Android tutorials for automated backup of database files and images to Google Drive

Other Questions Google drive
1

I’m building a messaging app where users can send texts and share pictures. The app saves message data and image filenames in a local database, but the actual photos are kept on the phone storage.

Since I don’t store anything on my own servers, users lose all their chat history when they get a new phone. I want to add a backup feature similar to what WhatsApp offers. They let users automatically save their chats and media to Google Drive and restore everything later.

I’m completely new to using Google Drive APIs in Android development. I’ve found some posts about backing up databases to Google Drive, but they only show small code snippets. As a beginner, I need more complete examples to understand the whole process.

Can anyone point me to complete tutorials, sample projects on GitHub, or step-by-step guides that show how to:

  • Upload database files to Google Drive programmatically
  • Backup image files along with the database
  • Handle the authentication and permissions properly

Also, I noticed that WhatsApp appears as a connected app in Google Drive settings. Can regular developers like me get the same level of integration, or is this something special that only big companies can do?

2

yup, WhatsApp’s just using the API like us devs can too. the google drive android quickstart is a good start for auth stuff. just google “android sqlite backup google drive” for examples on GitHub, found some great repos when i was doin a similar project!

3

Authentication’s easier than it looks once you figure it out. I built this for a personal project 6 months ago - biggest pain was managing backup frequency without blowing through API quotas. For database backups, export your SQLite to a file first with SQLiteOpenHelper.getReadableDatabase(), copy it to internal storage, then upload. Don’t stream the database directly to Drive - I spent way too much time fixing corrupted files. WhatsApp uses the standard Drive API with app-specific folders. They request drive.file scope instead of full Drive access, which users actually trust. Your app gets its own isolated Drive space this way. Watch out for Google Drive’s upload size limits per request - chunk your image uploads if they’re over a few MB. And definitely add retry logic because mobile connections drop all the time during uploads.