Welcome to my collection of tech notes and tips!
Always try to download software from a package manager (I like Winget, Chocolatey, PatchMyPC). This avoids potentially downloading software from a malicious website, and makes it eaiser to keep the programs up-to-date.
PDF Arranger - https://github.com/pdfarranger/pdfarranger
It's surprisingly hard to find a good free PDF editor for splitting/merging/rotating PDFs. This one with open source and cross-platform.
Photopea - https://www.photopea.com/
Free online Photoshop alternative
Unfortunately, Android is severely lacking when it comes to creating full devices backups (e.g. to migrate to a new phone). There is no equivalent to the iOS full backup and restore process. This guide documents all available methods to backup/restore a modern (Android 13) device.
Ideally, every app would support backing up to Google Drive. This is Google's preferred method and is seamless. Unfortunately, apps must opt-in to this method so not every app does it.
To view which apps are backed up to Google Drive, launch the Google Drive app on your device an navigate to Backups -> <Device Name> -> Apps Data.
You can't actually view/confirm what data is backed up, but if the app is listed here, there's a decent chance that the important data is backed up to Google Drive. This data should automatically be restored when you reinstall the app on your new device.
Most apps' main data can be backed up using ADB. Apps can opt out of being backed up.
The command is adb backup -all -nosystem -noapk -noobb -f backup.ab
Some app data is contained in /sdcard/android/data. Prior to Android 11, you could use ADB or 3rd party android apps to view/backup this data, but now there are major limitations. For read-only access, you can use the built-in Android file explorer. For write access, you must connect your device to a computer and use MTP file transfer.
These three backup methods are the only ones available to an unrooted Android device. Even when using all of these, not all data may be properly backed up, but it's the best and only options available.