Copyright © 2026 Needs of the Many / PluralBridge contributors

Licensed under the GNU General Public License v3.0 (GPLv3).

This recovery implementation and accompanying documentation were developed by Needs of the Many / PluralBridge. Please preserve this attribution as required by the applicable license terms.

Simply Plural Android Data Recovery — Samsung Smart Switch Path A

Scope

This procedure documents a Simply Plural data-recovery path successfully reproduced on a Samsung Galaxy S24+ after the Simply Plural servers shut down.

It recovers Simply Plural's locally stored structured data and converts it into a normal UTF-8 JSON file.

This procedure:

• does not require root access;
• does not require ADB access to Simply Plural's private app directory;
• does not require an existing Simply Plural export;
• keeps the recovered data local on the user's computer.

The resulting JSON is recovered Simply Plural local data. It is not yet a reconstructed official Simply Plural export.

Requirements

• Samsung Galaxy phone with Simply Plural still installed
• Windows PC
• Samsung Smart Switch
• Python 3 available from Command Prompt
• Windows tar command

Important: Do not uninstall Simply Plural, clear its app data, or factory-reset the phone before attempting recovery.

---

Step 1 — Back up Simply Plural with Samsung Smart Switch

Connect the Samsung phone to the PC and open Samsung Smart Switch.

Choose Backup.

In the backup-selection screen:

1. Select Apps.
2. Select Simply Plural.
3. Deselect other apps if you want the smallest possible backup.

Selecting Images is optional for recovering the JSON, but is recommended if you also want to preserve possible Simply Plural-related images for later avatar-recovery work.

Run the backup.

Expected

Smart Switch reports that the Simply Plural backup completed successfully.

---

Step 2 — Locate the Simply Plural .noedata file

Open the newly created Smart Switch backup folder.

The Simply Plural backup payload should be under a path similar to:

C:\Users\<WINDOWS_USER>\Samsung\SmartSwitch\backup\<DEVICE_MODEL>\<DEVICE_FOLDER>\<BACKUP_FOLDER>\APKFILE\data\com.saltypandastudios.frontime\

Inside that folder, locate:

com.saltypandastudios.frontime.noedata

Expected

The .noedata file exists.

---

Step 3 — Create a clean recovery working folder

Open Command Prompt and run:

mkdir C:\SP-Recovery

Expected

No output if the directory is created successfully.

If the folder already exists from a previous recovery attempt, use a different empty folder.

---

Step 4 — Copy the .noedata file into the working folder

Run:

copy "<FULL_PATH_TO_BACKUP>\com.saltypandastudios.frontime.noedata" C:\SP-Recovery\

Expected

        1 file(s) copied.

---

Step 5 — Verify the Android Backup header

Run:

python -c "from pathlib import Path; p=Path(r'C:\SP-Recovery\com.saltypandastudios.frontime.noedata'); print(p.read_bytes()[:24])"

Expected on the confirmed Samsung Galaxy S24+ recovery

b'ANDROID BACKUP\n5\n0\nnone\n'

This indicates:

• Android Backup version 5
• uncompressed payload
• unencrypted payload

If your header differs, stop before continuing.

The extraction command below assumes this exact 24-byte header.

---

Step 6 — Remove the Android Backup header and create a TAR archive

Run:

python -c "from pathlib import Path; p=Path(r'C:\SP-Recovery\com.saltypandastudios.frontime.noedata'); Path(r'C:\SP-Recovery\simplyplural.tar').write_bytes(p.read_bytes()[24:])"

Expected

No output.

The following file should now exist:

C:\SP-Recovery\simplyplural.tar

---

Step 7 — Confirm that the TAR contains simply.db

Run:

tar -tf C:\SP-Recovery\simplyplural.tar | findstr /I "app_flutter/simply.db"

Expected

apps/com.saltypandastudios.frontime/r/app_flutter/simply.db

---

Step 8 — Extract simply.db

Run:

tar -xf C:\SP-Recovery\simplyplural.tar -C C:\SP-Recovery apps/com.saltypandastudios.frontime/r/app_flutter/simply.db

Expected

No output.

The recovered file should now exist at:

C:\SP-Recovery\apps\com.saltypandastudios.frontime\r\app_flutter\simply.db

---

Step 9 — Confirm that simply.db contains JSON

Run:

python -c "from pathlib import Path; p=Path(r'C:\SP-Recovery\apps\com.saltypandastudios.frontime\r\app_flutter\simply.db'); print(p.read_text(encoding='utf-8')[:40])"

Expected

Output beginning with:

{"private":{

The characters following that will vary by system.

Despite its .db filename extension, simply.db contains JSON text.

---

Step 10 — Create a normal UTF-8 .json file

Run:

python -c "import json; src=r'C:\SP-Recovery\apps\com.saltypandastudios.frontime\r\app_flutter\simply.db'; dst=r'C:\SP-Recovery\simply.pretty.utf8.json'; d=json.load(open(src,encoding='utf-8')); json.dump(d,open(dst,'w',encoding='utf-8'),ensure_ascii=False,indent=2)"

Expected

No output.

The resulting JSON file should be:

C:\SP-Recovery\simply.pretty.utf8.json

---

Step 11 — Validate the JSON syntax

Run:

python -m json.tool C:\SP-Recovery\simply.pretty.utf8.json > nul

Expected

No output.

No output means Python successfully parsed the file as valid JSON.

---

Step 12 — Display the recovered collections and record counts

Run:

python -c "import json; d=json.load(open(r'C:\SP-Recovery\simply.pretty.utf8.json',encoding='utf-8')); [print(k, type(v).__name__, len(v) if hasattr(v,'__len__') else '') for k,v in d.items()]"

Expected

The exact collections and counts will vary by system.

In the Samsung Galaxy S24+ system used to reproduce this procedure, the result was:

private dict 1
Privates dict 1
users dict 1
FrontHistory dict 32
Users dict 1
Channels dict 6
Members dict 37
fronthistory dict 99
privates dict 1
chatcategories dict 1
customfields dict 7
friends dict 2
friendssettings dict 2
privacybuckets dict 2
members dict 49
channels dict 6

Important recovered collections included:

members
fronthistory
customfields
privacybuckets
channels
friends
friendssettings
chatcategories
users
private

For this reproduced recovery, the JSON contained:

• 49 records in the lowercase members collection
• 99 records in the lowercase fronthistory collection
• 7 custom-field records
• 2 privacy-bucket records
• 6 channel records
• 2 friend records
• additional system and cached Simply Plural collections

At this point, the structured Simply Plural data has been successfully recovered from the Samsung Smart Switch backup and converted into a validated UTF-8 JSON file.