📅 Published: April 2026 | ✍️ By Brad Andrews | ⏱️ 9 min read
This is Part 3 of The Blueprint Series, your step-by-step roadmaps for taking full control of your connected home. If you are just getting started, begin with Part 1: Install Home Assistant From Scratch. If you have HA running and your zones set up, you are in the right place.
Home Assistant ships with over 3,000 built-in integrations. That sounds like a lot. And it is. But the community has built thousands more, and some of the best things running in my setup right now did not come from the official release. They came from HACS.
HACS stands for Home Assistant Community Store. It is a custom integration that adds a community-powered app store directly inside your Home Assistant UI. Custom dashboard cards, integrations for devices the official release does not support, themes, automation helpers. All are browsable, installable, and updatable without touching the command line.
I installed it on day two of running Home Assistant. I have never looked back.
But HACS also deserves a honest conversation about risk. I have a cybersecurity background and I still read code before I install anything. If you are going to use it (and you should), you need to understand what you are trusting and how to make that decision well.
What HACS Actually Is
HACS is itself a custom integration. You install it once, and it then becomes the delivery mechanism for everything else. It connects to GitHub, where the vast majority of Home Assistant community projects live, and surfaces them in a searchable UI inside your HA instance.
From inside HACS you can browse and install three types of content: integrations (custom components that add new devices or services to HA), frontend resources (custom Lovelace cards and themes for your dashboard), and automations (pre-built blueprint automations the community has shared).
Everything in HACS is open source and hosted publicly on GitHub. That is both its strength and the thing to be clear-eyed about: you are installing code written by individual developers, not vetted by the Home Assistant core team.
Step 1: Install HACS
HACS requires a one-time setup. You will need to run a script in your Home Assistant terminal, then authorise it with a GitHub account.
Prerequisites:
- Home Assistant OS or Supervised install (the recommended setup from Blueprint #1)
- The Advanced SSH & Web Terminal add-on installed (covered in Blueprint #1)
- A free GitHub account. You need one to authorise HACS
Installation steps:
- Open the Terminal add-on in Home Assistant (or SSH into your instance)
- Run the official HACS installation script:
bash
wget -O - https://get.hacs.xyz | bash -- When the script completes, restart Home Assistant. Go to Settings → System → Restart
- After restart, go to Settings → Devices & Services → Add Integration
- Search for HACS and click it
- Follow the on-screen prompts to link your GitHub account. HACS will show you a code to enter at github.com/login/device
- Once authorised, HACS appears in your left sidebar
Insider tip: During GitHub authorisation, HACS requests read access to your public repositories. It does not need access to private repos. If you are prompted to grant broader permissions than that, stop and check you are on the legitimate HACS authorisation page.
Step 2: Find and Install Something
Once HACS is running, browse to it in the sidebar. You will see three sections: Integrations, Frontend, and Automations.
To install anything:
- Click the category you want (Frontend for dashboard cards, Integrations for new device support)
- Search or browse for what you want
- Click the item, then click Download
- For integrations: restart Home Assistant, then add the integration via Settings → Devices & Services
- For frontend cards: go to your dashboard, click Edit → Add Card, and the new card will appear in the card picker
Some cards and integrations require additional configuration. Always read the repository README before installing. The README is accessible directly from the HACS item page.
What I Actually Use From HACS
Here is what is running in my setup right now, pulled directly from HACS.
Dashboard cards:
- Button Card: the most powerful custom card in the ecosystem. Nearly every button and tile on my dashboards uses it. Highly configurable with templates, custom styles, and state-based behaviour
- Bubble Card: a minimalist card collection with native popup support. I use it throughout my daily dashboard including a weather popup
- Weather Forecast Card: visual hourly and daily forecast display. The built-in HA weather card does not come close
- Team Tracker Card: displays real-time game scores paired with the Team Tracker integration. Leafs and Blue Jays both tracked
- HTML Jinja2 Template Card: renders Jinja2 templates as HTML directly in a dashboard card. Useful for dynamic content that does not fit a standard card layout
- Voice Satellite Card: companion card for local voice satellites, showing pipeline status and wake word state
- Sonos Card: a proper Sonos media player card with album art, queue management, and group controls
- Tesla Card: Tesla vehicle status, charge state, and controls in a single dashboard card
- Music Assistant Player Card: media controls for Music Assistant, which manages my Sonos speakers and Voice PE satellites together
Integrations:
- Team Tracker: pulls real-time scores for the Leafs and Blue Jays via ESPN APIs. Powers both the card above and game day automations
- Adaptive Lighting: automatically adjusts colour temperature and brightness across all lights based on time of day and circadian rhythm. One of the most impactful things running in the house
- Dyson: unofficial integration for my Dyson Hot+Cool fan. The official HA release does not support this device, but someone in the community built the integration. Now I can automate the fan as part of basement scenes. It runs during the day to circulate air and regulate temperature, and shuts off automatically when a movie starts
- iAqualink: controls my pool vacuum robot through Home Assistant. My pool equipment and hot tub are also connected through a HACS integration. None of this was possible on any platform I used before HA
- TaskMate: family chore management with reward tracking. Powers the kids chore tracker view on our tablet dashboard
- Variables+History: adds persistent variable storage to Home Assistant, useful for stateful automations that need to remember values across restarts
On finding things you never expected: I did not go looking for the Dyson integration, the iAqualink pool integration, or the hot tub support. I found all of them by browsing HACS. My pool equipment had never been connected to anything before. Not Vera, not Homeseer, nothing. Now the pool vacuum runs on a schedule, the hot tub can be triggered from a dashboard, and the whole backyard is part of the same automation system as the rest of the house. That is the thing about the community store: devices and use cases you never thought possible are just sitting there waiting to be discovered. It is worth browsing occasionally even when you are not looking for anything specific.
The Security Conversation You Need to Have With Yourself
I want to be direct here, because most HACS tutorials skip this entirely.
HACS gives you the ability to install code written by anyone into the system that controls your home, including your locks, your cameras, and your garage doors. That deserves serious thought.
I have a cybersecurity background. I read code before I install anything. Here is how I approach it, and how I would recommend you think about it too.
Check the repository health first. Before installing anything, click through to the GitHub repository. Look at the star count, the number of contributors, the commit history, and when it was last updated. A repository with thousands of stars, regular commits, and multiple contributors has a much larger surface area of community review than something one person wrote and abandoned two years ago. That does not make it safe, but it is a meaningful signal.
Read the README. Every legitimate HACS project has one. If a project has no documentation, no explanation of what it does or what permissions it needs, that is a red flag.
Use AI to review code you cannot read yourself. This is something I do and I think more people should. You can paste the source code, or a link to the repository, into Claude and ask it to explain what the code does, what network calls it makes, and whether anything looks unusual. It is not a security audit, but it is a meaningful layer of review that catches obvious problems. I have done this with several integrations before installing them.
Know what HACS cannot guarantee. HACS maintains a list of repositories flagged by the community as problematic. You can find the list at hacs.xyz/docs/contribute/maintainer. But there is no formal vetting process for every project in the store. The HACS team is explicit about this: you are using community software at your own risk.
Custom repositories carry higher risk. HACS allows you to add repositories that are not in the official store. I use custom repos, but I also know how to read code and I run multiple security layers on my home network. If you cannot review code yourself, sticking to well-established integrations in the main HACS store is the right call. The official store at least has community visibility working in your favour.
My honest take: HACS is worth using. The community it represents is extraordinary and the quality of the best projects rivals anything in the official release. But go in with your eyes open, check your sources, and do not install twenty things on day one. Add integrations deliberately, one at a time, and give yourself time to understand what each one is doing.
Keeping HACS Updated
HACS shows a notification badge when updates are available for installed items. I install updates as they become available, but not automatically.
My process: when an update appears, I click through to the changelog on GitHub before updating. Most updates are bug fixes and feature additions. Occasionally they change behaviour in ways worth knowing about before you restart. For integrations tied to critical automations like door locks, alarm systems, and anything security-adjacent, I read the diff before updating.
For dashboard cards, the risk profile is lower. A broken card stops displaying. A broken lock integration stops your locks from responding. Treat them differently.
A Note on the Official Add-on Store vs HACS
Home Assistant OS has a built-in Add-on Store (Settings → Add-ons) that is separate from HACS. Add-ons are containerised applications that run alongside Home Assistant, including File Editor, Studio Code Server, and Mosquitto MQTT broker. These are maintained by the Home Assistant team and Nabu Casa and carry a higher trust level.
HACS is for custom integrations and dashboard cards. It is code that runs inside Home Assistant, not alongside it. The distinction matters for how you think about risk. If you are unsure which one you need, the answer is usually: Add-on Store for infrastructure software, and HACS for device integrations and dashboard enhancements.
What Comes Next
HACS is how you unlock the best cards and integrations the community has built. The next step is knowing which ones are actually worth installing.
In Blueprint #4: The Essential Add-Ons and Cards Every HA User Needs, I walk through the exact HACS cards and integrations I run daily, with honest notes on what each one does, why I chose it, and what to expect during setup.
Quick Reference
| Official HA | HACS | |
|---|---|---|
| Maintained by | Home Assistant team | Community developers |
| Vetting process | Yes, core team review | Community flagging only |
| Install method | Settings → Integrations | HACS sidebar |
| Risk level | Lower | Higher. Read before installing |
| Best for | Core devices and services | Community devices, custom cards |
→ Next in the series: Blueprint #4: The Essential Add-Ons and Cards Every HA User Needs
→ Previous: Blueprint #2: Setting Up Zones and Geofencing
→ Start from the beginning: Blueprint #1: Install Home Assistant From Scratch
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