Xamarin iOS - Disable Back up and Restore for Application

Question

I know Android and iOS can back up app’s data files, the backup data is then allowed to be transferred from old device to new device.

For android, I understand that we can disable backups for your application with <application android:allowBackup="false" ... in AndroidManifest.xml file. I wonder if iOS has the same?

Answer 1

Hello,

Welcome to our Microsoft Q&A platform!

iOS has its own Application Sandbox to restrict access to system resources and user data in apps to contain damage if an app becomes compromised, and the contents are backed up by iTunes. I'm afraid there is no such attribute to disable backups like Android, but there are three directories under the application : Documents, Library, tmp. The contents of tmp directory are not backed up by iTunes, the contents of Library directory are never exposed to the user via iTunes, you could also set UIFileSharingEnabled key false to the Info.plist file to disable users to access Documents files. For more details, you could refer to https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/xamarin/ios/app-fundamentals/file-system#application-directories

In addition, you could set the SkipBackup attribute on a file, it will inform the operating system that this file should not be backed up into iCloud. For more details, refer to https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/api/foundation.nsfilemanager.setskipbackupattribute?view=xamarin-ios-sdk-12

Best Regards,
Wenyan Zhang

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