Help salvaging data from the Oneplus 6T Clock app

Question

I started using the label/notes section in the OnePlus Clock app for more detailed notes because then I could also get alarmed + reminded about them at certain times during the day. It's a fair bit of notes and reminders, enough to make me try very hard to retrieve them (and then never use the clock app for notetaking again).

I finally updated my Oneplus 6T to Android 11 (the update came out last November I believe) and the clock app updated too... with a 50 character limit on each alarm. I am now locked out of reading all my notes. However, the notes are still there. I know this because the preview text for the label/note is longer than the character limit and shows more than I am able to see when editing the note. If I were to save over the note with only 50 characters though, it would delete all the data and thus I am not touching the alarms at all until I get a fix.

Anyway, here's what I've thought of/tried:

• Any solution involving rooting my phone: would like to avoid this option for now as it seems risky for my given phone based on what I have read but would try if no other option works/if someone convinces me it would be fine

• Using adb backup to backup com.oneplus.deskclock's data: although I did this and I believe it was successful, I have no way of verifying what I backed up exactly (the backup file seems too small for what should be in it). I could use the android-backup-extractor on GitHub, but I doubt the data will be in text form (need the app to view the data is my guess) and I also could not figure out how to set it up anyway, so my next steps were...

• Using my backup.ab file to restore com.oneplus.deskclock's data in the app on a different device. So far I have tried using BlueStacks (OnePlus Clock APK installs, but when I attempt to open it, it never shows up, likely because not OxygenOS), my old OnePlus 3 (incapable of running the correct version of clock app needed, also tried restoring my backup--does not result in any new alarms showing up on the system clock app as you would expect), an Android emulator (have not even attempted yet because I'm not sure if it would be able to run the clock app since it isn't OxygenOS, mainly waiting for input here before I even bother trying that behemoth-sounding task), and my current OnePlus 6T (too scared to try installing a previous version as I'm worried it will potentially erase or compromise data).

I have already invested a lot of time into this and feel all my leads could be deadends and I don't want to spend more time than I have to do this. So, I'm seeking help here now in hopes someone can help me streamline the rest of what I have to do.

Answer 1

This answer is going to disappoint you.

First, do not think of rooting the device. That process entails automatic factory reset of the device, which means, you would end up losing access to files which contains label/reminders for your alarms.

Second, adb backup is completely useless for this clock app because its developers have disabled backup functionality in its manifest ^{(see line 26)}. So adb backup of this app would be an empty file more or less.

Third, the data you are after is in a database named alarms.db located at /data/user_de/0/com.oneplus.deskclock/databases. You cannot access that location without root access. And that's a dead end.

Fourth, you cannot even use some accessibility service hack to read upcoming alarm notifications or Alarm clock's label dialogs because complete label/reminder text is not available there.

Fifth, access to that app's content provider requires permission which adb (shell) user doesn't possess. So there is one more dead end.

At last, I have to conclude that without root access or without support from OnePlus you are unlikely to get access to those alarm labels.