Bad Piggies Ultimate Backup Tutorial for all Platforms

Are you worried about losing all of your hard work in Bad Piggies? Scared those sneaky pigs may sneak up behind you and eat your progress? Or are you just looking for a little extra security in your gaming life? The goal of this guide is to help you in the event something goes horribly wrong. In some cases, these backup methods can ALSO be used to transfer your progress to another device. This way you don’t have to start from scratch. That said, as of now transferring progress only really works when the devices are the same (e.g. iOS to iOS, for example).

Universal Precaution: Do not remove (cut) any files! Here and throughout, we always say “copy”, which is what you should be doing: select the files desired and copy/paste them to your desired backup location.

We don’t know the process for absolutely every device, but we will gladly add information if you have it! Leave a comment below.

Want “Angry Birds” instead? We have a separate, complete post for our feathered friends.

Table of Contents

  1. iPad, iPhone, and iPod Touch
  2. Windows PC
  3. Mac
  4. Android

iPad, iPhone, and iPod Touch

Using the backup/restore feature in iTunes is a fantastic way to keep your device safe in the event of something going wrong, such as water damage or a stolen device. However, it’s certainly not perfect, and when it comes to backing up your gaming progress, restoring your entire device from a backup a few months old may not do much good. Nonetheless, we encourage you to create an iTunes backup before updating any app.

If you want to be more precise, you can manually backup all of your Bad Piggies data manually. Let us start with a few precautions for this method. Foremost, make sure you create an iTunes backup before accessing data files on an iOS device. Also, you should backup your data files before overwriting anything. With these words of wisdom — something all programmers live by — let us proceed.

Download one of the programs listed in our iOS-specific transfer guide. We personally recommend DiskAid, as it’s much more user-friendly than iExplorer. If you do choose to use DiskAid, take note of the additional details in Step 2. Once you are ready to rock n’ roll, you should copy the following files onto a new folder on your computer. These files are located in Apps > Bad Piggies > Documents:

  • Achievements.xml
  • Settings.xml
  • Progress.dat
  • contraptions (the folder and all of its contents)

Lastly, you can transfer from the “Standard Definition” to “High Definition” and vice-versa; however, you must purchase the apps separately. If you would like more info, refer to these to links for our complete iOS backup/restore and transfer guides.

Windows PC

The following are directions on how to backup the Bad Piggies app from download.angrybirds.com. Again, you’ll want to copy the following files: Settings.xml, Progress.dat, and the entire “contraptions” folder. The more important question is “where” are these files? The filepath may differ a little based on your version of Windows, but the typical paths are:

Windows XP = C:\Documents and Settings\Owner\Local Settings\Application Data\Rovio\Bad Piggies
Windows Vista or 7 = C:\Users\{username}\AppData\LocalLow\Rovio\Bad Piggies

Some of these folders may be hidden, so typing manually into the address bar should help when necessary. Alternatively, you can change your folders settings so that hidden files and folders become visible.

Once you’ve accessed the correct directory copy the contents to another folder. This will act as your backup. If you want to be extra safe you can also copy the files to an external drive or use a service like Dropbox.

Disclaimer: The data files for iOS and PC are indeed different than Windows. If you try to transfer files from iOS to PC or vice-versa, things will likely not work correctly. The most obvious reason is that iOS keeps track of things like achievements and in-app purchases, while PC keeps track of whether you have activated the full version or not. These concepts are not inter-compatible.

Mac

For some reason, the path to find Rovio data files on a Mac has always been a huge battle. They are buried so deep, you are finding the remains of fallen piggies next to the data! As with the other platforms, the files of interest are Settings.xml, Progress.dat, and the entire “contraptions” folder. Depending on your version of OS X, the files should be located in the following paths:

  • On Mac OS X 10.6.6 (Snow Leopard): ~/Library/Caches/com.rovio.mac.badpiggies/
  • On Mac OS X 10.7 (Lion) and 10.8 (Mountain Lion): ~/Library/Containers/com.rovio.mac.badpiggies/Data/Library/Caches/com.rovio.mac.badpiggies/

Mac and iOS: You should be able to transfer data between Apple systems without much difficulty. The Mac data files and iOS data files are compatible with each other. If this interests you, the iOS transfer guide has a video at the end regarding Mac, though again the filepath may be a bit different and you should include all noted files in your process. There may be some side-effects with some iOS-exclusive things, such as achievements and in-app purchases, but these are rather minimal.

Android

Some important disclaimers: The following process was written by a user named “Key” on the day of release. Furthermore, every Android device is different, and access to the file system typically requires a rooted device. If you don’t want to root your device, it’s only a matter of time before some “Bad Piggies Backup” apps start appearing on Google Play, but it should be noted that these apps will not be Rovio-official, so use your own discretion about employing them. From here onward, it is paraphrased from @Key.

Great news for Android users: Your save is now on the SD card and is interchangeable between the SD and HD versions.
Files are located at sdcard/Android/data/com.rovio.BadPiggies or com.rovio.BadPiggiesHD

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Category: Bad Piggies News & Updates, Guides, News

Comments (39)

By Key

On Android you don’t need to be rooted and the location of the files are the same on all devices.

To back it up connect the device to a pc and copy the com.rovio.BadPiggies or com.rovio.BadPiggiesHD folders.

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By Angryguy (@angryperson)

is it OK if you use Iexplorer to backup badpiggies?

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By AMslimfordy (@amslimfordy)

Sure, though I think it’s far less user-friendly.

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By Angryguy (@angryperson)

what do you mean by ‘user friendly’?

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By stink_boy11 (@)

It can’t give people that much of a hard time practically.

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By AMslimfordy (@amslimfordy)

iExplorer tends to kick users out after entering a couple directories, and it can get a bit frustrating. DiskAid is far more stable, I think.

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By lostgreybird (@lostgreybird)

Just get DiskAid its free and wicked easy to use, very polished

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By Abhijit (@abhijit)

is iExplorer an app of ios?
is it anything related to IE of windows?

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By sal9 (@sal9)

No, it’s for mac and pc.

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By alfredhartojo (@alfredhartojo)

What must we copy on the android?just progress.dat right?

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By AMslimfordy (@amslimfordy)

I believe the same files as listed in every other platform.

By Key

You need progress.dat,Contraptions folder and settings.xml file.Easy just to copy the com.rovio.BadPiggies folder.

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By alfablac (@alfablac)

I dunno how my Nexus is saving Bad Piggies because i dont have any of this files… just a server_cfg something and a flurryagent in files folder… Nothing more.. O.o

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By alfablac (@alfablac)

Just found using Titanium Backup.. It seems Root Explorer is not showing, but, at least for me, this files are hidden and located in data/data in a hidden folder “.external.com.rovio.BadPiggies” with a files folder and the other files..

By Key

The files are not stored in data/data like angry birds.They are stored in your internal memory or sdcard at Android/data.

Titanium Backup also backs up extra data on internal memory or sdcard as external.com.rovio.BadPiggies.

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By wrw01 (@wrw01)

Hi AMslimfordy,
I use Disk Aid but instead of doing copy and paste/move I use the command on the bar above that says “Copy to Computer” and just copy the entire “Documents” file to the backup file on my desktop.

Do you have any hesitation, advice, comments, etc., about using those commands on the Disk Aid screen?

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By AMslimfordy (@amslimfordy)

I have no hesitation about those buttons. They should work fine.

By gouk 105

If any one who has a nook bad pigges is now
Avliable

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By AMslimfordy (@amslimfordy)

The main post says this already, and is not relevant here.

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By very angry bird (@very-angry-bird)

why symbia isn’t here ?

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By AMslimfordy (@amslimfordy)

Because Bad Piggies isn’t available for Symbian, so there’s no reason to list it.

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By Hidayat1999 (@hidayat1999)

Thanks! Now I could install Bad Piggies on another computer without having to start over playing from the beginning.

By C H

the save location for Windows XP for bad piggies is in C:\Documents and Settings\Owner\Local Settings\Application Data\Rovio\Bad Piggies

for anyone that is looking for it

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By sal9 (@sal9)

Thanks for the tip, we will update the main article.

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By AMslimfordy (@amslimfordy)

Thanks! Updated.

By Indie_Guy

I wish Rovio would do what Ubisoft did with data and the new Rayman game. Rayman saves data across all of your devices. So when I play on my ipad, i open the game on my iphone and i have all the date there. It’s a really cool feature that angry birds needs. It saves the hassle of using diskaid.

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By AMslimfordy (@amslimfordy)

Yes, and this is something that Rovio has been working on for a very long time. However, the difference between Rayman and Angry Birds is that Angry Birds wants to sync across all platforms: iPhone, iPad, Android, PC, Mac, Nokia/Symbian, Nook, Kindle, …

By Indie_Guy

Oops, forgot that it had to integrate other platforms also. Well, I say start with iOS and move to Android, pc, Mac, etc.

By Liam

Rovio in their infinite(or finite) wisdom decided to put the Bad Piggies data storage in a completely different place than they use for the Angry Birds data location.
Bad Piggies:
C:\Documents and Settings\USER\Local Settings\Application Data\Rovio\

Angry Birds:
C:\Documents and Settings\USER\Application Data\Rovio

AND To make it even more confusing. They include a Bad
Piggies folder(that includes only one(1)folder(update) and one(1)file (BadPiggies.aiu) in the storage path for Angry Birds.
Kind of lame on their part IMO.

By Liam

Oops my bad. that is for my WinXP PC.

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By AMslimfordy (@amslimfordy)

This is already listed above….

By mari391

Does iFunBox do the job like DiskAid?

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By AMslimfordy (@amslimfordy)

We aren’t aware of this application.

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By cosmo2503 (@cosmo2503)

I never knew this is so easy. After losing my datas with last update and almost torturing replaying and 3staring all levels I wouldn’t risk it ever again. Now I have my backups, thanks for tutorial.

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By cosmo2503 (@cosmo2503)

@amslimfordy I made backup for my Bad Piggies and now I have three progress files, progress.dat, progress.bak and progress.bak2. I don’t know what to do with those .bak files. Should I delete them?

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By AMslimfordy (@amslimfordy)

@Cosmo2503 I don’t have time at the moment to investigate this further, but I wouldn’t delete them. For now, I’d say back them up as well.

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By cosmo2503 (@cosmo2503)

Thanks @amslimfordy. I guess that I made couple backups more then needed. Anyway I guess it wouldn’t hurt to keep them all. I will try how this works with my daughter iPod.

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By Josm (@josm)

By updating my android on my tablet i losed my scores… So what i did was ik copied Settings.xml, Progress.dat, and the entire “contraptions” folder from my pc and replace it on my tablet, and it is working perfect, only thing i lose now are my power-ups which i saved :)

By Suresh Chitkara

Just wanted to point out that backing up the progress in Bad Piggies will not have all the progress. When I tested my phone with the Bad Piggies app and Bad Piggies app HD, it does keep the levels I completed even the number of stars and especially the stars in sandbox levels, however the items added to the sandbox levels are not synced. At least the syncing does keep the Field of Dreams, however I now have a limited number of objects when playing sandbox levels. It’s also worth noting that whenever I switch from normal levels to sandbox levels, they keep unlocking. Hopefully this message gets spread and Rovio would fix this bug.

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