For my first few months with Home Assistant I stuck to the built-in integrations and wondered why everyone online had dashboards and devices I just couldn't find. The answer was HACS — the Home Assistant Community Store. It's the one add-on that unlocks the huge ecosystem of community integrations, cards and themes that aren't in core, and it's the first thing I install on any fresh HA setup now. Here's what HACS is, why it matters, and how it changed the way I run my smart home.
Home automation is all about customization and flexibility. For those using Home Assistant, the open-source platform for managing your smart home, you likely already appreciate its powerful integrations and ability to grow alongside your needs. But even with its extensive core capabilities, there’s a way to unlock even more potential: the Home Assistant Community Store (HACS).In this story, we’ll explore HACS, why it’s a game-changer, and how to get started with it.
What Is HACS?
HACS — the Home Assistant Community Store — is a free, open-source add-on that lets you discover, install, and update community-built integrations, themes, dashboard cards, and automations inside Home Assistant, all from one place. It isn’t part of Home Assistant by default and isn’t an official add-on store; think of it as a community-run “app store” that fills the gap between Home Assistant’s built-in integrations and the thousands of custom ones the community maintains on GitHub.
Why Use HACS?
Here are a few compelling reasons to add HACS to your Home Assistant setup:
1. Expand Home Assistant’s Capabilities
Home Assistant already supports many devices and services, but HACS takes it further by introducing custom integrations. For instance:
Want to integrate niche smart devices or APIs not officially supported? HACS has got you covered.
Do you need a new feature, like advanced analytics or a custom card for your dashboard? HACS is where you’ll find it.
2. Stunning Custom Dashboards
Home Assistant’s Lovelace UI is flexible out of the box, but HACS brings a treasure trove of custom Lovelace cards and themes. With these, you can build sleek, visually appealing dashboards tailored to your preferences.
3. Community-Driven Innovation
The Home Assistant community is packed with talented developers, and HACS is the go-to platform for their creations. You’ll often find cutting-edge integrations or solutions to common challenges here before they’re available in the core platform.
4. Seamless Updates
HACS makes managing custom components simple. With its intuitive interface, you can:
Install new integrations in a few clicks.
Receive notifications when updates are available.
Update integrations directly within the Home Assistant UI.
5. Completely Open Source
True to Home Assistant’s ethos, HACS is 100% open source, ensuring transparency and fostering a collaborative ecosystem.
Popular HACS Integrations and Plugins
Some standout offerings available through HACS include:
Mini Graph Card : Create beautiful graphs for temperature, power usage, and more.
Lovelace Auto-Entities : Dynamically display entities on your dashboard based on filters.
Garbage Collection : Stay on top of your trash and recycling schedule.
Custom Animated Weather Cards : Add visually stunning weather widgets.
UI Themes : Transform the look and feel of your Home Assistant interface with themes like “Dark Mode” or “Google Material Design.”
How to Install and Use HACS
Installing HACS is straightforward, but it requires a few steps. Here’s a quick guide to get you started:
1. Prepare Home Assistant
Before you begin, ensure you’re running Home Assistant Core on a supported platform like Docker, a Raspberry Pi, or a virtual machine.We will continue with the docker installation, which was done in the first step.
How to install Homeassistant via Docker on an Azure Linux VM
2. Install HACS
HACS installation is best done via Home Assistant’s CLI:
Official Documentation: https://hacs.xyz/docs/use/configuration/basic/#to-set-up-the-hacs-integration
SSH into your Home Assistant setup.
Change to your config-volume, which in our case is mounted under /home/xxxUserDirxxx/homeassistant
Run the following command to install HACS:
curl -sfSL https://get.hacs.xyz | bash -
3. Integrate HACS with Home Assistant
- Once installed, restart Home Assistant.
- Navigate to Settings > Integrations in the Home Assistant UI.
Search for “HACS” and follow the on-screen instructions to complete setup.
Follow this detailed how-to for the final steps ->
4. Start Exploring
After setup, HACS will appear in your sidebar. Browse and install custom integrations, themes, and plugins with just a few clicks.
As you can see, I needed the integration “Fusion Solar” to connect my Huawei PV-Solution, and I installed the “Mobile App” as well. The next step will be installing the KNX/EIB solution so that I can interact with my home.
Frequently Asked Questions about HACS
What is HACS in Home Assistant?
HACS (Home Assistant Community Store) is a community-maintained store for installing and updating custom integrations, themes, and Lovelace cards that aren’t in Home Assistant’s official integration list.
Is HACS official or safe to use?
HACS isn’t an official Home Assistant project, but it’s widely used and open source. The integrations you install through it are community-made, so review a repository’s popularity and source before installing — just as you would with any third-party software.
Do I need HACS for Home Assistant?
No — Home Assistant works fully without it. You only need HACS once you want a custom integration, theme, or dashboard card that isn’t available in the built-in catalog.
How do I install HACS?
The quickest way is the official one-line installer run from your Home Assistant CLI, then adding HACS as an integration and authorizing it with a GitHub account. See the step-by-step section above.
What are the must-have HACS integrations?
Popular picks include custom Lovelace cards such as Mushroom and mini-graph-card, the Card Mod and Browser Mod tools, and device-specific integrations the core doesn’t ship — see the “Popular HACS Integrations” section above.
Cloudapp-dev, and before you leave us
Thank you for reading until the end. Before you go:
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