Home Assistant integrations are the building blocks that enable your smart home devices and services to work together. The platform supports almost 3,000 official integrations, allowing you to extend the core functionality beyond what is available with a default Home Assistant installation.
For even more customization, the Home Assistant Community Store (HACS) offers third-party integrations, custom components, and themes. These community-developed additions provide advanced features and flexibility, catering to specific needs and enhancing your smart home experience.
This article highlights 15 of the best and most useful HACS integrations for Home Assistant, to help you customize and extend your smart home setup. While community-developed integrations are generally considered safe, it’s important to note that they are custom-built modules and should be installed at your own risk.
Relevant: Best Home Assistant Add-ons in 2024
Remote Home Assistant
Remote Home Assistant enables users to link multiple Home Assistant instances, providing a centralized control interface from multiple locations or setups. It’s ideal for managing different properties or setups from one main instance, as it allows real-time monitoring and control across instances without needing to switch between them.
I use this integration to link my office Home Assistant instance to my home one and check on things from one place. The integration is super simple to setup, but requires a bit of tweaking to expose only what you need to in the main instance.
- Integration: Remote Home Assistant
- Category: Remote Access
- Made By: lukas-hetzenecker
- GitHub: custom-components/remote_homeassistant
ZHA Toolkit
If you prefer using ZHA (Zigbee Home Automation) for your Zigbee devices in Home Assistant, you might feel that its built-in capabilities are somewhat limited, especially compared to Zigbee2MQTT. The ZHA Toolkit add-on enhances the standard ZHA integration, unlocking advanced features and controls that provide deeper management of your Zigbee devices.
Although ZHA Toolkit has a bit of a learning curve, users can perform advanced tasks not available in the default ZHA integration. The toolkit enables low-level Zigbee operations, such as binding clusters between devices for better interoperability, removing unwanted bindings, and setting up custom reporting for specific device attributes, like battery levels or sensor readings. Additionally, ZHA Toolkit offers a backup and restore function for Zigbee network data, allowing users to protect and recover their network configuration if needed.
- Integration: ZHA Toolkit
- Category: Zigbee Network Toolset
- Made By: mdeweerd
- GitHub: mdeweerd/zha-toolkit
Battery Notes
Battery Notes is a simple HACS tool for tracking battery information by adding notes to devices. It allows users to specify battery types and replacement dates, ensuring that devices are maintained and batteries replaced on time. Battery Notes integrates well with Home Assistant’s notification system, so you can receive timely reminders about low or expiring batteries. If you have many battery-powered smart devices, this integration is a must-have to streamline maintenance.
- Integration: Battery Notes
- Category: Battery Tracking
- Made By: andrew-codechimp
- GitHub: andrew-codechimp/HA-Battery-Notes
Powercalc
Powercalc is a module that estimates power consumption for devices without built-in energy monitoring. By creating power profiles, it calculates energy usage based on device states, supporting a comprehensive energy management strategy within Home Assistant.
Powercalc is capable of calculating the energy consumption of a lightbulb dynamically, with different values when it’s operating on full brightness or in a dimmed state. It provides very accurate estimates if the input data is correct. This integration is ideal for users aiming to monitor their home’s energy footprint and optimize consumption for cost savings.
- Integration: Powercalc
- Category: Energy Monitoring
- Made By: bramstroker
- GitHub: bramstroker/homeassistant-powercalc
Adaptive Lightning
Adaptive Lighting is a Home Assistant integration that adjusts your smart lights’ color temperature and brightness throughout the day to match natural daylight patterns. It provides a more comfortable and energy-efficient lighting environment by mimicking the gradual changes in daylight, from warm tones in the morning and evening to cooler, brighter tones during midday. This feature creates a natural, visually pleasant atmosphere in your home without manual adjustments.
- Integration: Adaptive Lightning
- Category: Lightning
- Made By: basnijholt
- GitHub: basnijholt/adaptive-lighting
Presence Simulation
Presence Simulation automates your home’s lighting and devices to simulate activity, making it appear as though someone is home even when you’re away. It randomly switches lights and devices on and off based on typical patterns, enhancing security by deterring potential intruders. This add-on is ideal for vacations or extended absences, adding a layer of protection to your smart home.
If you live a crowded and crime-prone area, this integration can save you from a future headache. Everything is good until it isn’t.
- Integration: Presence Simulation
- Category: DIY Security
- Made By: slashback100
- GitHub: slashback100/presence_simulation
Bambu Lab
Bambu Lab connects Bambu Lab 3D printers, offering real-time monitoring of print jobs and printer status. Users can receive notifications and manage printer operations remotely for smoother 3D printing experiences. This integration also tracks environmental conditions within the printer, providing data to help ensure high-quality prints. You can even integrate the camera of the printer and create a dashboard for a live video feed of your prints.
This integration is very data rich, exposing a bunch of sensors in Home Assistant like chamber and nozzle temperatures, fan speeds, print progress, weight, length, start time, elapsed time, remaining time, end time and various other sensors. Users can also control the printer and printing process from the Home Assistant dashboard or use entities as triggers in automations.
- Integration: Bambulab
- Category: 3D Printers
- Made By: greghesp
- GitHub: greghesp/ha-bambulab
Garmin Connect
Garmin Connect integrates Garmin fitness and health data with Home Assistant, making it possible to track metrics like steps, sleep, and heart rate alongside your smart home data. It enables automations based on fitness goals or wellness data, such as adjusting lighting for relaxation after an intense workout.
- Integration: Garmin Connect
- Category: Smart Watch
- Made By: cyberjunky
- GitHub: cyberjunky/home-assistant-garmin_connect
Dreame Vacuum
Dreame Vacuum integrates Dreame robot vacuums in Home Assistant, allowing control over cleaning modes, scheduling, and tracking cleaning progress. Users can manage vacuum operations directly from Home Assistant. It also provides status updates on the vacuum’s location and battery level, making it easier to automate and track cleaning routines.
The integration provides so much monitoring and control entities in Home Assistant, it’s almost overwhelming to go through them all. The vacuuming map is also usable in Home Assistant through this custom integration. It supports almost all Dreame models, as well as some Xioami and Mova robot vacuums.
- Integration: Dreame Vacuum
- Category: Robot Vacuum
- Made By: Tasshack
- GitHub: Tasshack/dreame-vacuum
Midea AC LAN
Midea AC LAN integration provides local control over Midea air conditioners via LAN, eliminating the need for cloud services. Users can adjust temperature, fan speed, swing direction, or change operating modes. This integration supports advanced scheduling and automations based on ambient conditions, ensuring optimal comfort in your Home Assistant smart home.
Unlike what the name suggests, Midea Group includes ACs from brands like Hyundai, Toshiba, Samsung, LG, Comfee, Electrolux, Beko, Galactic, Idea, Inventor, Kaisai, Mitsui, Mr. Cool, Neoclima, Olimpia Splendid, Pioneer, QLIMA, Rotenso, Royal Clima, Qzen, Toshiba, Carrier, Goodman, Friedrich, Kenmore, Trane, Lennox, and much more. Check out the integration setup guide here.
- Integration: Midea AC LAN
- Category: AC Control
- Made By: georgezhao2010
- GitHub: georgezhao2010/midea_ac_lan
Local Tuya
Local Tuya is a powerful third-party HACS integration that allows you to locally control Tuya Wi-Fi devices without relying on the cloud. This integration enhances privacy and reduces latency by enabling direct communication with Tuya devices on your local network. It’s important to differentiate Tuya Zigbee devices from Tuya Wi-Fi, as the former is local-only by design and does not depend on the cloud.
Local Tuya supports a wide range of devices, including smart plugs, lights, switches, and sensors. It offers extensive customization options, such as entity renaming, configuring multiple device attributes, and setting up energy monitoring for supported devices. Additionally, it ensures that devices remain functional even if the Tuya cloud service is down. It has a bit of a learning curve, which is the price you pay for buying Tuya Wi-Fi devices in the first place.
- Integration: Local Tuya
- Category: Device Control
- Made By: rospogrigioo
- GitHub: rospogrigio/localtuya
Proxmox VE
Proxmox VE is a custom integration for Proxmox Virtual Environment, allowing users to monitor and manage virtual machines and containers. It provides real-time updates on status and resource usage, adding control over virtualized systems within Home Assistant. Users can also automate VM management tasks, such as starting or stopping specific instances based on system load or time of day.
The integration is much more capable then the default Proxmox integration and offers more sensors and control entities. It’s worth noting here that temperature monitoring needs certain adjustments before it can be monitored in Home Assistant. Check out my guide for monitoring and controlling Proxmox VE from Home Assistant.
- Integration: Proxmox VE
- Category: Proxmox
- Made By: dougiteixeira
- GitHub: dougiteixeira/proxmoxve
Spook
Spook is a custom integration developed by Frenck, which extend Home Assistant’s functionality with a set of very powerful tools. As Frenck notes, this feature set is not and will not ever be included in core Home Assistant for various reasons of different nature.
Spook introduces new actions for automations and scripts, enhances existing ones, and provides additional devices and entities for monitoring and control. For instance, Spook adds entities to manage and monitor the Home Assistant Cloud connection, offering users more data points for their automations, scripts, templates, and dashboards. Additionally, Spook enriches the template engine with new functions, enabling more advanced templating capabilities. It also continuously monitors the Home Assistant instance for potential issues, reporting them through the repairs dashboard to assist users in maintaining an optimal smart home environment. The brave can even decide to manipulate the Home Assistant database with Spook, like adding lost energy data back into the .db file.
- Integration: Spook
- Category: HA Mod
- Made By: Frenck
- GitHub: frenck/spook
Browser Mod 2.0
Browser Mod 2.0 is among the most powerful third-party integration you can add to Home Assistant. It enhances the interaction between Home Assistant and web browsers by enabling features like device tracking, notifications, and control over various browser elements. It turns any browser into a media_player entity, allowing the user to cast media from Home Assistant.
The integration also enables users to control elements like screen brightness or send custom alerts to specific browser sessions. It can be used to set user permissions and manipulate the front end in ways not natively available in Home Assistant. Check out how to setup Browser Mod 2.0 in Home Assistant or how to replace the default more-info dialog window with Browser Mod Popups.
- Integration: Browser Mod 2.0
- Category: HA Mod
- Made By: thomasloven
- GitHub: thomasloven/hass-browser_mod
Alarmo
Alarmo is an incredibly versatile DIY security and alarm system integration that provides an intuitive interface for setting up and managing alarms. It supports various sensors and includes features like arming/disarming, automation triggers, and notifications for a complete, DIY alarm solution in Home Assistant.
Alarmo also supports custom actions based on alarm events, allowing users to automate lighting or sound alarms in response to security breaches. This integration is a must have for users with advanced security needs. Take a look at this Alarmo guide to get started.
- Integration: Alarmo
- Category: DIY Security
- Made By: nielsfaber
- GitHub: nielsfaber/alarmo
Thank you so much for this. I thought I had my HA setup all worked out but this made me realize theres some amazing functionality I’m still missing out on! Soooo many HACS.
It should be noted that HACS has been frozen for almost a year now, with no ETA on when it will be active again.
Not true, HACS works fine.
It’s an issue on your end
What do you mean by ‘frozen’?
I don’t see my amazing card called Ultra Vehicle Card ( https//ultravehiclecard.com ) which might not cure world hunger but will make your cars look slick in your dashboard!
This is Integrations-only, not cards