Home Assistant is

free and open-source software Free and open-source software (FOSS) is software available under a license that grants users the right to use, modify, and distribute the software modified or not to everyone free of charge. FOSS is an inclusive umbrella term encompassing free ...

used for

home automation Home automation or domotics is building automation for a home. A home automation system will monitor and/or control home attributes such as lighting, climate, entertainment systems, and appliances. It may also include home security such ...

. It serves as an integration platform and

smart home hub A smart home hub, sometimes also referred to as a smart hub or ''gateway'', is a control center for a smart home, and enables the components of a smart home to communicate and respond to each other via communication through a central point. The ...

, allowing users to control

smart home ''SMart'' was a British CBBC television programme based on art, which began in 1994 and ended in 2009. The programme was recorded at BBC Television Centre in London. Previously it had been recorded in Studio A at Pebble Mill Studios in Birming ...

devices. The software emphasizes local control and privacy and is designed to be independent of any specific

Internet of Things Internet of things (IoT) describes devices with sensors, processing ability, software and other technologies that connect and exchange data with other devices and systems over the Internet or other communication networks. The IoT encompasse ...

(IoT) ecosystem. Its interface can be accessed through a web-based

user interface In the industrial design field of human–computer interaction, a user interface (UI) is the space where interactions between humans and machines occur. The goal of this interaction is to allow effective operation and control of the machine fro ...

, by using companion apps for Android and

iOS Ios, Io or Nio (, ; ; locally Nios, Νιός) is a Greek island in the Cyclades group in the Aegean Sea. Ios is a hilly island with cliffs down to the sea on most sides. It is situated halfway between Naxos and Santorini. It is about long an ...

, or by voice commands via a supported

virtual assistant A virtual assistant (VA) is a software agent that can perform a range of tasks or services for a user based on user input such as commands or questions, including verbal ones. Such technologies often incorporate chatbot capabilities to streaml ...

, such as

Google Assistant Google Assistant is a virtual assistant software application developed by Google that is primarily available on home automation and mobile devices. Based on artificial intelligence, Google Assistant can engage in two-way conversations, unlike ...

Amazon Alexa Amazon Alexa is a virtual assistant technology marketed by Amazon and implemented in software applications for smart phones, tablets, wireless smart speakers, and other electronic appliances. Alexa was largely developed from a Polish speech s ...

Apple Siri Siri ( , backronym: Speech Interpretation and Recognition Interface) is a digital assistant purchased, developed, and popularized by Apple Inc., which is included in the iOS, iPadOS, watchOS, macOS, Apple TV, audioOS, and visionOS operating sys ...

, and Home Assistant's own "Assist" (a built-in local voice assistant) using natural language. The Home Assistant software application is commonly run on a

computer appliance A computer appliance is a computer system with a combination of Computer hardware, hardware, software, or firmware that is specifically designed to provide a particular computing resource. Such devices became known as ''appliances'' because of ...

with "Home Assistant Operating System" that will act as a central control system for

(commonly called a smart home hub/gateway/bridge/controller), that has the purpose of controlling IoT connectivity technology devices, software, applications and services from third-parties via modular integration components, including native integration components for common wired or wireless communication protocols and standards for IoT products such as

Bluetooth Bluetooth is a short-range wireless technology standard that is used for exchanging data between fixed and mobile devices over short distances and building personal area networks (PANs). In the most widely used mode, transmission power is li ...

Zigbee Zigbee is an IEEE 802.15.4-based specification for a suite of high-level communication protocols used to create personal area networks with small, low-power digital radios, such as for home automation, medical device data collection, and oth ...

Z-Wave Z-Wave is a wireless communications protocol used primarily for residential and commercial building automation. It is a mesh network using low-energy radio waves to communicate from device to device, allowing for wireless control of smart home d ...

, EnOcean, and Thread/

Matter In classical physics and general chemistry, matter is any substance that has mass and takes up space by having volume. All everyday objects that can be touched are ultimately composed of atoms, which are made up of interacting subatomic pa ...

(used to create either local

personal area network A personal area network (PAN) is a computer network for interconnecting electronic devices within an individual person's workspace. A PAN provides data transmission among devices such as computers, smartphones, tablets and personal digital assi ...

s or direct ad hoc connections with small smart home devices using low-power

digital radio Digital radio is the use of digital technology to transmit or receive across the radio spectrum. Digital transmission by radio waves includes digital broadcasting, and especially digital audio radio services. This should not be confused with In ...

s), or

Wi-Fi Wi-Fi () is a family of wireless network protocols based on the IEEE 802.11 family of standards, which are commonly used for Wireless LAN, local area networking of devices and Internet access, allowing nearby digital devices to exchange data by ...

and

Ethernet Ethernet ( ) is a family of wired computer networking technologies commonly used in local area networks (LAN), metropolitan area networks (MAN) and wide area networks (WAN). It was commercially introduced in 1980 and first standardized in 198 ...

connected devices on a home network / local area network (LAN). Home Assistant supports controlling devices and services connected via either open and proprietary ecosystems or commercial smart home hubs/gateways/bridges as long they provide public access via some kind of open API or MQTT interface to allow for third-party integration over either the

local area network A local area network (LAN) is a computer network that interconnects computers within a limited area such as a residence, campus, or building, and has its network equipment and interconnects locally managed. LANs facilitate the distribution of da ...

Internet The Internet (or internet) is the Global network, global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a internetworking, network of networks ...

, which includes integrations for Alexa Smart Home (Amazon Echo), Google Nest (Google Home), HomeKit (Apple Home), Samsung SmartThings, and Philips Hue. Information from all devices and their attributes (entities) that the application sees can be used and controlled via automation or script using

scheduling A schedule (, ) or a timetable, as a basic time-management tool, consists of a list of times at which possible tasks, events, or actions are intended to take place, or of a sequence of events in the chronological order in which such things ...

subroutine In computer programming, a function (also procedure, method, subroutine, routine, or subprogram) is a callable unit of software logic that has a well-defined interface and behavior and can be invoked multiple times. Callable units provide a ...

s (including preconfigured "blueprint"), e.g. for controlling lighting, climate, entertainment systems and smart home appliances.

History

The project was started as a Python application by Paulus Schoutsen in September 2013 and first published publicly on

GitHub GitHub () is a Proprietary software, proprietary developer platform that allows developers to create, store, manage, and share their code. It uses Git to provide distributed version control and GitHub itself provides access control, bug trackin ...

in November 2013. In July 2017, a managed

operating system An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware and software resources, and provides common daemon (computing), services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems scheduler (computing), schedule tasks for ...

called ''Hass.io'' was initially introduced to make it easier to use Home Assistant on single-board computers like the

Raspberry Pi Raspberry Pi ( ) is a series of small single-board computers (SBCs) developed in the United Kingdom by the Raspberry Pi Foundation in collaboration with Broadcom Inc., Broadcom. To commercialize the product and support its growing demand, the ...

series. This has since been renamed to "Home Assistant Operating System" (and is often referred to as "Home Assistant OS"), and uses the concept of a bundled "supervisor" management system that allows users to manage, backup, update the local installation and enable the option to extend the functionality of the software with add-ons (plug-in applications) to run as services on the same platform for tighter integrations with Home Assistant core. An optional "Home Assistant Cloud" subscription service was introduced in December 2017 as an external

cloud computing Cloud computing is "a paradigm for enabling network access to a scalable and elastic pool of shareable physical or virtual resources with self-service provisioning and administration on-demand," according to International Organization for ...

service officially supported by the Home Assistant founders to solve the complexities associated with secured remote access, as well as linking to various third-party cloud services, such as Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant. Nabu Casa, Inc. was formed in September 2018 to take over this subscription service. The company's funding is based solely on revenue from the "Home Assistant Cloud" subscription service. The money earned is used to finance the project's infrastructure and to pay for full-time employees contributing to the Home Assistant and ESPHome projects. In January 2020, branding was adjusted to make it easier to refer to different parts of the project. The main piece of software was renamed ''Home Assistant Core'', while the full suite of software with the ''Hass.io''

embedded operating system An embedded operating system (EOS) is an operating system designed specifically for embedded computer systems. These systems aim to enhance functionality and reliability to perform dedicated tasks. When the multitasking method employed allows ...

with a bundled "supervisor" management system was renamed ''Home Assistant'' (though it is also commonly referred to as "HAOS" as in short for "Home Assistant OS"). In April 2024, ownership of the Home Assistant source code and brand name was transferred to the newly created "Open Home Foundation" non-profit organization. The founder of Home Assistant made statements in the announcement that this transfer of ownership and change in governance should mean no practical change to its developers or users as it was primarily done to ensure that Home Assistant source code will remain a

and with a continued focus on privacy and local control. Statements in the press release also included secondary plans and goals of making Home Assistant transition from an enthusiast platform to a mainstream consumer product. Ownership of many of the open-source libraries that Home Assistant uses as dependencies and other related entities was also transferred to the Open Home Foundation non-profit organization.

Features

Hardware

Home Assistant is supported and can be installed on multiple platforms. Pre-installed hardware appliances are also available for purchase from a few different manufacturers. Compatible hardware platforms include

single-board computer A single-board computer (SBC) is a complete computer built on a single circuit board, with microprocessor(s), memory, input/output (I/O) and other features required of a functional computer. Single-board computers are commonly made as demonst ...

s (for example Hardkernel ODROID,

, Intel NUC), operating systems like

Windows Windows is a Product lining, product line of Proprietary software, proprietary graphical user interface, graphical operating systems developed and marketed by Microsoft. It is grouped into families and subfamilies that cater to particular sec ...

macOS macOS, previously OS X and originally Mac OS X, is a Unix, Unix-based operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc., Apple since 2001. It is the current operating system for Apple's Mac (computer), Mac computers. With ...

Linux Linux ( ) is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an kernel (operating system), operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically package manager, pac ...

as well as

virtual machine In computing, a virtual machine (VM) is the virtualization or emulator, emulation of a computer system. Virtual machines are based on computer architectures and provide the functionality of a physical computer. Their implementations may involve ...

s and

NAS Nas (born 1973) is the stage name of American rapper Nasir Jones. Nas, NaS, or NAS may also refer to: Aviation * Nasair, a low-cost airline carrier and subsidiary based in Eritrea * National Air Services, an airline in Saudi Arabia ** Nas Air (S ...

systems. Windows support is via a Windows VM or installing the

Windows Subsystem for Linux Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) is a component of Microsoft Windows that allows the use of a GNU/Linux environment from within Windows, foregoing the overhead of a virtual machine and being an alternative to dual booting. The WSL command-lin ...

(WSL). On officially recommended hardware platforms like the Hardkernel ODROID N2+ and

4/5 single-board computers, the installation requires flashing a corresponding system image onto a

microSD Secure Digital (SD) is a proprietary hardware, proprietary, non-volatile memory, non-volatile, flash memory card format developed by the SD Association (SDA). Owing to their compact size, SD cards have been widely adopted in a variety of port ...

card, eMMC, or other local storage from which the system can boot. It is possible to use Home Assistant as a gateway or

bridge A bridge is a structure built to Span (engineering), span a physical obstacle (such as a body of water, valley, road, or railway) without blocking the path underneath. It is constructed for the purpose of providing passage over the obstacle, whi ...

for devices using different IoT technologies like

; necessary hardware can be mounted onto GPIO (Serial/I2C/SMBus),

UART A universal asynchronous receiver-transmitter (UART ) is a peripheral device for asynchronous serial communication in which the data format and transmission speeds are configurable. It sends data bits one by one, from the least significant to ...

, or using USB ports. Moreover, it can connect directly or indirectly to local IoT devices, control hubs/gateways/bridges or

cloud services Cloud computing is "a paradigm for enabling network access to a scalable and elastic pool of shareable physical or virtual resources with self-service provisioning and administration on-demand," according to ISO. Essential characteristics ...

from many different vendors, including other open and closed smart home ecosystems. In December 2020, a customized ODROID N2+

with bundled software was introduced under the product name "Home Assistant Blue" as an officially supported common hardware reference platform. The same package is also referred to as "ODROID-N2+ Home Assistant Bundle" when sold without the official custom-made enclosure. It comes with Home Assistant OS pre-installed on local eMMC storage, a power-adapter, and a custom Home Assistant themed enclosure. Home Assistant founders made it clear that the release of official hardware would not keep them from supporting other hardware platforms like the

series. In September 2021, Home Assistant developers at Nabu Casa announced a crowdfunding campaign on

Crowd Supply Crowd Supply is a crowdfunding platform based in Portland, Oregon. The platform has claimed "over twice the success rate of Kickstarter and Indiegogo", and partners with creators who use it, providing mentorship resembling a business incubator. ...

for pre-orders of "Home Assistant Yellow" (initially called "Home Assistant Amber"), a new official home automation controller hardware platform with Home Assistant pre-installed, a spiritual successor to "Home Assistant Blue". "Home Assistant Yellow" is designed to be an appliance, and its internals are architected with a carrier board (or "baseboard") for a

computer-on-module A computer-on-module (COM) is a type of single-board computer (SBC), a subtype of an embedded computer system. An extension of the concept of System on a chip, system on chip (SoC) and system in package (SiP), COM lies between a full-up computer ...

s compatible with the Raspberry Pi Compute Module 4 (CM4) embedded computer as well as an integrated M.2 expansion slot meant for either an

NVMe NVM Express (NVMe) or Non-Volatile Memory Host Controller Interface Specification (NVMHCIS) is an open, logical-device interface specification for accessing a computer's non-volatile storage media usually attached via the PCI Express bus. The in ...

SSD A solid-state drive (SSD) is a type of solid-state storage device that uses Integrated circuit, integrated circuits to store data persistence (computer science), persistently. It is sometimes called semiconductor storage device, solid-stat ...

as expanded storage or for an

AI accelerator A neural processing unit (NPU), also known as AI accelerator or deep learning processor, is a class of specialized hardware accelerator or computer system designed to accelerate artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning applications, inc ...

card, and an onboard EFR32 based radio module made by Silicon Labs capable of acting as a Zigbee Coordinator or Thread Leader (Thread Border Router), as well as optional variant with PoE (Power over Ethernet) support. The most otherwise notable features missing on "Home Assistant Yellow" are an

HDMI High-Definition Multimedia Interface (HDMI) is a proprietary digital interface used to transmit high-quality video and audio signals between devices. It is commonly used to connect devices such as televisions, computer monitors, projectors, gam ...

DisplayPort DisplayPort (DP) is a digital interface used to connect a video source, such as a Personal computer, computer, to a display device like a Computer monitor, monitor. Developed by the Video Electronics Standards Association (VESA), it can also car ...

to connect a monitor, (which is likely due to it like most smart home hubs being purpose-built to act as a

headless system A headless computer is a computer system or device that has been configured to operate without a monitor (the missing "head"), Keyboard (computing), keyboard, and mouse (computing), mouse. A headless system is typically controlled over a network c ...

), as well as lack of onboard

, and a

USB 3.0 Universal Serial Bus 3.0 (USB 3.0), marketed as SuperSpeed USB, is the third major version of the Universal Serial Bus (USB) standard for interfacing computers and electronic devices. It was released in November 2008. The USB 3.0 specification ...

port by default. Shipping of "Home Assistant Yellow" is targeted for June 2022. In June 2022, Home Assistant developers at Nabu Casa announced their officially supported "Home Assistant SkyConnect", a multi-protocol IoT USB radio dongle capable of Zigbee and/or Thread low-power wireless protocols, that enable plug-and-play support for Home Assistant's built-in Zigbee gateway (the "ZHA" integration) and experimental Thread/Matter integrations. In September 2023, Home Assistant developers at Nabu Casa announced their officially supported "Home Assistant Green" as an entry-level computer appliance that is meant to make it easier for new users to get started with Home Assistant from scratch. It does however only feature an Ethernet port (for connection to the user's LAN) and two USB ports. That is, unlike the previous "Home Assistant Yellow" this new computer appliance does not include any built-in IoT radios for Zigbee and Thread low-power wireless protocols, so users wanting to connect such devices will need to buy separate USB radio dongles for each such protocol.

Dashboard

The primary front-end

dashboard A dashboard (also called dash, instrument panel or IP, or fascia) is a control panel (engineering), control panel set within the central console of a vehicle, boat, or cockpit of an aircraft or spacecraft. Usually located directly ahead of the ...

system is called Home Assistant dashboards, which offers different

cards {{Redirect, CARDS, other uses, Cards (disambiguation){{!Cards The CARDS programme, of Community Assistance for Reconstruction, Development and Stabilisation, is the EU's main instrument of financial assistance to the Western Balkans, covering spec ...

to display information and control devices. Cards can display information provided by a connected device or control a resource (lights, thermostats, and other devices). The interface design language is based on

Material Design Material Design (codename Quantum Paper) is a design language developed by Google in 2014. Expanding on the "cards" UI that debuted in Google Now, Material Design uses more grid-based layouts, responsive animations and transitions, padding, an ...

and can be customized using global themes. The GUI is customizable using the integrated editor or by modifying the underlying

YAML YAML ( ) is a human-readable data serialization language. It is commonly used for configuration files and in applications where data is being stored or transmitted. YAML targets many of the same communications applications as Extensible Marku ...

code. Cards can be extended with custom resources, which are often created by community members.

Automation

Home Assistant acts as a central smart home controller hub by combining different devices and services in a single place and integrating them as entities. The provided rule-based system for automation allows creating custom routines based on a trigger event, conditions and actions, including scripts. These enable

building automation Building automation (BAS), also known as building management system (BMS) or building energy management system (BEMS), is the automatic centralized control of a building's HVAC, HVAC (heating, ventilation and air conditioning), electrical, light ...

alarm management Alarm management is the application of human factors and ergonomics along with instrumentation engineering and systems thinking to manage the design of an alarm system to increase its usability. Most often the major usability problem is that ...

security alarm A security alarm is a system designed to detect intrusions, such as unauthorized entry, into a building or other areas, such as a home or school. Security alarms protect against burglary (theft) or property damage, as well as against intruders. ...

s and

video surveillance Closed-circuit television (CCTV), also known as video surveillance, is the use of closed-circuit television cameras to transmit a signal to a specific place on a limited set of monitors. It differs from broadcast television in that the signal ...

for

home security Home security includes both the Security alarm, security hardware placed on a property and individuals' Security of person, personal security practices. Security hardware includes doors, locks, alarm systems, lighting, motion detectors, and secu ...

system as well as monitoring of energy measuring devices. Since December 2020, it is possible to use automation blueprints - pre-made automation from the community that can be easily added to an existing system.

Security

Home Assistant is an

on-premises software On-premises software (abbreviated to on-prem, and often written as "on-premise") is installed and runs on computers on the premises of the person or organization using the software, rather than at a remote facility such as a server farm or clo ...

product with a focus on local control, which has been described as beneficial to the security of the platform, specifically when compared to closed-source home automation software based on

proprietary hardware Proprietary hardware is computer hardware whose interface is controlled by the proprietor, often under patent or trade-secret protection. Historically, most early computer hardware was designed as proprietary until the 1980s, when IBM PC chang ...

and cloud services. There is no remote access enabled by default and data is stored solely on the device itself. User accounts can be secured with

two-factor authentication Multi-factor authentication (MFA; two-factor authentication, or 2FA) is an electronic authentication method in which a user is granted access to a website or Application software, application only after successfully presenting two or more distin ...

to prevent access even if the user password becomes compromised. Add-ons receive a security rating based on their access to system resources. At the beginning of January 2021, cybersecurity analyst Oriel Goel found a directory traversal security vulnerability in custom integrations from third parties. Home Assistant made a public service announcement on January 22, 2021 disclosing the vulnerability problems and informing that that the issues had been addressed in Home Assistant version 2021.1.5 which was released on January 23. Later in January 2021, it made a second security disclosure about another security vulnerability that also had been fixed. There is no information about whether any vulnerability was ever exploited. In March 2023, a full authentication bypass was discovered in Home Assistant, earning a CVE score of 10/10. This security issue affected Home Assistant's default remote access solution, Nabu Casa, due to Nabu Casa's remote access security model that publicly exposes the local Home Assistant server to the public internet. This security issue allows bad actors full control of any Home Assistant server they can access due to the full auth bypass.

Reception

Home Assistant took second place in 2017 and 2018 for the Thomas Krenn Award (formerly Open Source Grant), later winning first place in 2019. Home Assistant also won a DINACon award in 2018 for their "Open Internet Award" category, as well as being a nominee for the same awards in 2013. Home Assistant has been included in a number of product and platform comparisons, where, like many other non-commercial smart home hubs/gateways/bridges/controllers for

, it has often been criticized for forcing users into a tedious file-based setup procedure using text-based

markup-language instead of graphical user interfaces. However, newer versions of Home Assistant produced by the core development team make the configuration (from initial installation as well as most basic configurations) more user-friendly by allowing configuration using the web-based

graphical user interface A graphical user interface, or GUI, is a form of user interface that allows user (computing), users to human–computer interaction, interact with electronic devices through Graphics, graphical icon (computing), icons and visual indicators such ...

as well as the original

scripting. GitHub's "''State of the Octoverse''" in 2019 listed Home Assistant as the tenth biggest open-source project on its platform with 6,300 contributors. At the GitHub's "''State of the Octoverse''" in 2024, Home Assistant became the top open source project on the platform by contributors, with more than 21,000 users contributing, which only included the Home Assistant core application (and not the frontend and not other libraries that the project develops for Home Assistant).

References

External links

*
Community forum
{{HVAC Smart home hubs Home automation Automation software Smart devices Building automation Alarms Security Digital video recorders Video surveillance 2013 software IOS software Free and open-source Android software Embedded Linux Embedded operating systems Embedded Linux distributions Free and open-source software Free software programmed in Python Software using the Apache license