Home Assistant Add-ons

If you run HA OS or HA Supervised, the Add-on Store is the gateway drug — Docker containers managed by the Supervisor, configured via HA's UI, backed up with HA's snapshots. This page is the curated list of "what every HA install eventually has running."

For HA itself see Smart Home Hubs; for dashboards see Home Assistant Dashboards; for LLMs in HA see Home Assistant LLM Integrations.

What an add-on actually is

• An add-on is a Docker container the HA Supervisor manages: install, start/stop, configure via the UI, included in HA backups, talks to the host via documented APIs.
• Only HA OS / HA Supervised support add-ons. HA Container / HA Core users run the same software directly via Docker / pip.
• Add-ons fall into three buckets: Official (HA team, audited), Community (third-party, audited at install), Local (custom Dockerfiles).

The "everyone has these" core add-ons

• ★ Mosquitto broker — official; the default MQTT broker. See MQTT for Home.
• ★ Zigbee2MQTT — community (officially blessed); the dominant Zigbee stack. See Zigbee Stacks.
• ★ Z-Wave JS — official; the Z-Wave stack. See Z-Wave Stacks.
• ★ ESPHome — official; the YAML-firmware compiler / dashboard. See IoT Firmware Platforms.
• ★ File editor / Visual Studio Code (Studio Code Server) — community; in-browser VS Code for editing your configuration.yaml. The single best DX upgrade after install.
• ★ Samba share / Samba Backup — official; expose /config over SMB so you can edit YAML from your laptop.
• ★ Terminal & SSH (advanced) — community; SSH into the HA host; full shell access; the official "Terminal & SSH" is more limited.
• ★ AdGuard Home — community (officially blessed); see DNS Infrastructure. Run your DNS sinkhole alongside HA.
• ★ Pi-hole — community alternative to AdGuard; same idea, different ergonomics.

Voice / AI add-ons

• ★ Whisper — official; STT for HA Assist. See Smart Home Voice.
• ★ Piper — official; TTS.
• ★ openWakeWord — official; the local wake word detector.
• ★ Ollama — community; local LLM runtime. See HA LLM Integrations.
• assist_microphone — official; satellite-side audio capture.
• Frigate — community; AI NVR. See Cameras & NVR.

Automation engines

• ★ Node-RED — community; the visual flow editor; complement HA's automation YAML for complex flows. See Self-Hosted Automation.
• ★ AppDaemon — community; Python automations that run alongside HA; vastly more powerful than HA's built-in automations for state-machine / multi-step logic. The Python developer's HA cheat code.
  • https://github.com/AppDaemon/appdaemon
• NetDaemon — C# / .NET equivalent of AppDaemon; smaller community; strong typing fans love it.
• n8n — community; full self-hosted automation platform. See Self-Hosted Automation.

Database / backup / observability

• ★ InfluxDB — community; the long-term sensor history option. See Time Series Databases.
• ★ Grafana — community; pairs with InfluxDB for dashboards. See Prometheus Stack.
• ★ Google Drive Backup / Nabu Casa Backup — community / official; off-site HA snapshots. The single most important add-on for "I won't cry when my SSD dies."
• MariaDB / Postgres — community; replace HA's default SQLite recorder with a real DB; necessary once you hit ~10k entities.
• Prometheus — community; HA exposes a /api/prometheus endpoint; pair with the Prometheus stack. See Prometheus Stack.

Network / remote access

• ★ Cloudflared (Cloudflare Tunnel) — community; expose HA via Cloudflare Tunnel for remote access without opening ports. See VPN Mesh.
• ★ Tailscale — community; mesh VPN; the "remote HA without exposing it" default. See VPN Mesh.
• WireGuard — community; classic VPN.
• Duck DNS — community; dynamic DNS for self-signed remote access.
• Nginx Proxy Manager — community; reverse proxy with web UI; not strictly needed if HA is your only web service, but useful for "expose Z2M's UI publicly too."

Niche but useful

• MotionEye — community; older motion-detection camera setup (use Frigate first).
• Plex / Jellyfin — community; possible but not recommended to run media servers on HA OS; use a separate box.
• Vaultwarden — community; password manager; runs on HA OS just fine. See Self-Hosted Passwords.
• Scrypted — community; HomeKit Secure Video bridge. See Cameras.
• VS Code Server — already mentioned; mention it twice — it's that useful.
• Glances / Netdata — community; system monitoring of the HA host.

Custom add-ons

• Adding a community repo: Settings → Add-ons → ⋮ → Repositories → paste the GitHub URL. The repo's add-ons appear in the store.
• ★ hassio-addons (community) — the most-used third-party add-on repo; AdGuard Home, Glances, MariaDB, more.
• HACS (Home Assistant Community Store) — for integrations and frontend cards, not add-ons. Different beast. See HA Dashboards.

Practical guidance

• ★ Snapshot before any add-on update. HA's built-in backup → off-box (Google Drive Backup add-on or rsync to NAS).
• Don't run add-ons that compete with first-class HA features unless you have a reason. HA's built-in MQTT auto-discovery beats hand-rolled.
• Pin add-on versions if you have a fragile config. Auto-updates are convenient but can break things at 3 AM.
• Audit community add-ons before install. They run as root inside containers with broad host access.
• Resource budget: a Pi 5 / mini-PC can run ~10-15 add-ons before things start feeling sluggish; offload heavy ones (Frigate, InfluxDB, Plex) to a separate box.

Pick this if…

• Running HA OS: install Mosquitto, Z-Wave JS, ESPHome, Studio Code Server, and a backup add-on on day one.
• Need Python-power automations: AppDaemon.
• Need a visual flow tool: Node-RED.
• Need long-term sensor history: InfluxDB + Grafana.
• Need remote access: Tailscale or Cloudflared.