Did you know that with a little legwork and a free application you can easily transfer your Angry Birds progress across an iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad, or Mac? This is great if you happen to have more than one iOS device (i.e. an iPhone and an iPad) or recently upgraded. This is also a great way to backup your Angry Birds progress in the event something goes awry.
Update: We have created a more-comprehensive guide, including many more platforms and some specific file paths. The iOS directions circle back here, but if you are looking for a different device, check out our Ultimate Backup Tutorial for all Platforms.
Disclaimer: We are not responsible if something goes wrong while performing the steps below.
Step 1: Before We Begin Lets Take Some Precautions
- Be sure you have the same version of Angry Birds installed on both devices (exception, SD and HD versions of the same app are OK).
- Be sure you’re copying the files off your device and not removing them.
- Before you overwrite any .lua file on your device create a backup copy first.
- Sync ALL devices with iTunes first. This way if something happens you can always restore.
Step 2: Install DiskAid
- Direct Link Change! DiskAid has become a product called iMazing. Our personal preference is still for DiskAid in terms of user-interface and cost. The direct link in (1) below has been updated to reflect the change, which can be a little tough to find. Let us know if you have any questions.
- Install DiskAid, which is available for both PC & Mac. While a paid version is available and can do a whole lot of cool stuff, the free version will work perfectly fine for this guide.
- Configure DiskAid. In the Menu Bar, click DiskAid > Preferences > Storage. Enable all three options: “Show all Apps even if…”, “Show root path for Apps”, and “Show hidden files and folders”.
Step 3: Copying the Angry Birds .lua Files Off Your iOS Device
- Open DiskAid.
- Connect the device you want to transfer your progress FROM. Once your device is connected, DiskAid should recognize it.
- Click “Apps”. Look through the app icons to find the application directory that you’re looking to transfer / backup.
- Click to open the desired app folder, then open the “Documents” folder.
- In the “Documents” folder you’ll see a few .lua files. You will want to copy over any of the following .lua files that you see:
- highscores.lua
- settings.lua
- {purchases}.lua (if applicable, such as Space and Star Wars)
- highscores_<hash>.lua and settings_<hash>.lua (if applicable via Rovio Accounts; learn more!)
Select them all and drag them into a folder on your PC / Mac. Once all these .lua files are copied over you effectively have a backup copy.
Step 4: Copying the Saved .lua Files onto Another iOS Device
- Connect the iOS device you want to transfer your progress TO and sync it with iTunes (if you already did you can skip this step). This way if something goes wrong you can restore.
- After the sync with iTunes is complete disconnect the device, launch DiskAid, then reconnect the same device again.
- Now repeat steps 3 and 4 above in order to navigate to the version of Angry Birds you’re looking to copy your data too. Remember, if copying from an iPhone or iPod Touch to an iPad you can go from non-HD to HD versions (the directory on the iPad includes “HD” in the name).
- Once you have the “Documents” folder open in DiskAid copy or drag the respective .lua files you previously saved on your computer onto your device (in other words, drag them from you computer into DiskAid, which will in turn copy them to your device — overwriting what was previously there).
- Once this is done you’ve effectively transferred your progress from one device to another, but in order to see the progress on the new device you need to completely close and reopen Angry Birds.
Step 5: Completely Restarting Angry Birds
- If you’re running a next generation iOS device you don’t have to restart to completely close Angry Birds, Angry Birds Seasons, etc. Rather, double-tap the home key. That will open the multitasking menu. Swipe the windows upward to close the programs.
- For those running older devices, such an older iPod Touch, just old down the power key and restart your device.
- Finally, reopen Angry Birds and you should see your progress correlates with what was on your other device.
- Rejoice!
Just wondering if anyone has come across a solution to transferring scores, I’m still on ios 7 ( iPhone 4 ), but have ordered 6s and really really want to transfer scores on ab seasons.
@adrian9595 Possibly with iMazing 1.3. See my post below.
Just got iPhone 6s and restored back up via itunes and my scores have transfered over, yippeee
I just got an email announcing iMazing 1.3. They say 1.3 can selectively backup and restore apps on iOS 9. It didn’t say if that applied to all apps. I haven’t tried it yet.
@amslimfordy2 @sal9
I want to copy my angry birds epic from a iphone 5 to a iphone 6. I backedup from itunes. But on my iphone 6 it get stuck on “loading game texts.. ” – it looks like it hasn.t copied my game proces…
I tried to copy files from imazing but the document folder says: “Documents’s Documents folder is not accessible. As of IOS 8.3, only the documents folder of “File sharing” enabled Apps is accesible”
And files in the document folder from the folder Backup says; “is read only and cannot be modified.”
I tried Diskaid, and their it says, “iOS 9.0.1 is not supported. Make sure you have the lastest version from http://www.digidna.net.”
What can i do to play on my iphone 6, where i was left on my iphone 5. .. please help.. Thank you
Daniel, AB Epic allows you to play/sync on multiple devices by signing in your Rovio Account. (and/or Facebook I can’t remember) – You will find some details here: https://support.rovio.com/hc/en-us/categories/200208236-Angry-Birds-Epic
I backed up my iPhone 4 to itunes, then restored my 6s in iTunes and synced everything, surprised to find progress and scores in ab seasons, Rio, space, star wars 1 & 2 all transferred over. Not sure about epic but would think it is the same. I did update to latest iTunes as well.
Figured it out. The owner of the files was listed as “root” instead of “mobile”…I think it was because my iPod Touch and my iPhone 4S have different iOS versions, which probably means they have different file structures.
http://www.mobiledic.com/ios-topics/recover-data-from-iphone-without-backup.html
Thanks, this worked, I never made an account for Rovio. Now i did and it works :)
I’m happy
Not sure it that will solve my issue. It does look daunting.
Since upgrading iPhone6 to 9.0.1, Rio is regularly hanging. So I wanted to start playing on my iPad Air2. Installed the game, and went about using iMazing to copy off my progress from the phone. I have backed up settings.lua and highscores.lua ready to install.
Got the error about not being able to move files into documents folder since iOS 8.3.
Both devices are running iOS 9.0.1 and Rio 2.5.0.
Any advice?
I want to transfer my AB Seasons progress off of an IPod Touch running IOS 5.1.1 to an IPad running IOS 9.0.1. Since Rovio stopped giving updates to my iPod, I would not have the same versions of the game on both devices if I attempt to transfer. (AB Seasons on my iPod on y goes up to Tropigal Paradise). Also, my computer can’t update to newest version of ITunes since I don’t have Windows 7. Is this a lost cause? Please advise.
There’s a simple and quick way if you want to copy the save data between the same version App. You can use iMazing’s app extract and install procedure, but this will only work for the exact same app. If there are separate iPad and iPhone apps, you’ll need to use the “modify backup” method I mentioned above which involves backing up the old device, extracting out the save data from the backup and then backing up the new device, replacing the save data in the backup and then doing a restore from backup. That is time consuming and only works if the backup is not encrypted.
If copying from iPad to iPad or iPhone to iPhone, do the following:
1. Connect old device and do an iTunes Backup.
2. Close iTunes and run iMazing and click Apps, then select the app data you want copy and click “Manage Apps” and then “Extract Apps”. Choose where the file(s) should be saved.
3. Disconnect old device and connect new one.
4. Make sure the apps are freshly installed on that device and have never been run yet. Basically delete the apps (if they exist), install them from App Store, but don’t run them.
5. Turn off “Find My iphone/iPad” (won’t work with it on).
6. Click Apps in iMazing, then “Manage Apps”, the “Install App”.
7. Chose the file(s) you made in step 2.
8. The device will do a quick restore (it only restores the data from the files you pick) and reboot.
9. Everything is done, you can turn “Find my iPhone/iPad” back on.
Thank you but I would not have the same version of the app on both devices since my iPod touch can’t get the newest AB Seasons updates. I also currently can’t get the newest version of iTunes because I don’t have Windows 7. I may get a new computer in a few months so maybe I will try once I have a computer running the most recent version of iTunes.
Thank you, I successfully used your procedure to copy my Angry Birds progress from an iPhone 5S to an iPhone 6S. I did not want to use iTunes backup/restore between phones and this worked perfectly, only transferring the progress from the games i wanted to keep playing on the new phone.
I just got a new iPhone 6s and when I loaded the backup from my old phone, everything came across except my scores in Rio. I tried to go into iExplorer to transfer my .lua files over to the new device, but I cannot find them anymore. My old device is still intact, and I would like to transfer my progress over if at all possible. I see mention of iMazing above, and see that it costs money. Would the paid version of iExplorer do the same thing? I have been using demo mode for years for free.
Same here, it seems that Rovio don’t enable file sharing in their apps and so there is no way to copy the lua files back. I really don’t know why they didn’t use iCloud sync or even enable their own Rovio account on all the games as this is a really bad customer experience.
As far as I know, iMazing 1.4.0 or later is the only software which supports backing up app data from iOS 9 devices.
My sons phone is water damage and screen smashed. How can I transfer his old account on angry birds xcx
Ack! Not available for my PowerMac! New iPad doesn’t like it. Original Angry Birds data fine, Rio and Seasons not.
I’m trying to backup my AB, Seasons and Rio scores. I downloaded iMazing, connected it the my iPhone, selected AB, then clicked on the Documents folder. The message was something like “As of iOS 8.3, “Documents” folder of file sharing apps can be accessed”. So what do I do now?
iPhone users – You can transfer hi scores, coins, everything through Imazing, but you have to pay for the program – it is worth it! The cost is $35, but if you go to Imazing and sign up for their newsletter, they will give you 10% off, so it’s a bit more reasonable. Note that you don’t have to use Imazing for all AB platforms.
1) If you set up a Rovio account you can save your hi scores and progress on Angry Birds, Star Wars II, Go! and Epic.
2) For AB Seasons you can log in through Facebook on the title screen and save your Seasons hi scores and progress and transfer to another iOS device that is also logged in through Facebook.
3) For AB Rio and Star Wars I (and everything else really), you can go the Imazing route. Here is the how-to link -https://imazing.com/guides/how-to-export-backup-and-transfer-ios-apps-data-and-settings
It worked and I’m a happy camper on my iPhone 8+!
PS – The backups that iPhone makes to iCloud or iTunes do not seem to have hi scores and progress since iOS 8.3, so using Imazing to extract (and store) your progress for non-Rovio Account and Facebook login AB platforms is the way forward.
Is it possible to transfer game progress from iOS device to android, or vise versa?
For data transfer between iOS devices, Phone Transfer is the ideal tool to get that. I had prior experience with the app when I replaced my old iPhone 4S with 6S. The steps are simple because the program has a nice user interface.
Step by step tutorial: http://tinyurl.com/iphone-to-iphone-transfers
This procedure is not the same when trying to do it on a mac. It doesn’t allow you to open the files inside the app, just extract the app and then load it onto the new device without transferring the data.
Will have to dust off my old Windows laptop and try to transfer from there.
Well, so much for that idea. Downloaded the program to my Windows laptop and tried to copy, following the guide, but it says, basically, this feature was disabled after ios 8.3 and higher except for apps with file sharing. Tried DiskAid, but since the new ipad is running ios 9, it doesn’t work with that ios.
So basically, that is it. Can’t transfer the progress anymore due to changes in ios. Great job Apple and great job Rovio!
If lost data after the transfer program is end ,i have met the same problem before , i have to transfer some files from iPhone to Andorid , but the messages is lost, so , there is a tutorial that you can get more how to recover lost data from iPhone
https://www.tunesbro.com/recover-deleted-messages-iphone.html
If lost data after the transfer program is end ,i have met the same problem before , i have to transfer some files from iPhone to Andorid , but the messages is lost, so , there is a tutorial that you can get more how to recover lost data from iPhone, perhaps , you can get it from Tunesbro
Another possible way to transfer data between iOS devices is Phone Transfer. It can directly transfer all kinds of files from one device to another by connecting to USB cable on the same computer. This tutorial shows you how to do that in a few seconds: http://www.android-rescuer.com/transfer-messages-from-android-to-iphone.html
Thanks for the post.