2024.12.5
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Install Home Assistant Operating System

Download the appropriate image

After downloading, decompress the image. If the image comes in a ZIP file, for example, unzip it.

Follow this guide if you already are running a supported virtual machine hypervisor. If you are not familiar with virtual machines, install Home Assistant OS directly on a Home Assistant Yellow, a Raspberry Pi, or an ODROID.

  • If VirtualBox is not supported on your Mac, and you have experience using virtual machines, you can try running the Home Assistant Operating System on UTM.

Create the virtual machine

Load the appliance image into your virtual machine hypervisor. (Note: You are free to assign as much resources as you wish to the VM, please assign enough based on your add-on needs).

Minimum recommended assignments:

  • 2 GB RAM
  • 32 GB Storage
  • 2vCPU

All these can be extended if your usage calls for more resources.

Hypervisor specific configuration

  1. Create a new virtual machine.
  2. Select type Linux and version Linux 2.6 / 3.x / 4.x (64-bit).
  3. Under Hardware, select the amount of memory and number of CPUs. Then, select Enable EFI.
    • Make sure EFI is enabled. If EFI is not enabled, HAOS won’t boot.
  4. Under Hard Disk, select Use an existing virtual hard disk file, select the unzipped VDI file from above.
  5. Then go to Network > Adapter 1. Choose Bridged Adapter and choose your network adapter.
    Please keep in mind that the bridged adapter only functions over a hardwired Ethernet connection. Using Wi-Fi on your VirtualBox host is unsupported.
  6. Then go to Audio and choose Intel HD Audio as audio controller.

By default, VirtualBox does not free up unused disk space. To automatically shrink the vdi disk image the discard option must be enabled using your host machine’s terminal:

VBoxManage storageattach <VM name> --storagectl "SATA" --port 0 --device 0 --nonrotational on --discard on

More details can be found about the command can be found here.

Start up your virtual machine

  1. Start the virtual machine.
  2. Observe the boot process of the Home Assistant Operating System.
  3. Once completed, you will be able to reach Home Assistant on homeassistant.local:8123. If you are running an older Windows version or have a stricter network configuration, you might need to access Home Assistant at homeassistant:8123 or http://X.X.X.X:8123 (replace X.X.X.X with your ’s IP address).

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With the Home Assistant Operating System installed and accessible, you can continue with onboarding.

  Onboarding

Install Home Assistant Core

Caution

This is an advanced installation process, and some steps might differ on your system. Considering the nature of this installation type, we assume you can handle subtle differences between this document and the system configuration you are using. When in doubt, please consider one of the other installation methods, as they might be a better fit instead.

Prerequisites

This guide assumes that you already have an operating system setup and have installed Python 3.13 (including the package python3-dev) or newer.

Install dependencies

Before you start, make sure your system is fully updated, all packages in this guide are installed with apt, if your OS does not have that, look for alternatives.

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade -y

Install the dependencies:

sudo apt-get install -y python3 python3-dev python3-venv python3-pip bluez libffi-dev libssl-dev libjpeg-dev zlib1g-dev autoconf build-essential libopenjp2-7 libtiff6 libturbojpeg0-dev tzdata ffmpeg liblapack3 liblapack-dev libatlas-base-dev

The above-listed dependencies might differ or missing, depending on your system or personal use of Home Assistant.

Create an account

Add an account for Home Assistant Core called homeassistant. Since this account is only for running Home Assistant Core the extra arguments of -rm is added to create a system account and create a home directory.

sudo useradd -rm homeassistant

Create the virtual environment

First we will create a directory for the installation of Home Assistant Core and change the owner to the homeassistant account.

sudo mkdir /srv/homeassistant
sudo chown homeassistant:homeassistant /srv/homeassistant

Next up is to create and change to a virtual environment for Home Assistant Core. This will be done as the homeassistant account.

sudo -u homeassistant -H -s
cd /srv/homeassistant
python3 -m venv .
source bin/activate

Once you have activated the virtual environment (notice the prompt change to (homeassistant) homeassistant@raspberrypi:/srv/homeassistant $) you will need to run the following command to install a required Python package.

python3 -m pip install wheel

Once you have installed the required Python package, it is now time to install Home Assistant Core!

pip3 install homeassistant==2024.12.5

Troubleshooting: If you do not see the above version of Home Assistant package in your environment, make sure you have the correct Python version installed, as defined under the Prerequisites.

Start Home Assistant Core for the first time. This will complete the installation for you, automatically creating the .homeassistant configuration directory in the /home/homeassistant directory, and installing any basic dependencies.

hass

You can now reach your installation via the web interface on http://homeassistant.local:8123.

If this address doesn’t work you may also try http://localhost:8123 or http://X.X.X.X:8123 (replace X.X.X.X with your machines’ IP address).

Note

When you run the hass command for the first time, it will download, install and cache the necessary libraries/dependencies. This procedure may take anywhere between 5 to 10 minutes. During that time, you may get a site cannot be reached error when accessing the web interface. This will only happen the first time. Subsequent restarts will be much faster.