Google announced some notable changes to Android backups in July. Besides Android backups now counting against your Google account’s storage limit, the company also announced a new auto-backup feature for local documents on your Android phone. The latter is now widely rolling out with the latest Google Play Services update.
While Google offers cloud backups for Android devices, it is limited to photos, videos, contacts, and messages. It does not include files stored locally on your phone. That meant PDFs, downloaded documents, and other important files could be lost if your device was damaged, lost, or reset.
This was a glaring omission, and Google finally fixed it by announcing a new auto-backup feature for locally stored documents on your Android phone. In typical Google fashion, though, the feature was not showing up for everyone. That’s changing now, as the feature appears to be widely rolling out now (via 9to5Google).
The files are backed up to Google Drive under a new Android backups directory. Inside it, you’ll find a subdirectory named after your device, containing a Download folder with your locally stored documents and other downloaded files.
Google says the backup will include .DOC, .PPT, .XLS, .PDF, and all other file types and documents saved on your device. All data is encrypted, so you don’t have to worry about privacy and security. However, unlike Google Drive backups, any changes you make to a backed-up document on your phone won’t sync to Google Drive or vice versa.
Also, if you ever turn off the feature, your backed-up data will not be deleted from Google Drive.
A useful feature with one frustrating limitation
Document backups will happen nightly, though you can trigger a manual backup if needed. Do note that document backups will also count against your Google account’s storage quota.
The problem with Google’s implementation is that it will back up all locally saved documents on your Android phone. There is no way to point it to back up only a selected folder or exclude certain files.
You can check if the Documents backup feature is available on your Android device from Settings > Accounts and backup > Google backup. If you see a Documents option, make sure to enable it. You can also tap the Back up now button to immediately start the backup process.
