Nelson Minar (@nelson.tech.lgbt.ap.brid.gy)

Android migration Pixel 8 → Pixel 10 Pro I got a new Pixel 10 Pro to replace my Pixel 8. After previous bad experiences migrating from old Pixel phones, how did it go this time? About the same, the only real improvement is that my Verizon eSIM transferred automatically. By far the biggest problem is many Android apps don’t migrate their state or settings. It doesn’t have to be this way, some apps do migrate successfully. I suspect many don’t bother. I used a cable instead of WiFi for the transfer this time. This option isn’t highly promoted but seems to be faster. I’m not sure it changed what data was transferred over though. ### Good things * It migrated my Verizon eSIM first thing. Previously that was something I had to do myself. * It migrated the credit card stored in Google Wallet. I had to enter the CVV to verify it. My Clipper card also migrated. * It initiated the data transfer in the background while my phone was still busy asking me to answer some setup questions. * The transfer mostly went seamlessly. It was a bit of a nuisance answering a bunch of questions but then I could walk away. * _Some_ apps migrated seamlessly. ### Bad things * Many apps don’t copy their settings or data over to the new phone. See below. * I had to reboot to finish the setup, updating OS and enabling a bunch of stuff. * I had to re-enable WiFi Calling. * It’s not copying all my data? I did the custom route and selected everything and it’s only 66 GB. My phone is nearly full at 256GB. Some big chunk of that is the OS, and 100 GB is a copy of Wikipedia. I wish there was a way to know what was missing. * There’s a lot of setup questions, some of which is them trying to trick me into turning on features I’d previously deliberately turned off. Unless there’s some new feature unique to the new phone it should not be asking. Particularly offensive: an attempt to opt me in to marketing spam. * It turned a bunch of ad tracking stuff on without asking me. I’m sure I’d turned it off in my old phone. * It did not restore my custom launcher (Niagara). I had to enable it. * The PWA Phanpy didn’t get restored as an app on my new phone. I had to reinstall it. * All my F-Droid open source apps didn’t come over. Not entirely a surprise, these are sideloaded as far as Android is concerned and I can see why they wouldn’t copy over. Sure is a nuisance though. * Stuff looks different. Different font sizes, different color temperature. * I gave up trying to transfer my Paris Metro tickets. They have some elaborate thing where the ticket is stored _on your phone_. They have a backup plan for transferring tickets but it involves creating another account. This is most definitely a case of the software being bad, not Android’s fault (alone). * I had to manually import my Google Maps Timeline data from an old online backup. This is possible at least but quite confusing, I think because in general the Timeline data is stored so awkwardly. ### App migration The biggest problem is that most apps don’t seem to migrate. Instead of being copied they have to be re-downloaded and re-installed. Then configured again. What this means in practice is I have to manually launch and inspect every single app before I can get rid of the old phone. What’s particularly strange is that _some_ apps do migrate themselves. The Paprika recipe database. Sony’s Playstation app, including my login state. It seems very hit-or-miss. Last time I looked at this I found a note from the Niagara Launcher team saying “We’re currently using Google’s Backup implementation, which is not 100% reliable…” Since then they’ve built a custom backup / restore system which mostly worked but I had to use manually. Other apps are using Google’s official implementation and it did work. Problems in particular: * It didn’t immediately copy the apps over. Instead it is reinstalling them from the Internet. Perhaps Android apps can’t reliably be copied from one device to another? * Apps don’t come with all the permissions I enabled before. I have to re-enable permissions in each app individually, stuff like “access files” in Solid Explorer. Some permissions do carry over, maybe just not the most sensitive ones. * A bunch of apps didn’t restore their settings. Some have custom backup and restore options I can do manually, like Niagara or Weawow. * A bunch of apps didn’t realize that I had paid for the app until I launched it and waited for some handshake to happen. ### Syncthing I used to use Syncthing to synchronize some data from my phone to a Unix folder. It worked but always felt a little creaky. And between Android making it harder and harder to work with the filesystem and the Syncthing project having some drama I decided not to bring it to my new phone. The obvious alternative is Google Drive. But a whole lot of apps don’t support storing data there, like Aegis’ backups. It’s possible to use a third party app like MetaCtrl – Autosync to sync local files to Google Drive but it comes with limitations and it annoyed me to pay $10 for what should be a system feature. In the end I was only using Syncthing for Aegis backups and GPSLogger logs. Aegis already backs up to Google Cloud, so that’s OK. GPSLogger has explicit Google Drive support. ### F-Droid F-Droid is an alternate app store for open source apps. It also lets you run some apps that violate Google policies. On my own phone I had four F-Droid apps: Bubble, GPSLogger, OpenTracks, and WiFi Analyzer. The only one I really care about is GPSLogger. I went ahead and re-installed F-Droid just to install GPSLogger. I may install more F-Droid apps later, some 8 of the Google Play apps I use have F-Droid versions. Amazingly there is _no_ free, ad-free spirit level / bubble level app on the Play store! There are several on F-Droid, including Bubble. I just reinstalled it. It warned me that the developer is not going to comply with Android’s new signed apps policy, so this app may go away next year. Like Loading... ### _Related_ https://nelsonslog.wordpress.com/2025/12/14/android-migration-pixel-8-%e2%86%92-pixel-10-pro/