If you go to somewhere like the Android Marketplace, sorry, I mean Google Play, you will find a huge number of backup and restore solutions for your Android phone. The problem is, most free apps available only support restoring the apps one at a time, or in the case of something like Titanium Backup, you have to pay for it. If you are someone who’s modded their phone and likes to constantly keep up to date with the latest custom ROMs, or you just prefer to reset your phone to default settings every so often, having to wipe your apps and restore each one individually can be rather tedious.
Many Android users like to store their back up apps on their computers instead on their phone memory so you have another copy kept safe just in case. There is a useful little utility around that makes it possible to backup and restore your phone’s APKs in one easy and convenient batch operation. Developed by XDA-Developers member hamsteyr, the APK Batch Installer Tool greatly reduces the hassle of restoring your backed up applications and games to your Android device.
The tool is a standalone executable, so just download and run it to get started. All you need to do is to connect your device to your computer via the USB cable, or if your phone is rooted, you can connect via Wifi by downloading and installing a small app called adbWireless from Google Play, then ticking the ‘ADB Wireless Link‘ box in the main window. USB Debug Mode enabled on your device is also required. APK Batch Installer is really easy to use and most options are pretty self explanatory.
To use the backup option, simply select it, ‘Browse‘ for the folder on your PC to save to and click ‘Next‘. Your APK’s will then be backed up to the PC. With a Rooted device, the ‘Backup data‘ option will attempt to save the settings for the app as well as the app itself meaning you don’t lose your custom setups. A useful feature the program also has, is renaming the APK’s to something legible while backing up. ie; ‘br46.apk‘ would be changed to ‘Web Browesr 4.6.apk‘.
The ‘Batch Install APK’s‘ option is a near reversal of the backup option; Choose the folder where the backups are stored, choose ‘Restore Data‘ if you used it during the backup, click ‘Next‘ and when prompted, select which apps are to be restored.
The last ‘Batch Rename APK‘ function is a real time saver if you already have several APK’s with obscure names like app1.apk, app2.apk etc. Point the program to the folder where they are and wait a few seconds for it to change the names into something you can actually recognise.
Although there seems to be no Windows compatibility list, I have tested it on Vista 32bit and Windows 7 64bit with no problems. It is being constantly updated so be sure to check the forum thread often for fixes and new features.
Go to the bottom of the first thread for download links.
Download links and forum Thread
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