Location of Backup file using GadgetBridge?

Hi,

New to the forums, since from today, I am the proud owner of a BangleJs 2. After my Peble Time unfortunately gave up.

I tried looking for the answer, here and other places I could think of. But couldn't find the answer.

I had tried to connect the Bangle to my PC, but wasn't able to find it. I will try again at some point with a different Bluetooth adapter, since I do like to try my hand at making some app/watchface to run on the Bangle.

In any case, the point was to connect it to my phone anyway, to be able to receive notifications.
I was able to connect it via the BangleJs GadgetBridge available via Google Play.

Where first thing I did was create a backup.

Now comes the problem: I am unable to find the location of the backup. And I actually believe that I should've gotten a prompt to download a zip file? Which I didn't get.

Gadgetbridge has all the permissions I can give it. Eventho it doesn't have the Access Files permissions, so it's probably not that.

Scoured the settings of GadgetBridge for anything related to it. And the Device specific settings in GadgetBridge. Also tried looking for permissions and settings in WebView. But nothing I can find that could help me with this.

I am beginning to get the impression I am only able to create backups via a PC connection.
I do hope it can be done on my phone as well tho.
As I do like the idea of being able to Backup first before tinkering and tweaking the watch any further.

Hi!

I think your right in that backups downloaded from the app loader within Gadgetbridge aren't saved anywhere accessible on the phone. It would make sense if they were though!

But your not out of luck. By visiting the app loader from a chromium based browser on your android phone you can download the backup (remember to disconnect from Gadgetbridge first). I just successfully did this with the Brave browser.

Hi :-)
Thanks for the response, much appreciated.

But your not out of luck. By visiting the app loader from a chromium based browser on your android phone you can download the backup (remember to disconnect from Gadgetbridge first). I just successfully did this with the Brave browser.

Indeed. I realized this last night and temporarily reenabled Chrome just for this ;-)

Maybe the app loader can detect it's being loaded in Gadgetbridge and give a warning about this. (This download issue likely also applies to apps that allow downloading of (CSV) files through the app loader).

In my case it wasn't a big deal. But I can imagine someone "making backups" via GadgetBridge and only looking to find it when the actually need it. Then they are in for quite a unfortunate surprise

Yes, i just ran into the same problem recently and if you have some more data on device, the download also takes ages and is kinda flaky when moving around with your phone at the same time. So I did multiple backup attempts which tool ages before I realized that the file isn't saved at the end.

Maybe it's possible for the we view to open downloaded files using an intent? (E.g. https://stackoverflow.com/questions/10069050/download-file-inside-webview)

This download issue likely also applies to apps that allow downloading of (CSV) files through the app loader).

This is solved at least for the recorder app. You can try it out to verify. I'm looking for the commits where it was fixed.

Edit:

• https://codeberg.org/Freeyourgadget/Gadgetbridge/commit/fa59dfe72eeac7f0d5dcd61d1f8aea5d4ade2619
  
• https://github.com/gfwilliams/Gadgetbridge/issues/6
  
• https://codeberg.org/Freeyourgadget/Gadgetbridge/commit/c647c2647f1b14369edaf5d4597f14c369ec0510
  

Hi - I thought this was something we'd solved a while back, but apps in the App Loader didn't used to be able to save files when run from Gadgetbridge. As @Ganblejs mentioned if you disconnect from Gadgetbridge and then connect to banglejs.com/apps with Chrome on your phone then it should all work fine.

But a note on the backups: it's a good idea to do, but if you've just got your Bangle there won't be anything on there that you can't get back to just be doing a Factory Reset, which you can do by holding down the button about 10s until you get to the recovery menu.

... so if you were worried about breaking it and not being able to recover, it's not an issue. There's pretty much nothing you can do by installing apps or developing your own JS code that you can't get out of using the factory reset

Quick update - I just spotted that we specifically call an Android.saveFile function for apps in the app loader now, but weren't from the backup in Gadgetbridge. I'm just working on a fix

Ok, pretty sure I've just fixed it now... If the app loader page has reloaded hopefully backups will work

Just tried it on the development app loader and it worked. Nice!

Yeah, tried it as well in the dev version and it works like a charm, thanks for the quick fix, @Gordon!

That's awesome!

Also very good to know I am unable to brick the watch or at least unbrick it via Factory Reset