Data recovery after uninstalling Android app

androiduser

I used Google's migration to shift data from Android 12 phone to Android 10 phone.
Other apps migrated successfully.
Accidentally uninstalled WH on source Android 12 before verifying migration. Icon looks like another app.
Opened WH on Android 10 and no data present.

I have about $500 worth of billable hours that I will not be able to bill if I can't get the records back.

Is there a way to recover the data? If I reinstall WH on the source phone will it pick up the data?

I can't see any WH data under filesystem on new or old phone.

Appreciate any suggestions!

WorkingHours version: 2.9.41 probably
OS + version: Android 12 & 10
Device model: moto g51

timo

By default the data is only stored locally on your device and uninstalling removes that data.
To prevent such unintended loss of data, WorkingHours shows this prompt every 30 days if the Cloud Sync is not enabled:
By default, WorkingHours is storing your data on this device only. To prevent data loss in case of a system crash, accidental uninstallation or device loss, it is recommended to periodically create backups in the app settings or to enable the Cloud Sync.

Sorry for what happened to you, but I am afraid there's no way to get back the data if you have not used the Cloud Sync or backed up the database manually.

androiduser

I would have been using it for less than 30 days in that case, but why would the app not save data in persistent memory? Is it an OS limitation?

I don't mean to be rude but I can't trust this software. Ultimately I should be more careful with backups of important data but this is a nasty gotcha. Back to paper I go.

timo

The database is stored on your device in persistent memory. But uninstalling an app always deletes that apps internal data - this is nothing unique to WorkingHours.

The reason of why the data didn't transfer is likely because I have set the "allowBackup" property of the app to "false". You can read about that property here. The reason I did this is to prevent that the users data (like potentially confidential information of the employer or client the user is working for) is not uploaded to Googles servers. As you can read in the documentation I linked above, setting this property to "false" does no longer prevent migrating the data in a direct data transfer between two devices. Unfortunately, you used an older Android Version in your migration.

I am sorry for the loss of data and that you lost the trust in this app. Please let me know what I could do to restore it and how to prevent such problems in the future.

androiduser

Thanks for your response, however the way both this software and Android are architected data loss is pretty much guaranteed, unfortunately. Android itself has so little respect for user data. Isn't it just mindblowingly bad design that you can remove an app and its data with zero warnings, and one button press?

I don't know if there's much that can really be done to fix this. Anyway I'm just going to use a spreadsheet because the proliferation of proprietary data on proprietary software that doesn't safeguard data is just a recipe for data loss.

timo

There is really not much risk of losing data if you enable the Cloud Sync. WorkingHours automatically uploads a database backup to your Cloud every day. And the database is just a zip-compressed SQLite database, which isn't a proprietary data format