How do you back up before installing Tabaa without losing your data?

Why does installing Tabaa need a factory reset at all?

Tabaa runs with Device Owner, the highest administrative privilege in Android. With it the operating system is what suspends the apps that are not allowed, rather than an app watching the screen and trying to close whatever opened. That is why the block holds on any launcher, for any user on the phone, on Wi-Fi and on mobile data alike, with any SIM, and whether or not a Google account is signed in. Android grants that privilege once and only during the setup of a clean device: a new phone still in the box, or a used phone straight after a factory reset. That rule belongs to Android, not to Tabaa, and the full explanation is in what Device Owner is.

The same moment that grants the privilege is what makes the "force stop" and "clear data" buttons disappear from the app's page, and what makes uninstalling from the phone unavailable. That friction is not a flaw in the product, it is the product: the reason the protection cannot be lifted with a tap is the reason it needs one wipe at the start. Removal stays possible, but through a factory reset whose key sits with the supervisor rather than with whoever is holding the phone. This guide walks you through getting everything that matters back afterwards, and the same checklist lives on the installation page.

What do you get in return for that wipe?

If you are going to wipe a phone once, you deserve to know exactly what changes afterwards, and what an app downloaded from the store cannot reach:

And some concrete things that come with the privilege:

• Speed. A blocked app closes in about a third of a second, and any change the supervisor makes reaches the phone in roughly 3 seconds, instantly when the silent push arrives. If the app happened to be open at the moment it was blocked, it closes at that moment rather than on the next round.
• It still works with no connection. The policy is stored on the device, and the duration of a strict focus lock is kept locally. Cutting the internet only stops new changes arriving; it does not stop the blocking.
• Ready from the first minute. The phone comes out of setup with sensible default lists already in place and nothing for you to configure: 47 VPN, proxy and DNS-changer packages refused in every mode even when they were preinstalled, and 32 apps blocked by default, 11 of them unofficial Telegram forks, because blocking the official app means nothing if a modified copy gets through.
• Filtering inside apps, not just in the browser. Tabaa pins private DNS to dns.tabaa.net system-wide and locks the setting, so every DNS query passes through it: the browser, the browser embedded inside a game or a chat app, and anything running in the background. No app has to integrate with Tabaa to be filtered. This needs Android 9 or newer.
• Permissions we do not ask for. No camera, no microphone, no SMS, no contacts, no call log, no photos, no files. That matters in practice: some banking and payment apps change their behaviour on devices where another app holds advanced system permissions. InstaPay and the National Bank of Egypt app have both published update notes that say so in as many words. Tabaa does not ask for that permission in the first place.
• One wipe and no more. After installation the app updates itself on the device with no store and no step from you, so every improvement to the protection reaches you without repeating any of this.

And we will say the limit out loud: this filtering works at the DNS level, so an app carrying its own DNS resolver inside its code can route around it, which is why the list of 47 packages and the lock on the VPN setting sit underneath it. Factory reset from recovery mode is left working on purpose, so that the phone can never be locked away from you for good.

What do you need to back up before the reset?

The steps in order, on installation day

1. Check the Android version first. The app runs from Android 8, but porn filtering relies on private DNS, which does not exist in the system before Android 9. On Android 15 and newer, cloned apps and private space are locked as well; below that, second space is covered by blocking the addition of users.
2. Go through the backup checklist on the installation page and work through every row of the table above.
3. Verify it yourself before wiping: open Google Photos in a browser and see that the photos really are there, and open WhatsApp settings and read the date of the last backup. This is the single most important step in the guide.
4. Run the factory reset from the phone settings.
5. At the welcome screen after the restart, follow the instructions on the installation page and scan the QR code. Tabaa is installed with Device Owner during setup itself.
6. Finish setup, sign in to your Google account, and restore the WhatsApp backup with your own number the first time you open it. You can add as many Google accounts afterwards as you want: the protection is bound to the device, not to an account, so adding or switching one changes nothing.
7. The supervisor links the device to their account from the supervisor app, and you activate the subscription from the pricing page (200 EGP a month or 2,000 EGP a year for a phone, with the second device at 150 and the third and beyond at 100 EGP a month).

From that point the supervisor can see, from their own app: the activity report, usage week by week, the list of installed apps with their icons, daily limits per app, an instant lock, a message pushed to the screen, and the phone's location on a map with a short trail of where it has just been. The location permission is granted by device policy, so no prompt appears that the child could refuse, and even so we deliberately do not ask for background location, so the phone is not left permanently showing a notice that your organisation can see your location.

What might not come back exactly as it was?

Honesty requires saying it plainly: not everything returns on its own.

• Progress in games that is not tied to an account (Google Play Games or the game's own login) goes with the local game data.
• Data in any app with no cloud backup and no account to sign in to.
• Passwords saved in a browser that is not syncing to an account. Export them or turn sync on before the wipe.
• Bluetooth pairings and display and sound settings. Small things, but you will be setting them again.

And one last thing to settle your mind while you wipe: if the subscription ever lapses, the device is not unlinked, not wiped and not locked. It settles into a read-only default state with the core locks still running, until you renew.

What if the phone is brand new?

Then there is nothing to back up at all: open the phone and scan the QR code from the installation page at the welcome screen directly. That is the ideal case when you are preparing a phone for your child or making a fresh start. The computer is a different story entirely: the Windows version installs on a working machine with no wipe and no provisioning, at 100 EGP a month or 1,000 EGP a year, from the Windows page. If you are still deciding who holds the key after installation, read asking a friend to supervise your phone if the phone is yours as an adult, or the parental control guide for Egypt if it is your child's. And for the whole picture before you start: the best Arabic porn blocker for adults. For any question during installation, support is on WhatsApp at +201507966165.