this post was submitted on 03 Nov 2026
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There's Termux on Android, which you could have 'dotfiles' for. There's individual apps which sometimes have automated backups. And there's applications that don't have backups, or system-level settings. Being clear in your question goes a longer way than being sassy :3
As to your actual question, that's still rather vague, because the easy answer is "backing up your entire phone", and the longer answer is "what are you backing up with regards to Android?" Android's system settings, within the 'Settings' app, is broken out even over the ADB CLI over multiple different commands, so there's no straightforward clear question or answer here.
Your best bet is just picking apps to use that have an 'export' feature, and maybe using Syncthing to sync a folder with a server/computer and export the settings into that folder. I basically do that but with Nextcloud, exporting directly to a 'Backups' folder in my Nextcloud, sometimes with nested subfolders for grouping things. As long as Nextcloud is installed and signed in, it's usually trivial to import them then into those apps.
But again, that's app choice, and per-app. I can export my settings for Material File Manager, but I can't really export them for Tempus, nor, irritatingly, HeliBoard.
If you're rooted you might be able to set up some kind of per-app backup of their individual /data directories with something like Titanium.