Moving your streaks to a new phone
"One day if your device breaks or is lost you lose all your stats" is a review you will find under almost every offline habit tracker, and it is a fair worry. Local-only storage is why the app opens instantly and why nothing about your routine sits on someone else's server. It also means the transfer is your job, and it takes about a minute if you do it before you wipe the old phone.
Do not rely on Android auto backup alone
Android can include app data in your Google account backup, but it is opt-in per device, capped in size, skipped for large or excluded files, and it only restores during the initial setup of the new phone. If you have already finished setting up the new device, that path is gone. Treat it as a bonus, not a plan.
The one-minute method
- On the old phone, open the app and export a backup file. It should be a single file you choose the location for.
- Put it somewhere that is not the phone: Drive, a chat with yourself, a cable copy to a computer.
- On the new phone, install the app, open it, and import that file before you start adding habits.
- Open the year grid and check that last month looks the way you remember. That is your verification, not the "import complete" toast.
What silently goes wrong
- Exporting after the reset. Obvious, and it still happens. Export first, wipe second.
- Backups that only live in the app's own folder. Uninstalling deletes that folder. If the export does not let you choose where the file goes, it is not a backup.
- Importing on top of new data. Import replaces what is there in most apps. Do it before you create habits on the new phone, not after.
- Assuming a paid tier moved with you. Not an issue in apps with nothing to unlock, but a common surprise elsewhere.
How often to do it
Once a quarter is enough for a habit tracker, plus once right before any phone change or factory reset. The file is small and plain JSON, so keeping several dated copies costs nothing.
How Habitile handles it
Habitile exports everything — habits, schedules, colours, every check-off — to a single JSON file through Android's file picker, so you choose where it lands. Import reads it back on any device. There is no account, so the file is the only copy that ever leaves your phone, and nothing about the export is behind a paywall.