How to transfer applications from one Android to another | Articles | Phones

Buy­ing a new phone comes with the has­sle of trans­fer­ring data from an old device. To pre­vent this oper­a­tion from tak­ing a whole day, you need to use one of the meth­ods described below. Each one helps auto­mate the process of trans­fer­ring Android app data to a new smart­phone. Even if you have nev­er done any­thing like this and have no idea how to do it, with the help of our instruc­tions you will quick­ly fig­ure every­thing out and be able to trans­fer data to anoth­er phone your­self.

Each user has their own favorite appli­ca­tions installed on the phone. Source: ft.com

App Library on Google Play

This is not the best way to help trans­fer data from an old Android to a new one, but it is often used. The main dis­ad­van­tage of this method is that each appli­ca­tion is installed indi­vid­u­al­ly in order of pri­or­i­ty. With a large num­ber of installed pro­grams, this takes a long time. The method can be used when you need to quick­ly trans­fer sev­er­al appli­ca­tions to a new device with­out using addi­tion­al soft­ware for this.

In fact, not all data is trans­ferred, but sim­ply the instal­la­tion of pre­vi­ous­ly used pro­grams on a new smart­phone. Built into any Android sys­tem, the Google Play ser­vice allows you to view a list of all appli­ca­tions that have ever been down­loaded from the cur­rent account. This is a kind of per­son­al library with soft­ware.

To see the list of installed appli­ca­tions, you need to open Google Play and log in to it, if you have not already done so. Next, you should tap on the avatar in the upper right cor­ner, call­ing the drop-down menu. There is an item “Man­age appli­ca­tions and devices”. You need to click on it and do the fol­low­ing:

• Go to the “Man­age­ment” tab.
• Click on the “Installed” but­ton and select anoth­er item in the drop-down menu — “Not installed”.
• A list of all pre­vi­ous­ly used pro­grams will open.
• To trans­fer this data from your phone to your Android phone, you need to check the box­es next to the appli­ca­tions and click on the down­load but­ton on top.
• The down­load of files will begin, after which the pro­grams will auto­mat­i­cal­ly begin to install.

All nec­es­sary appli­ca­tions should be ticked and click on the but­ton on top to install them.

Sim­i­lar­ly, you can trans­fer not only pro­grams, but also games.

File Manager ES File Explorer

It is one of the most pop­u­lar file man­agers on Google Play that you can install on your smart­phone or tablet. The appli­ca­tion has many use­ful fea­tures and tools, includ­ing trans­fer­ring pro­grams and games to oth­er Android gad­gets.

You can down­load this soft­ware on Google Play, where it is eas­i­er to find it under oth­er names — ES File Man­ag­er or File Explor­er. After installing the appli­ca­tion on both devices, you need to turn on Blue­tooth on them. Next, ES Explor­er is launched and the fol­low­ing actions are per­formed:

• Select the APPs tool from the menu.
• Find and tick the apps and games that you want to trans­fer to anoth­er smart­phone.
• Select the “Send” func­tion on the bot­tom con­trol pan­el.
• A small menu will appear with file trans­fer options. Blue­tooth must be select­ed.
• The device selec­tion win­dow for trans­fer­ring apps from phone to Android phone will open. You need to find the desired gad­get in the list.
• On the sec­ond device, it remains to con­firm the accep­tance of the file with the “Accept” but­ton.
• When the trans­fer is com­plet­ed, it remains to go to the fold­er with the saved APK file and run it.

After click­ing on the “Search” but­ton, all devices avail­able for data trans­fer will be dis­played.

A typ­i­cal mes­sage will appear on the dis­play prompt­ing you to install the pro­gram on your smart­phone. You must con­firm the pro­ce­dure by click­ing on the “Install” but­ton. Sim­i­lar­ly, you can install all oth­er appli­ca­tions and games that were trans­ferred using ES File Explor­er.

Google backup

With a Gmail account, you can use the back­up func­tion of appli­ca­tions and games to Google Dri­ve. It is only nec­es­sary to acti­vate the cor­re­spond­ing option on the old phone:

• Open the set­tings menu on your smart­phone.
• Go to the Google sec­tion.
• Find in the item “Back­up” and tap on it.
• Acti­vate the func­tion “Upload to Google Dri­ve” or “Auto-down­load from Google One” (this depends on the ver­sion of Android).
• Click on “Start copy­ing”.

The saved back­up can be restored on any smart­phone.

When the oper­a­tion is com­plet­ed, you need to pick up a new smart­phone and turn it on. A prompt to restore data will appear on the screen. If the phone is not new, you need to do a full reset to the fac­to­ry set­tings on it, and then the nec­es­sary menu will appear when you turn it on.

In it, you must click on the “Start” but­ton to start the pro­ce­dure. There will be three options for fur­ther action. You must select the sec­ond one — “Copy from cloud stor­age”. The sys­tem will ask you to enter your Google account infor­ma­tion, after which one or more back­ups will appear on the screen, from which you will have to select the one you need.

APK Extractor

This func­tion­al appli­ca­tion helps you quick­ly trans­fer data from one Android to anoth­er. Works sim­i­lar to the ES Explor­er pro­gram described above. The pro­ce­dure is sim­ple and intu­itive:

• First you need to down­load and install the APK Extrac­tor appli­ca­tion from Google Play.
• Blue­tooth must be enabled on both phones to trans­fer data.
• After start­ing the pro­gram in the list of files, you need to find the appli­ca­tion that you want to trans­fer.
• A menu will open in which you need to select the “Sub­mit” item.
• A list of file trans­fer options will appear, in which there is Blue­tooth — you need to tap on it.
• All avail­able devices will appear on the screen. Among them, there should be a sec­ond phone, if you did not for­get to acti­vate Blue­tooth on it.

After select­ing Blue­tooth, a win­dow for search­ing for avail­able devices opens, in which you need to select the desired smart­phone.

The uploaded file will appear in a sep­a­rate fold­er. By default, a direc­to­ry called Blue­tooth is cre­at­ed in the smart­phone’s mem­o­ry. It should con­tain the trans­ferred APK. It must be launched by ini­ti­at­ing the instal­la­tion of the pro­gram.

Which way to choose?

In fact, all the meth­ods described above for trans­fer­ring appli­ca­tions to Android 11 are sim­i­lar to each oth­er. There are oth­er appli­ca­tions, but func­tion­al­ly they are almost the same.

If there are few pro­grams on your smart­phone, APK Extrac­tor or even a library from Google Play will do. Users who have a lot of apps or games are bet­ter off with Google Back­up or ES File Explor­er app. With their help, you can move pro­grams not one by one, but all at once.