Automatically backup starred/tagged words to Google Drive

[hanping]

Hanping Chinese Dictionary Pro and Hanping Cantonese Dictionary automatically backup your starred/tagged words to your local device. To enable this, all you need to do is go to the Backup/Restore screen (left Navigation drawer) and specify the Location for new backups. You should not specify a folder under /Android/data because that may be deleted when you uninstall apps. If the local device storage does not appear then tap on the three-dots icon in the top-right and tap Show internal storage.

Let's suppose you choose a new folder hanping-backups at the top level of your device's storage. Your automatic backups will be placed here. However, should you remove this directory/wipe your storage/reset your device/lose your device etc, you will also lose your backups. So you need to, er, backup these backups to a remote location. Hanping periodically prompts you to do this, allowing you to, for example, email a copy of your backup to yourself.

However, there is a better way!

Google Drive provides you with plenty of storage in the cloud. Unfortunately, the Android app does not allow you to specify folders on your device to sync. Luckily, there are apps that unlock that functionality for you. The downside is that you have to grant such apps authorisation to read/modify your Google Drive storage. If you are happy to do that, then here are some instructions for how to do this with FolderSync.

• Install FolderSync on your Android device (it's free), launch it and complete the setup
• In Accounts, add your Google Drive account (might be good to check the Use Chrome custom tab if you are using a device purchased in China) and grant authorisation
• From the left Navigation drawer, select Folderpairs - sync type = To remote folder, and specify the Remote folder and Local folder (for simplicity I use hanping-backups at the top-level of the local device and Google Drive storage. You can create these folders within the app
• For Scheduling, select something appropriate for your uses, for example Daily
• For If conflicting modifications, select Use local file
• Have a look at the other options and check any that are appropriate (for example whether to sync on wifi only)
• Tap Save and then Sync to check

And that should be it!

If you need to restore from a backup that has been synced to Google Drive, simply launch the Google Drive app, navigate to your hanping backups folder, tap on the latest backup and select Hanping app from the app chooser. This will overwrite any starred/tagged words you currently have.

More information on how to configure FolderSync can be found here.