Add-ons

Introduction

Add-ons enhance Home Assistant’s functionality by enabling the installation of additional applications. These applications may integrate with Home Assistant, or facilitate tasks like sharing configurations via Samba for seamless editing from other devices.

Add-ons are in fact Docker containers managed from within Home Assistant. If you've installed "Home Assistant" as the OS,the add-on store allows you to install these. If you've installed Home Assistant within Docker, you're supposed to setup & manage these containers yourself.

Integrations versus add-ons

In Home Assistant, integrations and add-ons serve distinct purposes and operate in different parts of the system. See my integrations.

Key differences

Feature	Integration	Add-ons
Purpose	connect to external services	extend Home Assistant services
Location	within Home Assistant	side-by-side with Home Assistant
Installation	from UI (devices & services)	from Add-ons menu
Examples	Philips Hue, Spotify, ...	Node-RED, MariaDB, ...

Add-ons list

Info

This list does not change frequently; however, it may still be outdated compared to my current installation.

Add-on	Description
Adguard Home	Network-wide ads & trackers blocking DNS server
Duck DNS	Free dynamic DNS (DynDNS or DDNS) service with Let's Encrypt support
ESPHome device builder	building your own smart home devices using ESPHome
File editor	browser based file editor for Home Assistant
Grafana	open platform for analytics and monitoring
InfluxDB	scalable datastore for metrics, events and real-time analytics
Samba share	explore Home Assistant folders with SMB/CIFS
Terminal & SSH	allow remote logins