I received my new smartphone Today. My current one is running on Android 10 (Q). Dev hive mind first step: before transferring old to new, make a backup.

That _should _ be straightforward:

Settings > Google > Backup now

But straightforward tutorials where steps yield the expected result only exist in fairy tails... . Backup now was greyed out and thus not an option. After some research I found 2 possible fixes: the UI-based one of disabling all security locks temporarily or the more technical nerdy but structural way. Guess which one I chose... .

I'm using Windows here but you will get the gist for other operating systems.

1. Developer options menu
The first thing a developer does when setting up a new Android device is enabling the developer options menu. Just for the sake of it:

go to Settings _> _About device or phone > tap Build number 7 times

2. USB debugging
Turn on USB debugging in the developer options menu and connect the smartphone to your pc.

3. Android SDK platform tools

• Download the tools here (if you haven't got them already).
• Unzip to a folder.
• Open command prompt and navigate to the above folder.

4. Do your magic

• Run adb shell to get a cli prompt.
• Start the backup manager with with bmgr run
• Execute bmgr backupnow -–all to begin the backup.
• Restart your phone

That's it! The Backup Now button should be enabled again. All thanks and credit go out to the XDA Developers community. If error messages turn up be sure to check out this thread on their Forum.