Auto backup for apps

A quote from the Android Developers site:

Since Android 6.0 (API 23), Android has offered the Auto Backup for Apps feature as a way for developers to quickly add backup functionality to their apps. Auto Backup preserves app data by uploading it to the user’s Google Drive account. The amount of data is limited to 25MB per user of your app and there is no charge for storing backup data.

Besides the Auto Backup feature, there's also a backup feature introduced in Android 2.2 (API 8). The previous backup feature allows the system to backup app's local storage too, but not directly into the cloud. Both features are declared by android:allowBackup flag of the application tag from the AndroidManifest.xml file.

We recommend disabling the auto backup feature because all Android SDK and application data could be backed up to Google Drive, which is a security issue. All sensitive data produced by the Android SDK is encrypted but still for a better protection that data should stay only locally on the device.

To disable automatic backup of your applications update your AndroidManifest.xml file:

<application
    android:allowBackup="false"
    tools:replace="android:allowBackup">