Back up or restore data on your Pixel phone

You can back up content, data and settings from your phone to your Google Account. You can restore your backed-up information to your new phone. Your photos, videos and contacts are synced to their respective services and are separate to device backups.

Important: Some of these steps work only on Android 9 and up. Learn how to check your Android version.

Check the last backup date from a browser

You can check when and how many backups you have from Google Drive.

Go to Google Drive.
On the left, click Storage.
Click Backups next to the icon.
You'll find a list of backups from devices and when it was last modified.

Automatically back up your phone

Turn automatic backup on or off

Important: To help protect your backed-up data, use a PIN, pattern or password screen lock instead of a swipe or Smart Lock.

You can set up your device to automatically back up your files.

Open your device's Settings app.
Select Google Backup.
Tips:
- If this is your first time, turn on Backup your device with Google One and follow the on-screen instructions.
- Select the data that you want to back up: Photos and videos, Device data or both.

Tap Back up now.

Your Google One backup can take up to 24 hours. When your data is saved, 'On' will be displayed below the data types that you selected.

Switch backup accounts

Open your device's Settings app.
Tap System Backup.
Tap Account storage.
Tap the Google Account that you want to use for backups. If the account that you want to use isn't there, tap Add account.

What backs up automatically

Your backups are uploaded to Google and encrypted using your Google Account password. For some data, your device's screen lock PIN, pattern or password is also used for encryption.

Tips:

To find out how long your phone backs up unlimited photos and videos at full original quality, see the tech specs or learn about upload sizes.

Not all apps back up automatically. To find out about an app, learn how to contact its developer.

Your device does not back up photos that are saved in locked folders.

Erase after backing up

After you back up, you can reset your device by erasing everything on it. Learn how to reset your device to factory settings.

Get your data onto a new phone

Restore backed-up data and device settings

Important: To restore a backup from a higher Android version onto a device with a lower Android version may be unavailable or can result in missing transfer data. Ensure that your device has the latest version of Android before you restore data. Learn when you'll get software updates on Google Pixel phones.

To get your data onto a new device

You can:

Restore your data from a device backup saved in the cloud. You can restore your data either by:
- Factory reset
- Open your device's Settings app, then select Copy data (if you restore from the same device previously used for data transfer)
Sync cloud data, such as photos, videos and messages.
- To sync cloud data, sign in to your Google Account and follow the on-screen instructions.

To add another account to a set-up device

Open your device's Settings app.
Tap Google.
Tap your account email address Add another account.
Follow the on-screen steps.

To restore an account from a previous device to a reset device

Your photos and videos are already available in Google Photos. You can restore your backed up data when you set up your new device for the first time or after you set up your device.

At setup, to restore your data, follow the on-screen steps.
To restore your data after setup:
1. Open your device's Settings app.
2. Tap Back up or copy data Copy data.
3. Select the data that you want to transfer over. Learn how to transfer data from a cloud backup.

The process can take up to 24 hours.

Restore backed-up contacts

If you've saved your Google Contacts to your Google Account, they'll sync automatically. If you have other contacts on a phone or SIM card, learn how to manually restore contacts.

Check which photos, data, and settings you backed up

You can check what data and which apps are included in your backup.

Open your device's Settings app.
Tap Google Backup.
Under 'Backup details', review what data is backed up on your device.