Angry Birds Ultimate Backup Tutorial for all Platforms

As with any computer program, updating any of the Angry Birds apps has some inherent risks. No matter what platform your own — iOS, Android, Intellivision — when you update an app a lot goes on behind the scenes. 99% of the time, everything works as desired, but sometimes things don’t. 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.

Table of Contents

1. iPad, iPhone, and iPod Touch
2. Windows PC
3. Mac
4. Android
5. Symbian
6. Chrome and other Web Apps

iPad, iPhone, and iPod Touch

In a perfect world, an iTunes backup and restore would work 100% of the time. And truth be told, it is as effective as any other update, which is very good! But the downside of using an iTunes restore is that it reverts your entire device, which may be more than desired. Nonetheless, we encourage you to create an iTunes backup before updating any app. If you’re interested in this process, we have a nice tutorial to help you out.

If you would like a bit more control, you can manually backup all of your Angry Birds data on your own. 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 — we have a full guide on how to manually backup and transfer iOS data.

To finish, I highlight a few things about this process. Regardless of which version of Angry Birds your backing up, you’re interested in the .lua files, specifically the ones located in the \Documents folder. We encourage you to copy:

• highscores.lua
• settings.lua
• {date}.lua (Angry Birds Seasons only)
• {purchases}.lua (if applicable, such as Space and Star Wars)

Lastly, you can transfer from the “Standard Definition” to “High Definition” and vice-versa; however, you must purchase the apps separately. Again, 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 Angry Birds apps from download.angrybirds.com. Again, you’ll want to copy the following files: highscores.lua, settings.lua, {date}.lua in Angry Birds Seasons, and {purchases}.lua if applicable. The more important question is “where” the heck 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\{username}\Application Data\Rovio\
Windows Vista or 7 = C:\Users\{username}\AppData\Roaming\Rovio\

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

The data files for Mac have moved around in recent updates, so we apologize if things have moved again. As with the previous versions, the files of interest are highscores.lua, settings.lua, {date}.lua in Angry Birds Seasons, and {purchases}.lua if applicable. Depending on your version of OS X, the files should be located in the following paths:

On Mac os 10.6.6, Snow Leopard:

ABo, Rio, Seasons and Space: ~/Library/ApplicationSupport/com.rovio.mac.{app}/

On Mac os 10.7, Lion:

ABo and Rio: ~/Library/ApplicationSupport/com.rovio.mac.{app}/
Seasons and Space: ~/Library/Containers/com.rovio.mac.{app}/Data/Library/ApplicationSupport/ com.rovio.mac.{app}/

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 settings.lua in your process. There may be some side-effects with some iOS-exclusive things, such as achievements and the Mighty Eagle.

Android

Update 28 May, 2013: We have just published a brand new, extremely detailed and comprehensive guide for backing up progress on both rooted and non-rooted Android devices, valid through the Jelly Bean operating system and possibly beyond! The article is a bit lengthy and the process may be a bit challenging depending on your device, but it’s certainly worthwhile if you need to backup or transfer from your Droid. Click here for the guide!

Some important disclaimers: The following process was written in a forum post by a user over a year ago, every Android device is different, and to access the file system typically requires a rooted device. If you don’t want to root your device there are some “Angry Birds Backup” apps in the Android Marketplace. In the aforementioned forum thread there are some names of backup apps you might want to look at. Note, these apps are not Rovio-official, so use your own discretion about employing them. From here onward, it is quoted from @homie.

First you need to install some terminal for your phone. I recommend ConnectBot (just find it in the Android Market and download, it’s free). After launching it select ‘local’ from the dropdown list on the bottom of the screen and type anything you want in the field on the right. After you press OK you will see the dollar sign. I assume you have mounted your SD/microSD card in your phone. Then you will need to type following commands:

cd /data/data/com.rovio.angrybirds/files
cat highscores.lua > /sdcard/ab_hi.lua
cat settings.lua > /sdcard/ab_set.lua

Now you have copy of the Angry Birds save files. If you want to restore saves you need to install Angry Birds, complete at least one level and type in ConnectBot:

cd /data/data/com.rovio.angrybirds/files
cat /sdcard/ab_hi.lua > highscores.lua
cat /sdcard/ab_set.lua > settings.lua

For other apps, make the appropriate changes: .angrybirdsseasons/files and .angrybirdsrio/files; and use perhaps abs_ and abr_. For Space, use .angrybirdsspace.premium/files for the Premium (ad-free) version and .angrybirdsspace.ads/files for the free (ad-supported) version.

Symbian

The following information was provided to us by @PJng.

X:\Private\
20030E51 ABO
20030E52 ABS ({date}.lua files located within as well)
20030E53 ABS FREE
20030E54 ABO FREE
2003B21F ABR
2003B220 ABR FREE

Note: backup_registration.xml is not required, just copy highscore.lua & setting.lua files.

Chrome, Google+ and other HTML5 Mini-Games

There are a lot of variants for these directions, so we initially point you toward our Chrome backup and sync guide. That post is extraordinarily specific and comprehensive for backing up Chrome, broken down both by web browser and by operating system. Fortunately, most of the other web apps — such as “Angry Birds Volcano” and “Pistachios” — store their data in precisely the same way. Follow the applicable filepath as found in the Chrome backup guide. Instead of looking for a file resembling “chrome.angrybirds.com”, look for files resembling the web app you are interested in. For a few examples, here are a few filenames for web apps using the Chrome browser (where # means the numbers may vary a bit):

Volcano = http_fazer##-dot-latest-dot-angrybirds-fazer.appspot.com_#.localstorage
Pistachio = http_angrybirds-pistachios.appspot.com_#.localstorage

Important!

Many of the newest web based versions of Angry Birds actually use Flash, instead of HTML5. These versions don’t store your progress locally — or at least not in a way that is accessible. Rather, your progress is stored in the cloud, so no backup should be necessary.