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How to back up and restore Home Assistant properly

Updated 25 September 2026

A Home Assistant backup is only worth something if three things are true: it exists somewhere other than the machine it backs up, you have the key to open it, and you know how to put it back. Most people have at most one of the three. This guide covers all of them, then walks through a restore without losing more than you meant to.

What a backup actually is

In Home Assistant, a backup is an archive made at Settings → System → Backups. What's in it is chosen per backup:

• Home Assistant settings: your configuration files, automations, scripts, scenes, dashboards, helpers, and the registries that remember every device and entity's name and room.
• The history database: usually included, but it can be left out per backup, and a database kept on a separate server isn't included at all.
• Apps (previously called add-ons) and folders: on Home Assistant OS and Supervised only, each chosen individually.

Recent versions encrypt backups by default. The key is in an emergency kit Home Assistant gives you when you set up backups. An archive without its key can't be restored, so a backup whose key you've lost isn't a backup.

A downloaded backup, once decrypted, contains your passwords and access tokens in plain text. Treat the archive and the key as two separate secrets and keep them apart.

Backing up properly

If you have no backups at all, the ten-minute fix is the short version. The full version:

• Automatic, daily, keeping at least three. Settings → System → Backups → Configure automatic backups. One backup overwritten by a bad night is no backup.
• At least one copy off the machine. A network share, a cloud location from an integration you use, or Home Assistant Cloud. A disk failure takes the machine and every backup stored on it.
• The emergency kit stored somewhere else. A password manager is ideal.
• A manual backup before anything you can't undo. Updating Core or the operating system, removing an integration, deleting devices or entities. A scheduled backup from last night may already be a day out of date; take one now. A backup taken after the damage just preserves the damage.
• A restore test, once. Restoring onto a spare machine or virtual machine is the only proof that a backup works.

Pick the smallest restore that fixes it

Restoring a full backup is the biggest hammer you have. It puts back everything included in the archive, discards everything changed since, and restarts Home Assistant. Use the smallest tool that fixes the problem:

• One automation, script, scene or dashboard edit went wrong: don't restore at all. If you copied its YAML before editing, paste it back. Each automation trace also records the automation's configuration as it was when that run happened, so an older trace shows what it looked like before your edit.
• An app update broke something (Home Assistant OS and Supervised): restore just that app from a backup, a partial restore.
• A device, entity or integration was deleted, or a Core update broke things: restore a full backup, or a partial one of just the Home Assistant settings; on Home Assistant OS and Supervised that also puts back the earlier Core version. Registry deletions can't be put back any other way.
• An OS update broke things: a backup doesn't contain the operating system. On Home Assistant OS, go back to the previous version with ha os update --version <previous> from the terminal, or choose the previous system in the boot menu.
• The machine won't boot, or you're moving to new hardware: a fresh install, then restore during setup.

How to restore a backup

1. Take a backup of how things are now. Even if they're broken. A restore is itself irreversible, and this is your way back if you pick the wrong archive.
2. Pick the right archive. In Settings → System → Backups, find the newest backup from before the problem started. Check its date and size: a backup of a few megabytes probably left out something you need.
3. Have the encryption key ready. You'll be asked for it if the backup is encrypted. It's in your emergency kit.
4. Choose what to restore. Open the backup and choose Restore. On Home Assistant OS and Supervised you can pick parts: Home Assistant settings, the history database, individual apps and folders. Pick only what you need.
5. Let it finish. Home Assistant restarts and may be unreachable for several minutes. Don't power it off mid-restore.
6. For a new machine or a dead one, restore during setup. Install Home Assistant fresh. On the first screen of onboarding, choose to restore from a backup instead of creating a new home, then upload the backup file (or, if you use Home Assistant Cloud, pick it from there) and enter the key.
7. Check it properly afterwards. Go through Settings → Devices & services for integrations that failed, and re-authenticate any cloud integration that asks: a restore brings back an old login that may have expired. Check Settings → System → Repairs and the log. Anything that was disabled when the backup was taken comes back disabled.

Restoring on Container and Core

Without a Supervisor there are no apps and no partial restores: a restore puts back the Home Assistant configuration as a whole. From 2025.1 onwards, Home Assistant itself can create backups on these installs, and current versions restore them from the same Backups page. On older versions, update first; there's no good backup story before that. Whatever the version, keep a copy of your whole config folder somewhere else before any big change.

What doesn't count as a backup

• A git repository of your config. Useful, but it normally leaves out .storage, your secrets and the history database, which is most of what you need after a failure.
• **Copying .storage files back over a running system.** Home Assistant overwrites them from memory, and a half-copied registry can stop it starting. Restore through the backup system.
• A backup on the same disk. See above.

Deleting old backups

Home Assistant's scheduled clean-up never deletes your last backup. A manual delete has no such protection, and there's no age check either. When you clear space, delete oldest first, and leave at least one recent backup that you have the key for.

If you'd rather someone checked it: our Check-up (A$29, no subscription) offers a backup before it changes anything and tells you what it could and couldn't see about your backups. See what's included.