Not all home screens are created equal. Some offer more features than you’ll most likely ever use. But what happens when you get that home screen dialed into perfection and then… you lose your phone or have to (for whatever reason) reset to factory defaults? If your home screen doesn’t offer the ability to backup your settings, you’re going to have to recreate that ideal from scratch.

Fortunately, some home screen launchers — like the Nova Launcher — have a built-in backup system. With the backup, you can restore nearly every Nova Launcher setting you’ve tweaked. The only thing the backup can’t do is set your wallpaper.

With the Nova Launcher backup, you can backup to either local storage or share the backup out to your Google Drive account. You can even backup Nova Launcher on one device and then restore that backup to multiple devices. With that, you can create a single, business-related home screen layout for your staff and share it so they don’t have to spend the time recreating what you’ve done.

Here’s how you backup and restore the Nova Launcher home screen. I’ll show you how to back up to and restore from a Google Drive account, and these steps assume that you already have Nova Launcher installed and configured exactly how you like it.

Backup

The backup process is quite simple. Here are the steps:

  1. On your Android device, open the app drawer
  2. Tap the menu button (three dots in the top right corner)
  3. Tap Nova Settings
  4. Scroll to the bottom and tap Backup and Import
  5. Tap Backup
  6. Give the backup a name and select Share from the drop-down (Figure A)
  7. Tap OK
  8. Tap Drive from the share list
  9. Tap SAVE

Figure A

Backing up Nova on a Verizon-branded Droid Turbo.

The backup will immediately be created and send to your Google Drive account. Now, let’s restore it.

Restore

Obviously, in order to restore the backup, you must have Nova Launcher installed. So, if you have to reset your device, or you get a new one, first install Nova Launcher. Once that’s done, here are the steps for restoring a backup (you can do this on as many devices as you like):

  1. On your Android device, open the app drawer
  2. Tap the menu button (three dots in the top right corner)
  3. Tap Nova Settings
  4. Scroll to the bottom and tap Backup and Import
  5. Tap Restore or Manage Backups
  6. Tap Browse (Figure B)
  7. Locate and tap the backup from Drive
  8. When prompted, tap OK

That’s it, the backup should be restored to your device.

Figure B

Restoring a backup from Google Drive.

Remember, while the Nova Launcher backup system can backup/restore each and every setting you’ve tweaked, it still can’t touch your wallpaper — so, you’ll have to manually configure that.

Spread the love with your Nova Launcher configuration. Back it up, restore it, share it, and enjoy one of the finest home screen launcher replacement in the Android ecosystem.

Do you use the Nova Launcher? If not, what is your home screen app of choice? Share your favorite in the discussion thread below.