How to manually backup your SMS/MMS on Android?

If you are going to change a phone or upgrade your system, it is vital to back up your data. One of the places where we store important data is our SMS/MMS, whether it is sentimental value or practical value, it is useful to back them up.

However, unlike photos, videos or audio files which can be transferred and backed up relatively easily, backing up SMS/MMS messages is more complicated and usually requires the use of a third-party app or service.

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Why do you need manual backup?

Although there are many different apps that can help you back up SMS/MMS, you may consider backing them up yourself for the following reasons:

1. The app may not work on all devices and Android versions.
2. The app may upload your backup data to the cloud, which may compromise the security of your content.
3. By manually backing up, you can fully understand where your data goes and where it goes, reducing the risk of spyware snooping during the backup process.
4. Manual backup is more time-saving, labor-saving and direct than other methods.

How to manually back up SMS/MMS?

To manually back up your SMS/MMS messages, you need to install an Android tool called adb on your computer.

Now, it's important to know that Android usually stores SMS/MMS messages in a database called mmssms.db.

Because the location of this database may be different on different devices, and other SMS apps will create their own databases, such as GO SMS will create the gommssms.db database, so the first thing you need to do is search for these databases.

Open a command line tool (I used Linux Terminal, you can also use Windows CMD or PowerShell) and run the following command:

NOTE: Below is a series of commands to accomplish this task, followed by an explanation of what each command does.

 adb root
 adb shell
 find / - name   "*mmssms*"  
 exit
 adb pull /PATH/ TO /mmssms.db /PATH/ TO /DESTINATION/FOLDER

explain

We start by using the adb root command to start adb in root mode - this gives us permission to read system protected files.

adb shell is used to enter the device's shell.

Then, find command is used to search the database. (In my case, I found the database at /data/data/com.android.providers.telephony/databases/mmssms.db)

Suggestion: If your terminal outputs too many irrelevant results, try using find parameters to streamline the results. (You can check the specific parameters on the search engine)

Android SMS/MMS Database

We then use the exit command to exit back to our local system directory.

***, use adb pull to copy the database file to a folder on our computer.

Now, when you want to restore SMS/MMS, whether it is to a new device or a new system version, just search for the specific location of SMS/MMS in the new system again and replace it with our backed up database.

Use adb push to replace it, for example:

 adb push ~/Downloads/mmssms.db /data/data/com.android.providers.telephony/databases/mmssms.db