Hello all,
Currently I am debating whether or not to switch to a (preferably private/secure) custom rom on my device, however said device had been in use for a while now.
My question is the following: For those who have been in this situation, how have you dealt with the existing data on the device in terms of migration? After all, switching ROM usually involves a factory reset. Creating backups of everything is a bit tedious and timeconsuming and there is always the possibility of forgetting something.
As much as the whole “no local data, everything in the cloud” frustrates me, there is a logic to it: if everything is server-based, losing/destroying a phone isn’t a problem. (Well, thats the logic we can use, Google’s logic is “we want your data”).
For me then, the answer becomes build more self-hosting, then getting a new phone is simply reinstalling my self-host clients and logging in.
So my short-term solution is to sync everything to home with Syncthing, using apps local backup if it supports it (some apps will backup/export to a folder on the phone), or just ensuring important data is in folders that get sync’d.
Long term is to switch to self-hosted apps as much as possible.