Restoring Home Assistant or Recovering from Problems

Sometimes, Home Assistant may not start correctly, or you may need to recover from a mistake, a failed update, or a hardware issue. Fortunately, Home Assistant includes features that make it easy to restore your system and recover from problems. This guide explains how to restore from a backup, use safe mode, and shares practical recovery tips.

Restoring Home Assistant from a Backup

Home Assistant automatically creates backups (often called snapshots or full backups), which include your configuration, add-ons, and most user data. You can also create backups manually at any time.

Access Backups: Go to Settings > System > Backups in the Home Assistant UI. Here you'll see a list of your backups.
Create a New Backup: Click "Create backup". You can choose a full backup (everything) or a partial backup (specific add-ons or folders).
Restore from Backup: Click any backup in the list and choose either "Restore full backup" (recommended if your system is broken) or "Restore selected" (to recover only certain data).
Upload a Backup: If you reinstalled Home Assistant or moved to new hardware, you can upload a backup file by clicking "Upload Backup" on the Backups page.

Tip: Backups can also be downloaded to your computer for extra safety (highly recommended before any major changes or updates).

Safe Mode in Home Assistant

Safe mode is a special feature that helps you regain access if Home Assistant fails to start due to a configuration error. In safe mode:

Home Assistant starts with the minimum required components.
Most integrations, add-ons, and customizations will be disabled.
You can still access the UI to fix your configuration or restore a backup.

How to know you're in safe mode: A banner will appear at the top of the Home Assistant UI saying that safe mode is active.

What to do: Review the error messages shown (usually at the bottom of the UI or in Settings > System > Logs). Common causes are YAML formatting mistakes, typos in configuration files, or incompatible integrations.

Common Recovery Steps and Tips

Check the Logs: Go to Settings > System > Logs for error messages. These usually point to the exact file and line causing issues.
Restore from Backup: If you can't quickly fix the error, restore your most recent working backup.
Revert Configuration Changes: If you edited YAML files, undo your last change or upload a previous version.
Update Home Assistant: Sometimes, a bug is fixed in a new release. Go to Settings > System > Updates to check for updates.
Boot to Safe Mode (if needed): If you cannot access the UI at all, connect a monitor and keyboard to your device and use the terminal/console to access your configuration files.
Use "Check Configuration" Tool: Before restarting Home Assistant, use the "Check configuration" button in Developer Tools > YAML. This can catch errors before they prevent startup.
Community Support: Don't be afraid to ask for help on the Home Assistant forums or Discord.

Note: If you're running Home Assistant OS or Supervised, you can often restore backups or fix issues directly from the host operating system if the UI is unavailable.

When to Consider a Fresh Install

If all else fails (for example, your Home Assistant install is corrupted and won't boot), you can always reinstall Home Assistant and restore from a backup file.

Download the latest Home Assistant OS image from the official website.
Flash it to your SD card/SSD/USB drive.
Boot your device, and when prompted, upload your backup to restore your system.

As long as you have a recent backup, you can recover all of your configuration, automations, and data - even after hardware failure.