macOS

Install Home Assistant Operating System

Download the appropriate image

• VirtualBox (.vdi)

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

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

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).

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

Install Home Assistant Core

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==2024.4.3

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).