app. (Samsung users can choose to use Samsung Messages instead, which backs up to Samsung Cloud.) This is generally a “set it and forget it” system that saves SMS, RCS and MMS messages, call history, contacts and device settings to your Google Drive storage. (Photos and videos are backed up via Google Photos.)

You can check the status of it to see when it was last saved. Open your phone’s Settings panel, then find the Backup option. If this is your first time, you will receive on-screen instructions to enable backup. Otherwise, you should be able to see what has been backed up so far. If you’re on the Pixel launcher, scroll down to find a list of backup details to browse. Tap to see what’s in the safe.

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At most, backup data does not exceed 25 MB and does not count towards your Google Drive quota. (Google Photos does this, but it’s actually a different product.) Only the most recent data backup is stored at a time. All of the above is removed entirely.

Google One’s backup methodology is simply a “sync”, not a true data archive. If you accidentally delete a thread from Messages, its backup will also be deleted from the cloud and you will not be able to restore it. Google makes it clear, even in its developer documentation, that a user or other apps on the device cannot access the save data. So, what should a user do? Call an old faithful: SMS Backup & Restore.

Configure SMS backup and restore

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I use original Android apps like SMS Backup & Restore to make full backups easier, as it’s still the only way to easily go through the messages and call logs you have saved. The application treats your text messages like a database and stores them in XML format for analysis if necessary. SMS Backup & Restore was once an independent darling, although SyncTech acquired it in late 2017, which partly helped it last this long.

It’s easy to set up. Download and install the app from the Google Play Store. The app is free with ads, or you can pay a one-time $6 fee to remove them and unlock additional features, like more cloud storage. Then grant it access to your contacts and messages. Tap the option to set up a backup and choose Messages. (You can also include call logs if you want.) Next, choose your destination. I back up to Google Drive in its own archive folder. Dropbox, OneDrive, and WebDAV are also options.

SMS Backup & Restore offers several backup options. For one thing, you don’t need to save everything in your Messages app. You can choose to save only certain conversations. It also doesn’t have to be a constant backup. If you need to save a single chat thread, SMS Backup & Restore allows you to select it and save it to a location of your choice in XML format.

SMS Backup & Restore also allows you to browse all this data after it is synced. The easiest way is to use the mobile app, which lets you search for conversations, and use SyncTech’s web viewer, where you can download the XML file it generates and browse it as if it were a messaging app on your phone. SyncTech says all processing is done on the browser and nothing is uploaded to servers. If you prefer not to download your conversations via Web Viewer, you can try opening it with Excel. And if you’re particularly good, there are plenty of third-party XML readers, although not all of them are fully compatible with the way SMS Backup & Restore saves logs.

WhatsApp and Signal

These days, half of my digital life is split between multiple messaging apps, including WhatsApp and Signal. WhatsApp is where I chat with friends who are on wifi or live halfway around the world, while Signal is where my local parents and I keep our chats private.

WhatsApp can create a local backup on your phone’s internal memory every day at a set time. This is the most direct way to manage your own WhatsApp chat data. You will find your data in the WhatsApp application database on the internal memory of your device. WhatsApp can also automatically backup to Google Drive on Android devices. Unfortunately, Google has started counting WhatsApp backups towards your Google Drive storage quota. But the app shows you how much space you have in your Drive account if you back up this way.

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If you haven’t set it up yet, WhatsApp’s backup capabilities are available under Saving chats option in the app settings panel. You can select how often to back up and whether it includes videos. You can also choose whether backups are end-to-end encrypted. (Note that this option is not enabled by default.) If you need to export a particular conversation, you can do so from the Chat history menu. You can then read these WhatsApp backups by exporting individual chats as text files directly from the app.

The signal is a little trickier in backup. Since it is based on the principle of extreme privacy, it prioritizes local backup and does not backup to the cloud. Only recently, in the latest beta for Android devices, Signal added push-button backup. And technically, it’s still working out its issues.

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But you can use it if you want. In Signal on Android, go to Settings, then scroll down to Backups. You will see a big Beta sign next to it. Tap on it and from there, Signal will set you up with an end-to-end encrypted backup of your conversations. The recovery key is a 64-character code that will help you restore the backup. If you lose it, you will not be able to recover your messages.

Signal avoids the possibility of saving to a third-party service. Instead, it will backup the last 45 days of media and text messages for free. Any more than that, and you’ll have to pay $2/month for a full backup of your messages. It also gives you 100 GB of photo storage.

As these are encrypted files, they are not particularly easy to parse without first decrypting them and converting them to a readable XML file. You will also need to save the archive locally if you want to access it. Small apps like Signal Message Exporter and Signal Back can help if you’re particularly interested in having a readable log.

Backing up is not a one-time task. It’s something you have to get into the habit of doing. The best way to ensure you don’t lose these “receipts” is to make it a habit to check your backups. Keep Google One, WhatsApp, and Signal cloud backups enabled, then set SMS Backup and Restore to run once a week or, if you’re lighter on this app than others, once a month.