What is HACS?
HACS (Home Assistant Community Store) is like an app store for Home Assistant that allows easy installation of community add-ons, that are built by the community.
It gives you access to hundreds of add-ons, themes, and custom integrations that don’t come with Home Assistant by default.
You can:
- Add custom integrations (things that don’t appear in the official integrations list)
- Download new frontend themes to make your dashboard actually look nice
- Manage and update your installed custom content easily
Why HACS?
HACS streamlines the process of downloading community content into Home Assistant. It allows for one click install, and notifies you of available updates when they become available. Installing it is a no-brainer. Here’s why:
Active community – Thousands of users sharing, updating, and improving content all the time.
More integrations – Connect stuff that isn’t officially supported.
Better dashboards – Themes and cards galore to make your setup look sharp.
Easy updates – One central place to manage all your custom stuff.
How to Install HACS (Step-by-Step)
The process to install HACS is different depending on how you run Home Assistant. Before continuing, make sure you’re following the correct steps for your installation. If in doubt, refer to the official HACS documentation here.
OS/Supervised Installations
OS and Supervised users can use HACS add-on, however you must first add the add-on repository into Home Assistant.
- To add the HACS add-on repository to your Home Assistant, select this link.
- If not already done, enter your local home assistant IP here
- Add the repository to your instance by clicking ‘Add’
- Now the repository has been added, you can install the Add-on
- Once the Add-on has downloaded, select ‘Start on boot’ and start the Add-on
- Now the Add-on has started, head over to the ‘Log’ tab, and wait till you see the ‘Remember to restart Home Assistant’ message. Once you see this message, we can now restart Home Assistant
- After you’ve restarted Home Assistant, you can now add integration via the ‘Settings > Devices & services’ page. Select ‘Add Instance’ in the bottom right, and search for ‘HACS’
- You’ll then be prompted to accept the agreement, and then link your GitHub account to be able to use HACS. Follow the prompts, and submit the access code generated by HACS on your GitHub account.
- That’s it! HACS is now installed, and setup on your instance. You’ll see a new sidebar icon for it on the left (my image didn’t load in this example). From there, you can browse and install from the community store.
Docker Installations
Docker users can use the download script provided by HACS from the GitHub repo.
- Open a terminal session.
- Go inside your docker container with the command:
docker exec -it <name of the container running homeassistant> bash - Run the HACS download script from within the container:
wget -O - https://get.hacs.xyz | bash -
Core installations
Core users can also use the download script provided by HACS:
- Open a terminal session.
- Change to the user that is running Home Assistant.
- Run the HACS download script:
wget -O - https://get.hacs.xyz | bash -