Hello, I hope this is an okay place to ask this, I saw other threads about Divest OS being discontinued. I am running Divest OS on Fairphone 4 and need to get a backup of some messaging apps in my work profile before I move to Calyx OS. SeedVault only works on my personal profile, so I looked at Neo backup, but it requires root access, and I cannot access the Divest OS downloads anymore to get the boot.img for root access.
At this point I am a little lost, and feel like there must be an easier way to get a full backup. I have seen Open Android Backup, but it doesnât back up app data; I have seen specific apps like MobileTrans and iTransor, but both companies appear to be headquartered in China and I donât trust them with my data.
Does anyone have recommendations for how to easily get a backup of my chats and messaging from my work profile apps on DivestOS?
I agree, but unfortunately many people almost exclusively use messenger/instagram/whatsapp/wechat/line/etc. For my purposes I have tried to limit my exposure while still being able to interact with society at large.
I would prefer not to lose years of messages with friends and family. I know it is possible from what I have outlined above, just very difficult. All the tools are there, and it would be easy if I had a regular OS and were a âtypicalâ user. Hence I am trying to find an easier way to use those tools in my case.
There are no non-root tools to do that, afaik, and you must have root already(root or recovery access to your data/ partition) to be able to access them.
Would a Shizuku enabled file manager be able to access the necessary files?
If you do not have âDelete updates when installedâ checked in your updater preferences, you may have the most recent image on your phone. Since you only need the boot.img, you might be able to use an older version if you have it from when you began using DivestOS. Also ask in XDA or other forums if anyone has a local copy of the one of the images.
Iâve been looking at AXP.OS as a replacement for DivestOS. I was able to update my klte directly from DivestOS to AXPOP-slim and kept all data. Though as @SkewedZeppelin said, relocking the bootloader will wipe it anyway. The AXPOS regular version is prerooted and relockable for supported devices. If you can get Fairphone 4 added, that may be a path forward if you tolerate root access.
Right now I am investigating a few things. First, I am checking based off some (very old) other forums whether it would work to install an older version of the app which allows adb backup. This looks promising, but I havenât had a chance to test it - adb backup appears to be deprecated, and for some apps the âolder versionâ would be over a decade old.
Then I am going to investigate other apps or desktop integrations which claim to be able to backup app data without root access. Further searching has turned up a few programs similar from the aforementioned Chinese ones which claim to be able to do this.
I will check, thanks.
For now I am trying to find a way without root access, since that seems generally more risky, and a bit overkill for what Iâm trying to do. If none of the other options work, I may just bite the bullet and lose my data. (Besides, some apps allow local downloads of your messages - just transcripts, not an actual backup - so I wouldnât be losing everything.)
As an aside thank you for your decade of work on DivestOS and continued interaction with the community @SkewedZeppelin .
Perhaps I was missing something, but it doesnât appear to play nicely with the AOSP Files and my Shelter Work profile. I got FV Files and Shizuku running, but was unable to view emulated/10/Android/data in FV with Shizuku running. However for the LINE messaging app at least, some testing of file renaming in Android/data/jp.naver.line confirmed that the data stored there is not the actual messages, but just recent images, thumbnails, files, etc. so even if I had succeeded in copying that directory I donât think it would have been useful.
Trying to install old versions of the apps which allow adb backup does not work, since many of those old versions are years old.
Someone else online claimed that drag-and-drop across two file explorer windows in splitscreen works to get around Android data controls, but I couldnât get drag-and-drop working on the default AOSP Files app in DivestOS. (and again, Iâm not sure I would have even gotten any useful data.)
The backup app Helium was also recommended, but it is long gone. Sadly many of the recommended solutions and apps rely in some way on the deprecated adb backup.
At this point I think I will just bite the bullet and lose my chats. Signal and WhatsApp allow local backups, and I have chat transcripts in .txt format for others. Not a huge deal in the end, and I am willing to pay this price for having control of my data.
Since SeedVault only works for your personal profile, your best option is using Neo Backupâbut without root, itâs tricky. If you canât get the boot.img to root DivestOS, you might try adb backup (though itâs limited on newer Android versions). Another workaround is checking if your messaging apps have built-in export options (e.g., Signal allows encrypted backups). If your work profile is managed via Shelter, you could try moving apps to your personal profile temporarily. Otherwise, migrating to CalyxOS first and then setting up work apps again might be the cleanest approach.
If you didnât check âDelete updates when installedâ, the most recent DivestOS update can be exported from the Updater. You could then extract the boot.img from it.
