How long should I typically expect the restore function to take in LL with a fairly modern device, an LG G3 in this case?

I’ve been making frequent use of the backup option within LL’s Backup/Restore menu from the main settings page to retain my customizations. I also have a tasker profile that monitors the Lightening Launcher folder for any changes and creates a copy of the entire folder to my external SD.

After having lots of data realted issues with the custom ROM I was using I decided to switch to a custom ‘stock’ ROM.  After the install and restoring my apps etc I then proceeded to copy back the Lightening Launcher folder from my external SD and went into Settings>Backup/Restore and tapped on the latest archive in the list to restore my setup, however, after almost 20 minutes of the ‘Restore in progress’ dialog with the spinning circle I decided something wasn’t working right and tried an earlier archive with the same result.

TL:DR restoring my LL backup archives doesn’t appear to be working and just sits on ‘Restore in progress’ for 20 odd minutes before I end up cancelling it.

Any advice would be much appreciated.

Just a few questions if I may, I’ve been looking for answers for a few days and am coming up blank so far:

1. Is it possible to prevent newly installed apps from creating an icon on the desktop?

2. For some reason, more than likely of my own doing, I’ve lost the ability to long press an icon either on my desktop or within a folder to access its menu of options, for example to remove it. Is there a setting I have jogged somewhere perhaps?

3. I like my folders to be sorted alphabetically and normally do this via the Items – Sort a-z menu option of the folder. Is it possible to have the sorting automatically maintained so I don’t have to do this every time I add or delete an icon from a folder?

Thanks very much in advance for any advice, I’m loving Lightning Launcher and have actually forgotten all about Nova Launcher since installing it! 😁

I’ve just switched from Nova to Lightening and am loving the customizable aspects so far although I am still at the bottom of that steep learning curve for now! 😀

One feature I like on Nova was the ability to disable the clock from the status bar while the launcher was displayed. Is this possible to achieve on LL?