IssueTracker

Yeah it randomly stops without a way to restart.  I get partially restored apps notification

This is quite easy to reproduce with 4G devices and also happens with 3G devices.
Here is what we see.

Purchase phone1. Put SIM in it / Or activate it other way.
Start using it as personal phone. Download bunch of APPs from markets. Set personal wallpapers.
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Now purchase brand new phone2. Same company/same model. doesn't really mater.
Put your working SIM from phone1 to Phone2.

Login using same google account.

Wait for few hours / days. If you are lucky, APPs that you dwonloaded may restore. But most of the time they are not. Alsow wallpaper never restores.

I tried this in DroidX2, Droid3, HTC Thunderbolt, Samsung Charge. Every where, its getting reproduced.

Based on log analysis, we found following:

when the restore function attempts to restore applications via the GMS vending app (market), there is an uncaught exception and it crashes (hence no apps restored).

Not sure what google is doing about this.

As I understand the backup mechanism is not triggered instantaneously. So a backup can happen anytime between 0-8 hrs according to my experience. The reason why you see the restore happening sometimes is because of this behaviour.

Same here, only "partial restore", it seems not to work properly

When my MyTouch 4G bricked during the 2.3 firmware update, I was sent a new phone. When I put my SIM card into the new phone and logged into my Google account, all of my apps were restored without any problem.  

Now my SIM card is damaged (it's old) and I was told by T-Mobile that I would have to get a new SIM card.  I inserted the new SIM card into my phone and activated it but kept getting the "There was a network error while trying to sign in to "Username". Retry now or press the Back button to cancel." message and T-Mobile support told me that "Due to the sim card being changed has caused a proem with your login because the old sim card is not recognized."

I was advised to do a factory reset of my phone at this point, which I did after backing up my contacts. At this point, none of the apps were restored at all and I received no notification about any of them being restored.

Same issue on Droid 2.  Very frustrating if you're depending on it to back everything up. We have to perform resets on a regular basis for troubleshooting, and we can't depend on google backup or backup assistant to keep settings/apps correct.  Since we can't depend on it, it is not a viable backup solution.  
Please either fix this bug, or display that it is beta.  

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I just wiped my phone (running 4.0.3) (including erasing the SD card) and re-initialized it; it's happily downloading an awful lot of my previously-installed apps.  (It failed to restore any of my Amazon apps, though.  Some of them were probably installed via Amazon's app store.)

The one app that I ran (linkedin) didn't autofill my username or password.

I wiped my phone due to an upgrade 2.3.4 for LG G2X Tmobile. After restart, no apps downloaded, then I accepted google play agreement and apps started dl'd. well after 4 out of 180 completed, it just stopped as if completed. overnight no more apps installed. I checked google play app again and low and behold a new version of google play has interceded the dl process and I had to agree to new terms of the new upgraded play store. after that, no apps downloaded either.

I believe that google play store upgrade is screwing up the google app restore process.
big bummer! I wish there was a way to stop the upgrade and allow the apps to restore or reset the flag manually for restore from a google website.
please get this fixed!!! and email me if there is a solution gregorythensley@gmail.com

I wiped my tablet running ICS 4.0.3, and nothing restored despite the correct backup/restore options.

galaxy nexus with any version, same problem, nothing restores

Completely agree with this defect as reported. The backup restore process is unreliable and fails since I have multiple Android devices.

The intended behavior in no way resembles the actual behavior, and due to complexity issues with multiple devices/SIM cards, etc, there is almost no way of doing this completely "automagically".

Why not change the intended behavior to be automatic in most cases when it's possible, but with optionally more control from the user if needed. (i.e. use the Google Play website, which already lists devices, and installed apps, etc) It has all of the info necessary to implement a very controllable backup/restore solution. It should list last few device "snapshots" with the ability manually initiate a backup or restore. Also maybe have a list of favorite apps so you can one-click restore them to any device. Including options to individually restore app data as needed would be very useful too.
An implementation like this would be a very useful feature, unlike the current implementation. As it is, I have to use third party solutions such as Titanium Backup and that is a real pain. Please fix!

Here's what I did that worked. I factory reset the device (again), and then at the very first screen (where you choose the language), I turn it off. I put in a difference sim card, turn it on and then proceed with the normal setup. This worked for my Nexus 4. Good luck!

Can't believe this problem still exists. I see it being even worse now... my nexus 5 didn't restore anything. No apps, no wifi passwords. I have all the settings enabled for "restore from google account"

It's insane. Say what you will about Apple, they don't have these issues.  

@15 this issue is untouched because this website is for developer issues with the AOSP Android source code and the developer toolset, not Google services such as Google Account Login and Backup or Restore settings. It's a closed source service that this website has no visibility of. No-one at Google who has the power to fix this will be reading this website, I'm afraid. Unfortunately Google doesn't seem to have an appropriate website to report issues with their specific apps and services. Sorry.

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I also get this on Samsung galaxy s4 running android 4.4.2. Apps / desktop wallpaper & layout are ok. Passwords do not restore even when I manually add one of them to trigger downloads.

Reset device
Add password to local wifi
Login to Google account
Wait for downloads to complete
 When in range of other passworded wifi that was preciously stored need to wps connect or redo password

For the first time in several devices/resets this happened to me, the difference with previous working scenarios is that my new device has a different SIM card.

Confirmed, same behaviour with 4.4.4 cm11.

A pretty awful bug to go ignored for 4 years...

Just did a factory reset on my Sony Xperia Z3 Compact with android 5.0.2(official, not rooted) and after that I enter my google account = NO automatic restore... :(
I had "Back up my data" and backup account my google account. This sucks... Now I need to go through all apps that I need to download manually and wifi setting etc.

I just did a factory reset on my Nexus 5 (Google's own phone) and prior to this I had backup and & restore turned on. I made sure it was turned on, and I have always had it turned on.

After the factory reset - nothing restored. Not on WiFi network password, not one language setting, or date & time setting, no app settings, absolutely nothing that was stored on the device was restored after the factory reset.

This is a total joke of a feature considering all over the internet I read about issues with this backup and restore. It's a good thing I backed up all my important information using another method.

The same thing, was not able to restore anything, real bad service!

Settings failed to restore for me with a Blu Vivo XL. Have also observed it before with a Motorola Droid 4, a HTC G2, Sony x10 mini

I just did a full restore from the cloud on a Pixel 2 running Android 8.1.0.  It was close to perfect.  I had over 100 apps installed, and they all got restored; my home screen looks right ... I noticed only two discrepancies:
* Google Authenticator had lost its data.  I assume this is by design.
* "Reddit Sync" lost a widget that I'd added to the home screen.

That's it!

Voting +1 for this feature.

Estoy de acuerdo con este comentario, es molesto cuando el diseñador te levanta la mano porque no le convence el contraste de los colores y te es imposible responder con fundamento y suplir los criterios. Sería genial poder personalizar más esta sección.

This has been an issue for 6 years now. Why isn't Google dealing with it? If I'm to use  Custom Tabs, I need to be able to change the toolbar text and color at will.