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AppBackup

AppBackup is a program for the iPhone/iPod touch that lets you back up and restore the saved data and settings for your App Store apps.

2008-09-27: Version 1.0.3final is now available! View changes.

Call for translators: If you want to help translate AppBackup into a different language, please contact me. Currently, it supports English, German, and Swedish.

Download AppBackup 1.0.3final

AppBackup is available via BigBoss's repo on Cydia! You can find it under the Utilities section.

Screenshots

Requirements

A jailbroken iPhone or iPod touch running iPhoneOS 2.0 or later, with Cydia
At least one App Store app

Installation

AppBackup is available via BigBoss's repo on Cydia. If you want to install AppBackup manually:

Download AppBackup and save it to your device under /var/root
SSH into your device as root
Run dpkg -i net.scott-wallace.iphone.appbackup_1.0.3final-1_iphoneos-arm.deb

If you're installing AppBackup for the first time (i.e. not upgrading it), you also need to do the following:
If you're on 2.1 or later, run rm ~mobile/Library/Caches/com.apple.mobile.installation.plist
Restart SpringBoard (run killall SpringBoard).

Usage

To back up one app, open AppBackup, select the app, and then select Backup. To restore an app, select it and then select Restore. (If there is no restore option, then it hasn't been backed up yet.)

To back up all apps at once, tap All at the top-left of the screen, and select Backup. To restore all apps that have been backed up at once, tap All and select Restore. (You must have at least one app backed up in order to see this option.)

Backup Location

Backups are stored in /var/mobile/Library/AppBackup/tarballs as files called bundleid.tar.gz, where bundleid is a given app's bundle identifier (e.g. com.ooi.supermonkeyball). These files are regular gzip-compressed tar archives and can be opened with any program capable of viewing them (e.g. 7-zip on Windows). Backup times are stored in an XML property list at /var/mobile/Library/AppBackup/backuptimes.plist as Unix timestamps.

If you want to "backup the backups," you should back up the entire /var/mobile/Library/AppBackup directory tree.

FAQ

Does AppBackup back up data from jailbreak apps (e.g. from Cydia or Installer 4)?
No. This is because jailbreak apps store their data in many different places, while App Store apps save their data in sandboxes that I can easily locate. Also, there are known problems with App Store apps' data being removed during updates, which is the main reason for making this program.
Why does AppBackup take a while to start up?
AppBackup is written in Python, an interpreted language, and the Python interpreter must be loaded at runtime along with the UIKit framework. Other than that, the choice of programming language should have no impact on performance.

Credits/License

AppBackup is released under the GNU General Public License, version 2 or later.

I would like to thank these people:

saurik, for porting Python and PyObjC to iPhoneOS (this whole thing is written in Python!)
Dave Arter, for writing the Python sample code used as the basis for this app
gojohnnyboi, for posting the (Obj-C) source code of his apps so people like me could learn from it
BigBoss, for hosting AppBackup on his repo
Everyone who has sent me bug reports!

Changes

AppBackup 1.0.3final (2008-09-27)

Added German and Swedish translations
Uses date format according to user's locale and preferences
Source is now compiled into optimized Python bytecode to run a little quicker; this may fix some crashing problems people have been having, especially after updating to 2.1.
Changes to UI: All and About buttons moved to bottom; buttons in dialogs are now on separate rows. This is to better support translated strings.
Sorting of apps in the list is now done case-insensitively.

AppBackup 1.0.2 (2008-09-02)

Fixed a problem where if an app's Info.plist file didn't exist, AppBackup would crash by checking to see if it exists (thanks Steven B.)
Fixed a problem where AppBackup would crash if you have a non-directory file in /var/mobile/Applications (thanks Ryan H.)
Changed some strings to stress that this doesn't backup the actual apps, but just their saved data
Added support for localization. If you want to help translate AppBackup into a different language, please contact me.
Other small code changes

AppBackup 1.0.1 (2008-08-19)

Now outputs debugging info to /var/mobile/Library/AppBackup/debug.log
Fixed a problem with BigBoss-provided debs causing it to crash
Changed something that I think might cause a crashing bug if you have lots of AppStore apps
Added thanks to BigBoss for hosting it
Some minor, unnoticeable changes (like changing some comments in the code)

AppBackup 1.0 (2008-08-17)

Initial public release