Cloud backups through your Google account cover most everyday needs, but they don't always preserve everything — sideloaded apps that aren't on the Play Store, specific APK versions you want to keep, or app data for apps that opt out of Android's automatic backup. Archiving the APKs yourself is a reasonable second layer, especially before a factory reset or when moving to a new device.

What you can and can't back up this way

An archive manager can package the installed APK file itself, plus any files you can access in shared storage, such as save-game folders some apps expose deliberately. It cannot reach into an app's private, sandboxed storage without root access, since Android blocks other apps from reading that space by design. For most people, that means this method backs up "which apps you had installed and their APK version," not the private data inside them.

Locating installed APKs

Installed app packages typically live in a system folder your archive app can browse to directly, though the exact path depends on the Android version and manufacturer skin. Some archive apps include a dedicated "Installed apps" or "Backup apps" section that lists everything currently installed and lets you export the APK without hunting through folders manually — check your app's main menu for this before browsing by hand.

Packaging a backup

  1. Open the installed-apps or app-backup section of your archive tool, if it has one, or browse to the APK's storage location.
  2. Select the APKs you want to keep. If you're backing up several at once, select them all before compressing so they end up in a single archive rather than dozens of loose files.
  3. Compress to ZIP or 7Z. There's no advantage to RAR here since you're creating the archive yourself, not receiving one.
  4. Move the resulting archive off the device — to a computer, cloud storage, or an SD card — so it survives a factory reset.
Naming tip: include the app version number and date in the archive's filename (for example, myapp-v3.2-2026-09.zip). Six months later, an unlabeled archive full of similarly named APKs is hard to sort through.

Restoring from a backup

Extract the archive on your new or reset device, then tap each APK file to reinstall it. Android will ask you to confirm installing from an unknown source the first time, since APKs installed outside the Play Store trigger that warning regardless of where they originally came from. Reinstalling this way keeps your app's version exactly as it was, which matters if a newer version on the Play Store has changed something you rely on.

A note on sideloaded apps specifically

If any of the apps you're backing up came from outside the Play Store originally, keep in mind that reinstalling them carries the same trust considerations as the original install did — the archive only preserves the file, it doesn't re-verify it. Prefer restoring apps that are also available on the Play Store from there instead, and reserve manual APK backups for apps that genuinely aren't.

If you hit an error while extracting your own backup later, our error-message guide covers the most common causes.