Some Android users have been experiencing backup issues with Google Drive that stops the device from backing up their data.
If that wasn’t concerning enough, it has been happening for over nine months.
If you’re not on top of your backups you may not have even realised this has happened. According to Android Police it has been happening without warning.
The bug has been reported on Reddit as well as Google’s own help forums.
The issue has been impacting a variety of Android 9 and 10 devices, including Samsung, Moto, Huawei, OnePlus and Google. It’s also said to not be linked to specific G Suite accounts, a particular patch or whether a user uses multiple or single accounts.
Fortunately, it isn’t happening to everyone. I tested a Google Pixel 4 this morning and backups were working fine.
The difficulty to pinpoint the problem is possibly why Google is yet to acknowledge the issue. Gizmodo Australia has reached out to the company locally for comment.
You can tell if your device is affected by going in to your system settings and checking the status of your backups. Users having problems are reporting that the ‘back up now’ button is greyed out and unable to be interacted with.
The lack of official commentary on the problem for the better part of a year means that we don’t know when an official fix will be released.
In the meantime, some Android users have found a temporary solution which they also think may be the underlying cause for the bug.
It involves lockscreen security methods such as fingerprint ID, face unlock, patterns and even the humble PIN code. Reportedly disabling these security features and rebooting the phone can fix the issue. Some users have said that they also needed to clear their Google Drive app data to get the backup to work again.
If you go down this path, just be sure to re-enable your phone security afterwards.
Another long-term method was posted to the XDA forum earlier this year, but requires a bit of Android Debug Bridge (adb) messing about.