Advanced Raspberry Pi installations
While we recommend Home Assistant OS, there are also alternative ways to install Home Assistant. Before you continue, be aware of the limitations and differences compared to Home Assistant OS. You can find more information on the installation page. Most notably, add-ons are only available with the Home Assistant Operating System.
Install Home Assistant Container
These below instructions are for an installation of Home Assistant ContainerHome Assistant Container is a standalone container-based installation of Home Assistant Core. Any OCI
This installation method does not have access to add-ons. If you want to use add-ons, you need to use another installation method. The recommended method is Home Assistant Operating SystemHome Assistant OS, the Home Assistant Operating System, is an embedded, minimalistic, operating system designed to run the Home Assistant ecosystem. It is the recommended installation method for most users. [Learn more]. Checkout the overview table of installation types to see the differences.
Prerequisites This guide assumes that you already have an operating system setup and a container runtime installed (like Docker).
If you are using Docker then you need to be on at least version 19.03.9, ideally an even higher version, and libseccomp
2.4.2 or newer. Docker Desktop will not work, you must use Docker Engine.
Platform installation
Installation with Docker is straightforward. Adjust the following command so that:
-
/PATH_TO_YOUR_CONFIG
points at the folder where you want to store your configuration and run it. Make sure that you keep the:/config
part. -
MY_TIME_ZONE
is a tz database name, like TZ=America/Los_Angeles
. -
D-Bus is optional but required if you plan to use the Bluetooth integration.
Once the Home Assistant Container is running Home Assistant should be accessible using
http://<host>:8123
(replacewith the hostname or IP of the system). You can continue with onboarding. Onboarding Restart Home Assistant
If you change the configuration, you have to restart the server. To do that you have 3 options.
- In your Home Assistant UI, go to the Settings > System and click the Restart button.
- You can go to the Developer Tools > Actions, select
homeassistant.restart
and select Perform action. - Restart it from a terminal.
Docker compose
As the Docker command becomes more complex, switching to
docker compose
can be preferable and support automatically restarting on failure or system restart. Create acompose.yml
file:Start it by running:
Once the Home Assistant Container is running, Home Assistant should be accessible using
http://<host>:8123
(replacewith the hostname or IP of the system). You can continue with onboarding. Onboarding Exposing devices
In order to use Zigbee or other integrations that require access to devices, you need to map the appropriate device into the container. Ensure the user that is running the container has the correct privileges to access the
/dev/tty*
file, then add the device mapping to your container instructions:Optimizations
The Home Assistant Container is using an alternative memory allocation library jemalloc
for better memory management and Python runtime speedup. As the jemalloc configuration used can cause issues on certain hardware featuring a page size larger than 4K (like some specific ARM64-based SoCs), it can be disabled by passing the environment variable
DISABLE_JEMALLOC
with any value, for example:The error message
<jemalloc>: Unsupported system page size
is one known indicator.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.Install the dependencies:
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.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.Next up is to create and change to a virtual environment for Home Assistant Core. This will be done as the
homeassistant
account.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.Once you have installed the required Python package, it is now time to install Home Assistant Core!
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.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
orhttp://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.