Google’s fix for the worst part of setting up a new Android phone is actually working

Last year, Google introduced the Restore Credentials API within Android’s Credential Manager, aiming to solve one of the most significant friction points of switching phones: Getting logged out of all your apps. A year later, Google has shared an update on how this has progressed, and this small change has helped Uber reduce manual logins by an estimated 4 million logins per year!

Android’s app restore problem and its solution

One area where iPhones excel over Android is the app data migration process when switching phones. On iPhones, iOS transfers practically all apps and data, including app sign-in state (except for banking apps), seamlessly, giving users the feeling that they never switched phones.

When switching between Android devices, Android transfers apps and some app data, but drops the login credentials, forcing users to log in to all their apps again to receive notifications. So even though users migrate their data to their new Android flagship, many of their apps have essentially “reset” themselves. Things don’t “just work” anymore on your new phone — you have to start all your apps manually, sign back into them, and set them up once again.

This is where Android’s Restore Credentials API comes into the picture. Thanks to this, users can seamlessly log back into the app whenever they switch devices and restore their data.

App developers can also allow users to silently log back into the app as soon as the restore is completed, enabling them to even receive notifications without needing to open the app on the new device.

How Google’s solution helped Uber

Engineers at Uber note that it can be an unpleasant and off-putting experience when you open the Uber app on your new phone to request a ride, but find out that you’re logged out right when you need it.

Uber ultimately utilized the Restore Credentials API to address this issue. The API generates a unique token on the old device, which is seamlessly and silently moved to the new device when the user restores their app data during device setup. The result is that user account data is safely and seamlessly carried over, without requiring any additional user input.

Uber reports that, at that time of its rollout stage, an average of 10,000 unique daily users had signed in with Restore Credentials, and the number is expected to double once the company expands the rollout to its entire user base. The company estimates that the change will eliminate 4 million manual logins annually.

Within Uber’s context, users still have to launch the app once on their new phone to restore the sign-in state, but as mentioned, the experience can be even smoother if app developers put in the work to allow the sign-in state to be restored in the background during device setup.

While Uber is a good example of a popular app that has leveraged this API, we need more developers to adopt it to compete against iOS’ seamless sign-in experience. Hopefully, this success story will provide sufficient motivation for more app developers to adopt the API into their apps.