Data lock-in

Data lock-in prevents device owners from accessing data stored on the device they own. For example, some mobile applications store user data in a way they can only be viewed from inside the app, with no possibility of creating backups or moving them to external data storage to make space free.

Incidents

Saved pages in Samsung Internet

The mobile web browser by Samsung stores saved pages in the /data directory. This is a locked-in directory where apps store data only accessible to themselves.

Users have requested Samsung developers to change its browser to store saved pages in a non-locked-in place that makes them accessible from other applications and makes it possible to create backups, or to let users export copies of saved pages, but Samsung refused to implement this change. Some users have stored thousands of web pages this way before realizing they are unable to create backups or move them to external storage.

Rooting a device would make the /data folder accessible, but this requires an unlocked bootloader. The process of unlocking the bootloader involves a factory reset, which deletes all user-generated files from internal storage.

In comparison, Google Chrome on mobile stores web pages as MHTML files in the download folder where they are not locked in, and Firefox on mobile completely lacks a feature to save pages.

Saved pages in Apple Safari on iPhone

Apple refers to saved pages as the "reading list", a name that implies the feature is intended for storing pages only until they are read, not for archival. Like with Samsung, people have asked for an ability to export saved pages. Apple has not responded.

User data in mobile web browsers

No major mobile web browser lets the user export their session (list of opened tabs) and browsing history and bookmarks to a local file. Exporting all tabs may be desirable to start with a fresh session without losing the existing session, and exporting the history makes it easier to search for pages a long time after visiting, beyond what the browser retains.

Some web browsers have a "Sync" feature that allows synchronizing tabs and bookmarks across devices, but it is cloud-based, meaning it depends on an online service that can cease to operate at any time.

Text messages

The built-in text messaging applications of both Android and iOS lack a built-in local export option.

On Android, the third-party app "SMS Backup+" can create exports, but they can not be directly stored locally, only uploaded to the middleman GMail, which requires Internet connection and a Google account, and can cease to function at any time due to Google API changes.

On iOS, exporting apps require payment, an external computer, and save as PDF, resulting in much larger files than plain text.

Chat messages can be archived manually with screenshots and screen recordings, but this takes lots of time and manual work, and the resulting files can not be searched for text and will be much larger in size than a plain text-based export would be.

WhatsApp lets the user export messages to a text file, but this has to be done for each conversation individually, and starting with an April 2025 update, exporting can be remotely disabled by the other participant.

Android data folder

Since Android 11, apps can no longer browse the Android/data folder in the shared user storage (not to be confused with /data, which was locked in since the beginning).

Videos downloaded inside the YouTube app

YouTube provides no official way for people to create permanent local copies of videos. This includes Creative Commons media. The only exception is YouTube Studio allowing channel owners to download their own videos in up to 720p.

While the YouTube app lets paying YouTube Premium subscribers download videos for offline viewing, the videos are only accessible through the YouTube app, encoded in a proprietary format, and forcibly deleted after 29 days.

Permanent local copies are necessary to preserve Internet history when YouTube ceases to operate:

Whenever I tell people that we need to plan for the day when YouTube goes offline, I mostly receive weird reactions. It seems to be the case that people can't think of YouTube being gone. Unfortunately, I'm convinced that most people will face the day when we lose this enormous library of videos.

See also

• Right to own