How are you supposed to backup a Galaxy Watch?

[StoufferTheCat]

Hello everyone - hope you're having a good Christmas.
Can anyone explain to me how you are supposed to backup a Galaxy Watch 6?
On opening the "Wearable" app on my phone (Galaxy S23) that is connected to my Galaxy Watch 6 there is no "Automatic Backup" option any more, just simply not there. When I dig further into Backup I can see that my watch has no backups - not a single one has ever been made, even though I've had the watch for two weeks.

There is no "Backup Now" there is absolutely nothing in the Wearable app to indicate I an either setup an automatic backup or complete a manual backup.
One Google Search indicated that I now need to use "Smart Switch" (Why? There is a Backup option - so why would I require another app to do this?)
On launching Smart Switch on my mobile it isn't seeing the watch that is currently connected via BT sitting a meter away, instead seems to want me to launch an app on the watch - that doesn't currently exist.

How have we gone from:
Open up Wearable
Tap Backup Now

To me sitting here with absolutely no idea how to get the data saved into the Samsung Cloud as I have been able to for the last x years.

So, if anyone has a Samsung Phone and a GW6 - if you would be ever so kind as to detail how I go about making a backup or switching automatic backups on - or anything really. that would be most appreciated.

[alexmidd]

The problem with this is, I don't charge my phone when I go to bed, I do it in the evening when I can monitor it and take it off the stand when it is charged. However, the blurb in the app seems to suggest that I can only save the backup to the cloud between the hours of 1am and 5am, while the phone is charging. I just simply refuse to do this. Why on Earth is there not a manual backup option or at least another option to save the backup during more sociable hours? This restriction seems totally nonsensical and unnecessary.

[arianwen27]

There is a manual backup method. Go to reset your watch in the app, when you press the button, it'll do a backup, when the backup is finished, press the back button on the watch to cancel the reset. Little dangerous but it does do a manual backup. Also on your phone you can enable 'battery protection' which will allow your phone to charge overnight without damaging the battery. It stops charging at 80%, then will charge to 100% when you wake up

[alexmidd]

Doesn't that just back the watch up to the phone though? I don't have a problem with that, although admittedly it doesn't back it up very frequently - it has only done one today, automatically, for the first time in about a year. The problem is getting it to back up to the cloud, which it refuses to do and says it hasn't done for 299 days. I am now trying the manual backup in the Smart Switch app to see if that works.

[arianwen27]

Ah sorry about that, this thread is a year old so I forgot what the original issue was. In that case, I don't think there's a way to do that. You can back up your phone and watch to your PC using smart switch but other than that, over night is the only way. To explain a little more, a lot of device maintenance features and systems run over night when charging. I won't go into too much detail but android devices benefit from charging over night

[alexmidd]

OK, thanks. I find it astonishing that Samsung feel that we should be forced to charge our phones overnight, when many of us do not work that way. My phone only takes an hour to charge up, so leaving it on stand for 8 hours overnight is excessive. It is also potentially dangerous as it has not been unknown for phones to catch fire while charging, so I'm not taking that chance. The simple option would be just to allow us control over when and how we back things up, and when we charge our phones.

[arianwen27]

It's less of Samsung and more of android as a whole. The idea is during the day the phone is fast cool and does what you want it to do. At night, it starts doing tasks and work to keep itself running ok such as updates or app recompilation. This means while you sleep with the device on charge, it has unlimited battery and processing power to do what it needs to do to stay healthy. Some of these tasks still run even when not charging. But if all of them ran, you'd wake up with a dead phone. If your worried about danger, limit the battery charge to 80% and use an official Samsung charger. The phone will charge to 80% then stop, only using the charger to keep itself running, called bypass charging

[alexmidd]

OK, that makes sense. Thanks for the info. Maybe I just have to change my habits then, but I've never really been comfortable charging overnight. I assume after it reaches 100%, or 80% if you have the limitation set, it stops charging? (Sorry we've gone off topic but thus is one of the reasons I don't currently charge overnight. Thanks for the info so far though, it has been very helpful.)

[arianwen27]

There's 3 settings you can pick from. Basic: charge to 100%, discharge to 95%, charge to 100% on a loop till you unplug it. Maximim: cap charge at 80%, then the charger is only used to directly power the phone, battery isnt used. And adaptive: learn your sleep patterns, when your asleep, charge to 80%, when your phone believes your about to wake up, fully charge. If your handy with Samsung routines, you can program your phone to limit charge under other conditions, not relying on it to guess your sleep

[truelies]

Very confused on how to backup, I don't have a Samsung phone, but have a Samsung watch, it showing not backup 14 days.

Supposed be auto backup in wearable app? I already in put Samsung account, but nothing backed up.

The smart switch app and the pc one is only for a Samsung phone? Seems not work for my phone.