FAQs

• SMS Backup & Restore backs up SMS/MMS messages and call logs on Android phones so that they can be restored or transferred later.
  MMS messages include messages with pictures/music/videos and usually group messages.
  Draft messages also get backed up and restored as long as the messaging app makes the drafts available in the phone’s messaging database. A lot of messaging apps keep the drafts internal to them so this may or not work for all messaging apps.
• The app always creates a local backup on your phone, and has options  to upload backups to the cloud, which is essential if the phone ever gets lost or stolen or just stops working.
• Backups can be created on-demand, or can be scheduled to  automatically create recurring backups.
• Backups can be viewed and searched directly from the app.
• It can also delete all messages and/or calls from the phone to free up space. Of course, we highly recommend that you have backups of them before you delete them.

• All messaging apps that use telephone carrier based SMS & MMS Messages and store the messages in the phone’s messaging database.
• It does not support apps that use the SMS & MMS messaging but do not store the messages in the phone’s messaging database. For example, Signal or Threema.
• It does NOT support anything that has its own messaging platform (WhatsApp, Skype, WeChat, Lyne, etc.) as they do not use SMS/MMS.

SMS Backup & Restore is, as the name suggests, a backup and restore app. That means it can back up existing messages (and call logs) from the phone and can recover the same from backups. To be able to recover deleted data, it needs existing backups of those messages and call logs. The backups should have been created before the deletion.
The backups created by the app are either stored on the phone or on your own chosen cloud account (Dropbox, Google Drive, OneDrive etc). The backups are never sent to the developer.
If you do not have a backup created by the app then, unfortunately, this app cannot recover deleted messages and call logs for you.

If you have an existing backup then select the Menu > Restore option in the app. The app will then guide you thru the process of selecting a backup and restore the messages and/or call logs.

This app can only restore messages that were backed up by it before the messages were deleted. As long as you have a backup of the messages, it can restore from the backup. The contents of a backup can be checked using the Menu > View backups feature in the app or via the online viewer at this page.

This app only uses and supports backups in its specific XML format and cannot restore from backups created by other apps or in other formats like *.db, *.vmsg, *.csv etc.

It does not have access to backups that appear in the “Backups” section on the Google Drive app. Those are backups created by Google and cannot be used by other apps.

Yes it can, on Samsung phones or if you use Google’s Messages app for messaging.

Google’s Message app now supports RCS messaging with all service providers in USA as well as a lot of providers outside of USA. Messages stores these messages in the SMS/MMS database on the phone as MMS messages and SMS Backup & Restore can backup and restore these messages. If you wish to use RCS messages and backup/restore them using SMS Backup & Restore then we recommend using Google’s Messages app instead of the phone’s built-in messaging app.

On some phones, a factory reset can delete everything on the phone’s memory and storage area, including SD Cards. To make sure that you don’t lose the messages / calls on the phone, do the following:

Before Factory Reset: 

Confirm that the backup contains your important messages. You can do so using the Menu > View Backups feature in the app itself or by using the online viewer.

Make sure that a copy of the backup is stored outside the phone. There are a few different ways to do that:

• Configure the app to upload the backup to Dropbox, Google Drive or Email and then create a new backup. Confirm that the backup XML file gets uploaded to the cloud account or arrives in the email.
• Copy the backup file to a computer manually and confirm that the size of the file on the computer is the same as what the app shows
• Manually email the backup to yourself. To do so, from the main screen of the app, tap on Menu > View backups, select the Local tab and then tap on the 3-dots menu on top right and then select Send File.

After Factory Reset:

• Install the app again
• If you uploaded the backup to a cloud account,
  • Tap the Restore button
  • Select the cloud account type on the screen and log in to the correct account
  • The app will select the latest backup file on the cloud account, follow the on-screen instructions from there.
• If you copied the files to a computer,
  • Copy/download the backup file created before the reset back to the phone
  • Change the Backup Folder setting to the folder in which the backup file exists
  • Restore
• If you sent the file to email,
  • Open your email client on the phone,
  • Download the backup file from the email client
  • Tap on the downloaded file and the phone should ask you to select an app to open the file with, select SMS Backup and Restore and then follow the on-screen instructions to restore.

Please see our Privacy Policy

Currently, the only way to reset the password is to uninstall and re-install the app.

This will not remove your backups, however you will need to set up the app preferences again.

Our translations come from volunteer users of our app! As such, there may be incomplete or incorrect translations. Any strings that are not translated will appear in English. Translations are an on-going process. If you’d like to volunteer to translate for us, please email us at [email protected]

The app itself has a built-in viewer that can be used to the contents of the backup file. This can be accessed using Menu > View backups.

To view the backups outside the app or from a computer, use the online viewer on our site.
Note that the online viewer processes the whole backup file within the browser on the computer itself and can have troubles loading very large backups, especially if they have too many images/videos etc (MMS messages). If you find that the viewer gets stuck or shows errors about memory issues, restart the browser and then make sure the checkbox to “Load images and other media” is disabled before selecting the xml file to view.

We’ve created an in-depth list of how to transfer messages from different phones and devices.

Notes:

• If you get an Error during SMS Restore, please try restarting the phone and restore again. Sometimes the internal database for the messages gets corrupted and is fixed upon restarting the phone.
• Some logs suggest an antivirus app interfering with the restore. Uninstalling/Disabling the antivirus app fixes the restore issue.
• Please send us the logs as soon as you get the error, otherwise the logs will not contain the information needed.

Reporting Errors

If you’re getting an error, then we will need to have a look at the logs to figure out the issue and either make a fix in the app, or determine if there’s something wrong with the settings or the phone. This app has a built-in option to Send Logs in case of errors. This option normally appears when the app encounters an error, and allows you to send us an email containing details of the app’s activity and the error it encountered. You can also find the option by going to Menu > Help and feedback.

We have decided to make the app ad-supported so that we can continue to develop and support the app and its users. The app displays a non-intrusive banner ad at the the bottom of the main screen. If you do not wish to see the ads in the app, you can remove them by opening the settings and then turning on the option to “Remove ads”. After that, restart the app and it will not display ads any more.

Advanced messages (or Enhanced messaging) use a new messaging technology called RCS and these messages are different from the normal SMS and MMS messages.

You can check if you are using RCS in your messaging app by long pressing on a message (that was not backed up) and select Show Details, if it says “Advanced Message”, “Chat” or “Rich Communication Services” then this is an advanced message (called RCS), it’s not an SMS or MMS message. 

Google’s Messages app supports RCS messaging with most mobile service providers in the world. Messages stores these messages in the SMS/MMS database on the phone as MMS messages and SMS Backup & Restore can backup and restore these messages. 

UPDATE Starting with v10.15.002, SMS Backup & Restore supports backup of RCS/Chat messages on Samsung phones (using Samsung’s Messages app). These messages get backed up as normal SMS/MMS messages depending on the content and will be restored as normal SMS/MMS messages. 

Note that since these messages do not get restored back as RCS/Chat messages, this may result in duplicates appearing in the Samsung Messages if a restore is performed with existing RCS/Chat messages already in the Samsung’s Messages app. To work around duplicates, you may need to delete the messages from the Samsung’s Messages app, or use a different messaging app like Google Messages.

Most of the features are the same in the free and the paid version of the app, except:

• The free version has ads while the paid does not.
• The paid version has options to compress and encrypt the backup files.
• The paid version has support for using WebDAV as a cloud location for backups.

This app can be set up to send the xml backup files via email. It does not store individual messages as separate emails in Gmail.

The email option does not appear during the initial setup process as we do not recommend using it due to the attachment size restrictions in most email services.

If you wish to set up email as a backup destination, you can set it up from Menu > Settings > Backup location > Email.

This appears to be an issue with the Android 10 implementation on OnePlus phones. The same issue does not happen on the Pixel phones with Android 10.

It appears the phone shows the dialog to change the default SMS app but does not let the app confirm that it is the default SMS app.

In most cases, restarting the phone once after setting SMS Backup & Restore as the default SMS app allows it to continue with the restore.

If the above doesn’t work then SMS Backup & Restore can be manually selected as the default SMS app from the Phone Settings > Apps > Default apps setting. After that, restart the phone and the restore should work.

In some cases, the app cannot find or pair with the other phone during transfer via Wifi-Direct. The first thing to try is to restart both the phones and see if the transfer works after that. If it still fails, we suggest that you upload a backup from the phone to a cloud account, like Google Drive or Dropbox and then Restore on the other phone from there.

Starting with v10.11.001 of the app, it has a dedicated menu to print (Menu > Print from backups). This will take you thru selecting a backup and then selecting a conversation to print. The print can be sent to a physical printer or saved as a PDF.

The online viewer on this website can also be used to easily view and print the messages or call history.

The default setting in the app is to back up all the messages and call logs available on the phone at the time of the backup (Full backups). While this is a good option for quickly creating a new backup, it can quickly take up a lot of storage space if there are lots of messages and scheduled backups are used to created regular backups. There are a few different ways to reduce the storage:

1. Use a different backup type – create incremental backups or use archive mode. This can be changed from Menu > Settings > Backup settings > Backup type. More info at  What are the backup types supported by the app?
2. Only backup selected conversations. This can be done from Menu > Settings > Backup settings > Selected conversations.
3. Only backup messages sent/received after a certain date. This can be done from Menu > Settings > Backup settings > Withing date range.
4. Set the app to automatically delete older backups. This setting is available for each of the cloud accounts supported and can be changed from the respective cloud settings screen at Menu > Settings > Backup location. For local backups, the app can be set to limit the storage used, this can be set from Menu > Settings > Backup location > Retention.

The app always creates temporary local copies of the backups even when its set to only store them on cloud accounts. This is to ensure that there is a backup available if the upload to the cloud account fails. It also makes it easier for the app to retry uploads to the cloud accounts as well as upload the same backup to multiple cloud accounts if configured to do so.

It also maintains a local copy of the last backup, so that a restore can use the local copy instead of downloading it again. Once the backup has been successfully uploaded to the cloud accounts, it deletes previously stored local copies, except the last backup. It can be set to delete this last backup copy as well from the settings at Menu > Settings > Backup settings, as shown below:

Save local copy – when enabled, a copy is kept on the local storage of the phone for all backups created.

Local backup folder – The local folder where the local copy of the backup should be stored. This defaults to the app’s private folder so that the backups cannot be accessed by any other app. It can be configured to stored these backups on any folder on the phone or to other supported storage like external SD Cards.

Keep local copy of latest backup – This specifies if the app should always keep a copy of the latest backup, even if the “Save local copy” above is turned off. Turning this off will make the app delete any local copies as soon as the cloud backups have been successfully uploaded.

Archive Mode backups

Archive mode works by adding newer messages or call logs to an exist backup and thus always needs a local copy of the backup so that it can be appended. For this reason, the above settings to not keep a local copy do not work if the app is set to use Archive mode.

We do not have an iPhone/iOS version of the app because iOS does not allow 3rd party apps like ours to access messages or call history. To transfer your messages or call history from an Android phone to an iPhone, you will need to use the iPhone’s transfer feature during the initial setup process of the phone.

iOS does not allow 3rd party apps like ours to access messages or call history. Due to this restriction, SMS Backup & Restore cannot work on iOS and thus we don’t have an iOS version of the app.

To transfer your messages or call history from an Android phone to an iPhone, you will need to use the iPhone’s transfer feature during the initial setup process of the phone.

Starting with v10.12.001, the Pro version of the app now supports WebDAV as a backup location. This is in addition to the existing support for Google Drive, Dropbox and OneDrive.

WebDAV is supported by a variety of cloud services as well as popular NAS devices. To configure WebDAV in the app, open Menu > Settings > Backup location, scroll down to the WebDAV options. The same options are also available while creating a new backup.

Server URL – The URL for the WebDAV service. This is dependent on the service being used, so please consult the service documentation. Refer to the list below for some of the popular services.

User name – The username for authenticating with WebDAV service.

Password – The password for the account.

Folder – The folder in which the files should be stored. The default is /webdav but can be changed. Some services may need a custom folder being specified here based on the settings for the account and this may need to be manually entered here.

Select a folder – Once the root folder has been specified in the setting above, this button can be used to visually select/change the folder.

Delete backups older than – Like the other cloud accounts, this can be used to automatically delete backups older than specified number of days. This is only applicable for full backups.

Server URLs for some popular services

Starting with Android 11, the phone can automatically remove permissions assigned to the app, if it hasn’t been actively used for a while. This can happen even if the app is set to automatically create scheduled backups. To make sure that the permissions are not removed for the app, it now shows a note on the main screen of the app with a button where you can turn off this setting for the app.

More info about this permission revocation in Android is available here.

The app needs various permissions to be able to backup and restore messages and call logs. Not all of the permissions declared are requested or required for its functioning. It will only request the permissions it needs when it needs them.

• SMS
  • Read SMS – To backup messages.
  • Write SMS – To restore messages.
  • Receive SMS – To handle messages received while the app is the default messaging app (during restore or when deleting messages).
  • Send SMS – The app does NOT request this permission and never sends any messages, however, some phones bundle and display this permission when the app requests the permission to Write SMS and become the default SMS app.
• Call Logs
  • Read Call Logs – To backup call logs.
  • Write Call Logs – To restore call logs.
• Contacts
  • Read Contacts – To store contact names in backups and to display the contact names when viewing the backups in the app.
  • Write Contacts – Required by Android to restore call logs.
• Storage
  • Only used on phones running older versions of Android to store the backups on SD cards or external storage on the phone. This permission is not requested on newer phones as the backups are stored in the app’s internal folder by default.
• Location
  • Only requested when using the app’s built-in transfer feature. This is a requirement of Android to be able to discover nearby devices.
• Network state/connections
  • Only requested when using the app’s built-in transfer feature. It uses these permissions to make Wi-Fi Direct connections as well as reset network if needed.
• Accounts
  • To authenticate with Google Drive and Gmail for cloud uploads.
• Prevent Phone from Sleeping
  • To prevent the phone from going to sleep/suspended state while a Backup or Restore operation is in progress.
• Run at start-up
  • Start scheduled Backups.

This app doesn’t directly support importing Google Voice messages but there are various scripts developed by users of this app that you can use to convert the Google Voice messages exported using Google Takeout into the XML format used by SMS Backup & Restore.

One of the most complete implementation is at https://github.com/SLAB-8002/gvoice-sms-takeout-xml

Please note that we haven’t used these scripts ourselves so you will have to try it out yourselves and check if it works for your use case.

Google is trying to reduce the risk of inadvertent access to data by making it difficult for app developers to gain full access to user’s Google Drive account. Their recommended access is to only allow apps to access files that the app created. Due to this change from Google, we also do NOT recommend that you assign full-access to the app.

Due to the new restrictions being imposed by Google on accessing files from Google Drive, the app now defaults to limited access on Google Drive. This means that it can only access files that were created by the app itself. Since the free and the Pro version of the app are 2 separate apps, this also means that the Pro version cannot access files created by the free version and vice-versa.

Another issue with this access restrictions is that the app also cannot see any folders that were created directly in Google Drive for storing backups in specific folders.

In most cases, this is usually not a problem as you just keep using the app (free or Pro) that you used to create the backup and it can always access the files that it created. It becomes a bit more problematic if you move from the free to the Pro version as the Pro version cannot access the files created by the free version.

To view or restore backups that are not directly visible in the app, you can use the Google Drive app to access the backup files. Once you have the file select or open, use the 3 dots menu and select “Open With”. On the next screen, select the SMS Backup & Restore app that you have installed.

It appears that a recent update to the phone software on Samsung phones (most likely as part of deprecating Samsung’s Messages app), the RCS messages are being stored as normal SMS/MMS messages. This is in addition to the messages getting stored as RCS messages.

Since SMS Backup & Restore backs up the separately stored RCS messages on Samsung phones, this results in the messages getting duplicated in the backups as they get backed up as both SMS/MMS as well as RCS.

If your backups contain duplicates, you can turn off the RCS backup option from Menu > Settings > Backup Settings and that should stop the duplicates from getting backed up.

Note that there was an issue with older versions of the app that did not disable the RCS backup properly, so please ensure that you are using at least v10.21.003 of the app.

Yes it can, on Samsung phones or if you use Google’s Messages app for messaging.

Google’s Message app now supports RCS messaging with all service providers in USA as well as a lot of providers outside of USA. Messages stores these messages in the SMS/MMS database on the phone as MMS messages and SMS Backup & Restore can backup and restore these messages. If you wish to use RCS messages and backup/restore them using SMS Backup & Restore then we recommend using Google’s Messages app instead of the phone’s built-in messaging app.

Yes, you can enable scheduled backups which automatically back up your messages and/or calls at specified intervals. This setting can be found in Preferences, and also when you create a backup.

On initial setup, the app prompts to select the desired locations for the backups. The locations currently supported are Google Drive, Dropbox, OneDrive and local storage on the phone.

If the local storage option is selected, the files are stored, by default, in the “SMSBackupRestore” folder of the primary storage area on the phone. On most phones this is the folder path “/storage/emulated/0/SMSBackupRestore/” but it can vary based on how the phone was set up. There is an option under Menu > Settings > Backup Settings > Local backup folder to change this folder. The same screen allows selection of custom folder anywhere on the phone or external SD Card (if available).

If only cloud locations are selected then the app stores a local copy of the backups in the app’s internal storage folder (usually “/data/user/0/com.riteshsahu.SMSBackupRestore/files”) before uploading to the cloud account. Once the backup is successfully uploaded to the cloud account, this local copy is deleted.

• You can View and Search the backup files directly from the app from the main screen.
• When Restoring or Viewing your backup(s), you have the option to Use System Browser to look for backups on phones with Android v4.4 or later.
• To access the backup files on a computer, you can either send them using the Send backup file menu option, or by mounting the SD Card to a computer and then browsing to the SMSBackupRestore folder. Backup files uploaded to the cloud are browsable via the app, and accessible via the cloud provider directly.

Backups are stored in XML format.

• The date is backed up in the same format as it’s stored on the phone; it’s the Java date representation (including millisecond) of the time when the message was sent/received in UTC.
• Check out www.epochconverter.com for information on how to do the conversion from other languages to Java.
• Please note that the site does not include milliseconds in the date it generates when converting human readable date to java/epoch date. To add milliseconds, add 000 at the end of the number generated by the site.

Starting with v10.07.100, the app now support 3 different ways to create backups:

1. Full backups – Always backs up all the messages/call logs available on the phone at the time of the backup. This is the default setting. This consumes the maximum storage as each backup has all the data and has repeated data from any previous backups, in addition to new messages/call logs since the previous backup.
2. Archive mode – A full backup is created initially and then subsequent backups add new messages/call logs to the backup created initially. The whole backup is then uploaded to the cloud accounts configured. This saves on storage space and keeps the number of files to a minimum. The downside is that, as the file grows, the data usage increases as the whole file is uploaded every time.
3. Incremental backups – A full backup is created initially and then subsequent backups store new messages/call logs to new files. This provides the benefit of smaller subsequent backups but still results in new files created for every backup run.

The type of backup can be configured from Menu > Settings > Backup Settings > Backup Type.

Archive mode options:

• Archive filename for messages – The name of the file that the messages will be stored in. If this file does not exist then a new full backup will be created and stored in this file. If this file exists then any new messages will be added to this file.
• Archive filename for call logs – The name of the file that the call logs will be stored in. If this file does not exist then a new full backup will be created and stored in this file. If this file exists then any new calls logs will be added to this file.
• Split backups – Specifies if the file should be split occasionally so that the backups do not become too large. The splitting works by creating a new file and adding new messages/call logs to that file instead of the original file. The name of the file will be generated based on the File name date format setting. The splitting can be set to happen automatically after a number of days or every month. It can also be done manually by checking the box for “Force split on the next backup run”. All the files will still be needed during a restore as each file only contains a certain number of messages. The default is to not split the backups. 

Incremental backup options:

Create new full backup – specifies how often a new full backup should be created so that there are not a lot of small backup files. The more backup files created, the more files will be needed during a restore. A manual full backup can be triggered by checking the box for “Force a full backup on the next backup run”

“Archive Mode” is this app’s way of incrementally adding new messages to an existing backup file and can be enabled from the preferences. Here’s how it works:

• • Whenever the app successfully backs up one or more messages, it stores the latest message’s Numeric ID and Timestamp to be used later.
  • The next time the app runs, it only requests messages that have a larger ID or a later Timestamp than the stored values.
  • When the app finds any messages that satisfy the above criteria, it starts copying the existing backup file’s records into a new temporary file (displays “Processing existing backup file…” in the progress dialog).
  • Once it has copied all the contents of the existing backup, it then adds the new records to this new file.
  • If backup verification is enabled, it then verifies this new file to make sure that the backup file is readable.
  • It renames the existing (older) backup file to another temporary name.
  • It renames the newly created backup file to the name specified in the “Archive Filename” preference.
  • It deletes the older backup file.
  • If the app is set to upload the backups to cloud then the whole backup is then uploaded to the cloud.

This works fine in most cases, but there are a few cases in which it may not work properly:

• Android reassigns the Numeric ID if the message with the largest ID is deleted and a new message is received after that.
• A message is received with an older Timestamp than the Timestamp stored by the app.

Since the app uses both these things to check for new messages, it will work fine if only one of the above conditions are true. However, if for some reason both these conditions are true (e.g. you deleted the latest message and then received a new message with an older timestamp), then the app will not be able to figure out if there is a new message that it should back up.

If you delete messages often, and do not care about whether those deleted messages are backed up or are missing when using the “Archive Mode,” then we suggest you do not use it. You can use the normal backup, and if you use Scheduled Backups then it can (optionally) automatically delete older backup files so you don’t end up with lots of backup files with similar content in them.

There are multiple reasons why all your messages may not be getting backed up:

1. If the messages are very long or if they contain multimedia images or photos or if they are Group messages then you need to enable backup of MMS messages. To do this go to the app Menu > Settings > Backup Settings > Turn on MMS.
2. If the backups are missing only sent messages then check if you are using Advanced Messaging /Enhanced Messaging for sending messages. You can check this in your messaging app by long holding on a message (that was not backed up) and select Show Details, if it says “Advanced Message” or “Chat” then this is an advanced message (called RCS), it’s not an SMS or MMS message.

   At this stage, SMS Backup & Restore can only back up RCS messages sent/received using Google’s Messages app.

   If you are using your phone’s default messaging app and you are not using any features offered by Advanced/Enhanced messaging, then you can disable it from your messaging app settings.
   Any messages sent after changing the setting will then get backed up by the app.

The app does not have any restrictions on the number of call logs it backs up, however, most phones only keep a limited number of calls (500 or 1000 or 2000) in memory and the app can only backup those call logs.

This app can be set up to send the xml backup files via email. It does not store individual messages as separate emails in Gmail.

The email option does not appear during the initial setup process as we do not recommend using it due to the attachment size restrictions in most email services.

If you wish to set up email as a backup destination, you can set it up from Menu > Settings > Backup location > Email.

Due to the new restrictions being imposed by Google on accessing files from Google Drive, the app now defaults to limited access on Google Drive. This means that it can only access files that were created by the app itself. Since the free and the Pro version of the app are 2 separate apps, this also means that the Pro version cannot access files created by the free version and vice-versa.

Another issue with this access restrictions is that the app also cannot see any folders that were created directly in Google Drive for storing backups in specific folders.

In most cases, this is usually not a problem as you just keep using the app (free or Pro) that you used to create the backup and it can always access the files that it created. It becomes a bit more problematic if you move from the free to the Pro version as the Pro version cannot access the files created by the free version.

To view or restore backups that are not directly visible in the app, you can use the Google Drive app to access the backup files. Once you have the file select or open, use the 3 dots menu and select “Open With”. On the next screen, select the SMS Backup & Restore app that you have installed.

It appears that a recent update to the phone software on Samsung phones (most likely as part of deprecating Samsung’s Messages app), the RCS messages are being stored as normal SMS/MMS messages. This is in addition to the messages getting stored as RCS messages.

Since SMS Backup & Restore backs up the separately stored RCS messages on Samsung phones, this results in the messages getting duplicated in the backups as they get backed up as both SMS/MMS as well as RCS.

If your backups contain duplicates, you can turn off the RCS backup option from Menu > Settings > Backup Settings and that should stop the duplicates from getting backed up.

Note that there was an issue with older versions of the app that did not disable the RCS backup properly, so please ensure that you are using at least v10.21.003 of the app.

This app can only restore messages that were backed up by it before the messages were deleted. As long as you have a backup of the messages, it can restore from the backup. The contents of a backup can be checked using the Menu > View backups feature in the app or via the online viewer at this page.

This app only uses and supports backups in its specific XML format and cannot restore from backups created by other apps or in other formats like *.db, *.vmsg, *.csv etc.

It does not have access to backups that appear in the “Backups” section on the Google Drive app. Those are backups created by Google and cannot be used by other apps.

When you already have existing messages or calls on your phone and perform a restore, the app does not replace these records and the records from the backup file will be merged. Any duplicates will be ignored.

We’ve seen a few reports of this with the latest version of the Android Messages app. In some cases, users have reported that the messages started appearing once a new message was received after the Restore.
If the Messages app is not showing the recently restored messages then we suggest that you clear the storage of the Messages app from Phone Settings and after that it should start showing the messages properly. 

This problem usually happens if the phone’s built-in transfer feature (Pixel transfer, Samsung Smart Switch etc.) is used before using SMS Backup & Restore’s transfer feature. Those transfer features tend to create only the text based parts of MMS messages but do not transfer the media properly, leaving a skeleton behind. SMS Backup & Restore’s transfer then detects those existing messages as duplicates and does not restore the remaining parts of those MMS messages.

To fix this problem, you’ll need to delete the existing MMS messages from the phone and then perform another transfer/restore using SMS Backup & Restore.

You can use the “Delete messages or phone calls” feature (Menu > Tools) in SMS Backup & Restore to easily delete all messages.

This appears to be an issue with the Android 10 implementation on OnePlus phones. The same issue does not happen on the Pixel phones with Android 10.

It appears the phone shows the dialog to change the default SMS app but does not let the app confirm that it is the default SMS app.

In most cases, restarting the phone once after setting SMS Backup & Restore as the default SMS app allows it to continue with the restore.

If the above doesn’t work then SMS Backup & Restore can be manually selected as the default SMS app from the Phone Settings > Apps > Default apps setting. After that, restart the phone and the restore should work.

To restore a specific conversation, use the Menu > View backups feature to load the conversations from the backup file. Once you have located the desired conversation, select “Restore this Conversation” from the 3-dots menu on the right.

Due to the new restrictions being imposed by Google on accessing files from Google Drive, the app now defaults to limited access on Google Drive. This means that it can only access files that were created by the app itself. Since the free and the Pro version of the app are 2 separate apps, this also means that the Pro version cannot access files created by the free version and vice-versa.

Another issue with this access restrictions is that the app also cannot see any folders that were created directly in Google Drive for storing backups in specific folders.

In most cases, this is usually not a problem as you just keep using the app (free or Pro) that you used to create the backup and it can always access the files that it created. It becomes a bit more problematic if you move from the free to the Pro version as the Pro version cannot access the files created by the free version.

To view or restore backups that are not directly visible in the app, you can use the Google Drive app to access the backup files. Once you have the file select or open, use the 3 dots menu and select “Open With”. On the next screen, select the SMS Backup & Restore app that you have installed.

When Scheduled Backups are enabled, the app displays a notification after each successful backup with information about how many messages / call logs were backed up and failed.

If you are not getting this notification, then the scheduled backups are not working. Here are some potential ways to fix this problem:

For phones running Android 13 and above

• Open the App Info screen for SMS Backup & Restore (Long press on the app icon and then tap on the app info, or select the app from Phone Settings > Apps)
• Tap on Alarms and reminders
• Turn on the switch for “Allow setting alarms and reminders”.

Samsung Phones

For phones running Android 12 and above

• Open the App Info screen for SMS Backup & Restore (Long press on the app icon and then tap on the info icon, or select the app from Phone Settings > Apps)
• Tap on Battery
• Select Unrestricted
   

For phones running Android 10 and 11

• • Open Phone Settings > Device Care > Battery > App power management > Apps that won’t be put to sleep
  • Tap on Add apps
  • Scroll down and select SMS Backup & Restore
  • 

For phones running Android 9 or older, check if you have any power saving restrictions on the app being applied by the phone. To check, open the Battery screen from Phone Settings and see if it shows anything like the screenshot attached. If so, tap on the Details button at the bottom and then look for SMS Backup & Restore in the list and disable power saving for it.

Huawei Phones

Change settings as follows: Settings> Apps> SMS Backup & Restore > Battery> Keep running after screen off.

OnePlus Phones

For phones running Android 13 and above

• Long Press on the app icon and select Info
• Select Battery usage
• Turn on “Allow background activity” and Allow auto-launch
   

For phones running Android 12

• Open Phone Settings > Battery > Advanced Settings > Optimized battery use.
• Select SMS Backup & Restore
• Select “Don’t optimize”
  

For older phones

• Open Phone Settings > Battery > Battery Optimisation.
• Tap on 3 dots on top right corner.
• Tap on Advanced optimization, keep it off.
• Phone Settings > Advanced > Recent app management > Select “Normal clear”
     

TCL Phones

• Open Phone Settings > Smart Manager
• Tap on Auto-start
• Disable “All automatically manage”
• Enable Auto start for SMS Backup & Restore

Other Phones / General issues

• This app can be installed on the SD Card on phones which support it. If the app is installed on the SD Card, then it is not able to start the scheduler when the phone reboots. If you want to use Scheduled backups, please do not install the app on the SD card.
• On older versions of Android, whenever an app is updated, Android removes all its scheduled events and the schedules can only be set again by the app when it is opened. Each time you update the app, make sure you open it at least once after the update to enable the schedule.
• Some other “Task Manager” or “Task Killer” app is killing this app, thus making the backup impossible. This is especially a problem if the other app is set to “Auto Cancel” or “Auto Kill” every hour or so. If this is the case, make sure “SMS Backup & Restore” is excluded from the apps which are auto killed.

The app is not able to create the backup file. Possible reasons are:

• SD card is not available
• SD card is corrupted, or is out of space

We’ve received multiple reports of the uploads to OneDrive failing with Unknown Errors.

At this stage it appears to be a server side issue with OneDrive servers rejecting uploads from certain accounts. We haven’t been able to reproduce this issue with any of our accounts and thus haven’t been able to develop a fix for this.

If you have an account with this issue and can share the account credentials with us to reproduce and potentially fix the problem, please get in touch with us.

There could be a couple of reasons for this:

• I’ve moved my SD card from an older phone to a new phone.

More phones now come with built-in (internal) storage, and shows the internal storage as the SD card to the app. Therefore, when the app looks for the backup files, it is directed to look at the internal SD card and not the external SD card. You can try one of the following:

• Change the Backup folder in the app to point to the external storage card:

1. The app has built-in options to browse and select external storage cards. Open the Preferences screen (Menu > Preference)
2. Click on the “Backup Folder” preference
3. The app will list the storage cards that it has detected on the phone.
4. Select “External Storage,” if it’s listed. The path in the text box will change to the detected storage card path
5. Tap the “Browse…” button
6. Locate the existing “SMSBackupRestore” folder on the SD Card. For example:
7. Samsung Vibrant/Galaxy S phones: “/sdcard/sd/SMSBackupRestore/”
8. Samsung Galaxy S II phones: “/sdcard/external_sd/SMSBackupRestore/”
9. Some other phones (Motorola Droid/X/3/Bionic): “/sdcard-ext/SMSBackupRestore/”
10. Select the folder
11. Close the preferences
12. Perform the Restore

• Copy the “SMSBackupRestore” folder from the external SD card to the internal storage, and then restore from there:
  1. Create a new backup on the new phone, this will make sure that the required folder is created. You can name the file so that it’s easily identifiable later
  2. Connect the phone to a computer and mount the storage so that it’s accessible on the computer
  3. Locate the “SMSBackupRestore” folder on the phone’s storage and copy the old backup file to that folder
  4. Unmount the storage from the computer
  5. Perform the Restore and select the file copied in the earlier step

• A factory reset was performed on my phone.

  Depending on the make/model of the phone, a factory reset can delete everything on the phone’s memory and storage area, including SD Cards.In cases like these the backup file may actually be deleted from the phone and hence the app is not able to find it.

  Before attempting a factory reset, always make sure that a copy of the backup is stored outside the phone. If the app cannot find the backup files, then you can try searching for them by connecting your phone to a computer and searching for *.xml files on the storage card of the phone.

Some messaging apps have a default setting that deletes older messages from conversations that have more than 200 messages. When thousands of messages are restored, this setting can cause a lot of problems because it keeps trying to delete messages when you try to open the conversation. If you are restoring lots of messages, please disable this setting by opening the Preferences/Settings of the messaging app.

Some phones can take a lot of time to index and process newly created messages, especially if there are thousands of them. If you get a blank screen, or if the phone asks you to “Force Close” or “Wait,” just press “Wait” and leave the messaging app running. Eventually it will finish processing and start working normally.

If the messaging app opens but doesn’t show the newly restored messages then you may need to clear its storage from the Phone Settings > Installed Apps screen to force it to refresh the messages.

There are a few things that can cause this:

• Not all messages were backed up.
  • Some messages, including group messages, are MMS, and they did not get backed up, and hence cannot be restored with this app. There is a setting to enable / disable this to your liking.
  • You can view the backup file and see if it has all the messages in it. Check “How to view or edit SMS and Call Logs backup file on a computer”
• The restore process did not finish completely. When the restore completes, it shows the number of messages it restored.
• Newer versions of Android have a setting for specifying how many messages they will store (defaults to 200) per conversation and any message older than that gets deleted automatically. If you have lots of messages, then make sure the setting is either disabled or has a higher number set.

A lot of the messaging apps keep the drafts internal to them and do not store them in the phone’s messaging database. Since this app can only access messages that are available in the messaging database, it may not be able to access those drafts to back them up.

If the drafts were indeed backed up, the phone may require a restart after the restore for the messaging app to show them properly.

There could be a couple of reasons for this:

1. Using Handcent Messaging AppHandcent appears to display messages in the order they are added instead of the date of the message, so if you restore messages after you have existing messages in Handcent, they may appear in the wrong order.

   A workaround is to create a new backup, and then delete all the messages from Handcent. A restore after this action should result in the correct ordering of messages as well as clearing up duplicates.

2. Motorola Phone Use There are two variants of this problem:
   1. All the restored messages get the time of restore. These phones basically do not accept the time stamp supplied when restoring; they store the supplied time stamp internally but use the time of restore to display to the user. This problem was fixed in v4.4 of the app. If you are still having this problem, please make sure you are running the latest version of the app then delete your messages and restore again. If you are still experiencing this problem then please let us know by clicking the “Send Feedback” button in the footer below.
   2. The sent messages get the correct time, but the received messages are off by a few hours. This is also the result of messages getting grouped incorrectly in conversations, with a lot of sent messages appearing together and then a lot of received ones appearing later.This problem is caused by the phone either not storing the correct time zone information, or by adjusting the time zone when displaying to the user. The app has an option to adjust the time zone in the time stamps when viewing or restoring messages.

      Open the preferences screen and then check the appropriate boxes under the “ADJUST TIME ZONE” section. You’ll need to delete your existing messages from the phone and perform a Restore again.

      Sometimes this problem also occurs if you have an app like “SMS Time Fix” that adjusts the time stamp on messages after they arrive. If this is the case, please disable the other app to confirm whether or not the issue is still occurring.

We’ve seen a few reports of this with the latest version of the Android Messages app. In some cases, users have reported that the messages started appearing once a new message was received after the Restore.
If the Messages app is not showing the recently restored messages then we suggest that you clear the storage of the Messages app from Phone Settings and after that it should start showing the messages properly. 

This problem usually happens if the phone’s built-in transfer feature (Pixel transfer, Samsung Smart Switch etc.) is used before using SMS Backup & Restore’s transfer feature. Those transfer features tend to create only the text based parts of MMS messages but do not transfer the media properly, leaving a skeleton behind. SMS Backup & Restore’s transfer then detects those existing messages as duplicates and does not restore the remaining parts of those MMS messages.

To fix this problem, you’ll need to delete the existing MMS messages from the phone and then perform another transfer/restore using SMS Backup & Restore.

You can use the “Delete messages or phone calls” feature (Menu > Tools) in SMS Backup & Restore to easily delete all messages.

Instructions to temporarily fix this problem are here.

Although the app has an option to delete all the messages or call logs on the phone, the only time it does so is when someone presses that button and then also confirms in the dialog to delete.

If you have not done this, then the deletion of messages or call logs is not because of this app. This is also a known problem with some Android phones.

The app has the option to automatically create backups on a schedule. To create the schedule, it needs to check and apply the settings each time the phone restarts.

This is standard for Android phones; the app will not slow your phone down by constantly running in the background.