HACS, the Home Assistant Community Store, is a catalog of integrations, dashboard cards, themes and templates that people publish on GitHub, together with the tool that installs and updates them inside Home Assistant. Until Home Assistant 2026.10 it was a separate custom integration that you installed yourself. Since 2026.11, released on 4 November 2026, it is built in as the Marketplace, under Settings → Marketplace.
My own instance still runs Home Assistant 2026.9 with HACS. I'm waiting for the first bugfix release of 2026.11 before I upgrade, so everything about the Marketplace below comes from the release notes and the Home Assistant documentation, not from my own use.
What is HACS?
Home Assistant ships with a large set of integrations. Many more devices, services and dashboard cards are covered by projects that individual developers maintain on GitHub. HACS lists these projects, installs them into your configuration folder and tells you when a new version is out.
The Marketplace installs four kinds of content (older HACS versions also managed AppDaemon apps and Python scripts):
-
Integrations go into the
custom_componentsfolder. Most are then added under Settings → Devices & services, some need a restart or YAML configuration first. -
Dashboard cards go into
www/communityand are registered as a dashboard resource. -
Themes go into the
themesfolder and are selected in your user profile, providedconfiguration.yamlloads that folder. -
Templates are reusable template macros in
custom_templates.
Updates show up under Settings → Updates, next to the Home Assistant updates. The naming is a little confusing now. The HACS project itself uses HACS for the project and for the versions before 2026.11, and Marketplace for the integration built into Home Assistant from 2026.11. I do the same here.
HACS and the Marketplace from Home Assistant 2026.11
From 2026.11 there is nothing to install. Settings → Marketplace is there from the start and is available to administrators only. The first visit shows a warning, and installing or updating only works after you accept it.
You no longer need a GitHub account to browse the catalog, install from it or update. GitHub is only needed for projects that are not in the catalog, which you add and keep updated through Add from link, and for a higher request limit. The connection asks for no access to private repositories and no permission to change anything on GitHub.
If you already used HACS, Home Assistant migrates it on the first start after the update. What you installed stays installed. The Marketplace keeps updating it, with three exceptions: AppDaemon apps, Python scripts and custom repositories without a hacs.json file. Their files stay and keep working, but they get no more updates. The full list of changes and the install steps for older versions are in how to install HACS in Home Assistant.
What people use HACS for
Mostly for three things: devices that Home Assistant doesn't support or supports only partly, dashboard cards that don't exist in core, and themes.
In my setup that is a short list. The Huawei Solar integration reads my inverter, Tapo: Cameras Control brings in the Tapo cameras with privacy mode and motion detection as entities, and button-card is the custom card I reach for when the built-in ones aren't enough. For the parts that run the house, KNX above all, I use built-in integrations, because they are maintained as part of Home Assistant. I wrote up the rest of the list and the reasons in the HACS integrations I actually run.
Is HACS safe?
Everything in the catalog is written and published by the community. The Home Assistant documentation is direct about it: nothing in the Marketplace is tested, audited or supported by the Home Assistant project. An integration runs inside Home Assistant and can access your home, your data and the system Home Assistant runs on.
There are a few safety nets. A repository can be removed from the catalog, for example when its author no longer maintains it. If you have it installed, a repair tells you why. In the rare case that a repository is marked as critical, for example because an update deletes data, the Marketplace uninstalls it immediately and restarts Home Assistant.
That doesn't replace looking at a project before installing it. I check whether it still gets commits, whether issues get answered, and whether a built-in integration already does the same job.
Popular HACS integrations and cards
A few projects worth a look:
- Mushroom: minimal dashboard cards.
- card-mod: custom CSS for almost any card.
- mini-graph-card: compact history graphs for sensors.
- auto-entities: fills cards by filter instead of fixed entity lists.
- Frigate: connects Home Assistant to a Frigate instance that you run separately for local object detection on your cameras.
The HACS integrations directory lists all of them ranked by GitHub stars, and Trending in HACS shows which repositories are gaining stars right now.
How to install HACS
On Home Assistant 2026.11 or newer you don't install anything, you open Settings → Marketplace.
On 2026.10 or older it takes about ten minutes: download HACS (as the Get HACS app on HAOS, with the installer script on Container and Core), restart Home Assistant, add the HACS integration and authorise it with GitHub. Every step, the Docker route and the common errors are in how to install HACS in Home Assistant.
Frequently asked questions
What is HACS in Home Assistant?
HACS, the Home Assistant Community Store, is a catalog of community-made integrations, dashboard cards, themes and templates, together with the tool that installs and updates them. From Home Assistant 2026.11 it is built in as the Marketplace.
Is HACS official?
From 2026.11 Home Assistant includes the Marketplace, which distributes community content without testing, auditing or supporting it. Before 2026.11, HACS was a community integration that you installed separately.
Do I need a GitHub account for HACS?
From 2026.11 the catalog works without a GitHub account, but adding and updating repositories outside the catalog needs one. Older HACS versions require an account.
Do I need HACS for Home Assistant?
No, Home Assistant works without HACS. I use it for the few community integrations and cards my setup needs.
Can I still install HACS on Home Assistant 2026.11?
No, Home Assistant 2026.11 blocks the HACS custom integration, so you use Settings → Marketplace.
What happens to what I installed with HACS?
It carries over to the Marketplace with your custom repositories and update entities. AppDaemon apps, Python scripts and custom repositories without hacs.json stay installed but get no more updates.
Next step
If you're on an older version, start with how to install HACS in Home Assistant. Once it runs, the HACS integrations I actually run and the HACS integrations directory are the places to look for what to install.
Originally published at cloudapp.dev, where it is kept up to date.
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