New Android Phone? Here’s how to backup your games data so you don’t lose your progress without root!

These are the quick steps to backup the game data for individual games so you can restore them to your new phone.  In this example, I am replacing my Samsung Galaxy Grand Prime with a Galaxy J7 Sky Pro.  I first tried using the Samsung Smart Switch App, but it doesn’t bring the application data with it, so I lost my game progress.

Download the Samsung Mobile drivers: http://developer.samsung.com/galaxy/others/android-usb-driver-for-windows

Download the 15 Seconds ADB Installer: https://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2588979

Install the drivers and the ADB Installer.

Enabled USB debugging on both phones

Before we begin, be sure to update the applications on the old phone to the latest version and install the game on the new phone.  I found, if you didn’t, some games didn’t care and other would throw an error and maybe keep some of your progress.  In one game, it kept my diamonds, but not my coins.

Connect the phone to your computer via USB cable, let your computer install the drivers for the device.

You will need to know the complete package name for each game.  In this example, I’m backing up Hill Climb Racing 2.

Where hcr2.ab is whatever name you want to make the backup file for this game and com.fingersoft.hcr2 is the package name.  If you don’t know the package name for the game you want to back up, it’s probably easiest to just google the game name with “package name” and it should pop up on some page.

Open a command prompt:

cd c:\adb

List all the 3rd party apps installed, so you know what to backup.

c:\adb> adb shell pm list packages -3

c:\adb> adb backup -f hcr2.ab com.fingersoft.hcr2

* daemon not running. starting it now on port 5037 *
* daemon started successfully *
Now unlock your device and confirm the backup operation.

When you run this command, unlock your phone and touch “BACKUP MY DATA”

Do this for each game you want to transfer to the new phone.  When you are done backing up the games and want to switch phones, run this:

c:\adb> adb kill-server

This will stop the connection server so you can connect the second phone and adb will start the daemon and connect to the new phone.  Then, to restore the game, run this:

c:\adb> adb restore hcr2.ab

Do this for each game you backed up and you should be all set.

Here are some examples of Package Names:

Hill Climb Racing 2 = com.fingersoft.hcr2
Piano Tiles 2 = com.cmplay.tiles2

When the app is no longer listed in the app store…

adb shell pm list packages -f -3

package:/data/app/~~p8FY0S5hSmYI_78heC5HKw==/com.virmee.bracelet.app-DXvTuq1fX4ijdMaaucNLow==/base.apk=com.virmee.bracelet.app

adb pull /data/app/~~p8FY0S5hSmYI_78heC5HKw==/com.virmee.bracelet.app-DXvTuq1fX4ijdMaaucNLow==/base.apk virmee.apk

adb backup -f virmee.ab com.virmee.bracelet.app

Switch phones…

adb install virmee.apk

adb restore com.virmee.bracelet.app