The Easiest Free Way To Do Home Assistant Remote Access!

I have covered quite a few different remote access solutions for Home Assistant, either through port forwarding or setting up VPNS but recently, it has emerged there is another way to do it...via a Cloudflare tunnel! So let's take a look at it & I'll show you how to set it up with a free domain name & explain why you may do this over some of those other methods we've talked about in the past!
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[@EverythingSmartHome]

Small correction at 8:22 - I used Plex as an example of a web service to add as an additional sub domain, this was meant to be an example only of something you could connect - do not connect Plex to Cloudflare, it is against the ToS to stream video through Cloudflare tunnel and could result in getting your account closed. This was a poor choice of an example on my part, apologies!

[@ayedjed]

is this will effect the traffic ? I have Synology NAS so could my home assistant on raspberry p3 will effect performance of browsing my files on NAS

[@danielshiloah1485]

Would looking at your security camera feeds consider streaming video ?

[@b4kk4li]

@@danielshiloah1485 I think anything that is heavy UDP streaming traffic would be considering against the use of service. I think its more for tunnel lightweight tcp traffic like web servers etc as mentioned in their use cases

[@chrisn5827]

Hi all, did anyone have issues authorzing the tunnel as i receoved this message . "Failed to validate requested hostname *.xxxxxxxx: This zone is either not part of your account, or you do not have access to it. Please contact support if using a multi-user organization. (Code: 1010)" Cheers

[@francescoatria1086]

i have followed your video and everything is working like when i was using duck dns except google assistant i have to change something?

[@bat3332]

no nonsense no need to skip even a minute video. This video is the EXAMPLE for a value video which don't waste the viewers time or the creator's time just straight to the point and everything covered with error possibility and bonus tip. This should be the template of an content oriented video making. Awesome

[@EverythingSmartHome]

Appreciate the feedback and kind words, thank you 🙏

[@swimWithAL]

100% agree. I'm now setup with Cloudflare (A service I already have LOVED), now paired with my favourite smart home software to give me remote access from anywhere. EZPZ🤩

[@tempacc9589]

What do you mean? the video starts at 3:20 everything before that is just intro trash

[@aqrus3965]

Dude, I love your videos! Every single explanation is straight to the point and can is so simple that even inexperienced home assistant users can follow along. Keep up the great work, Lewis!

[@RipsawFox]

I watched the video on release, and finally got around to setting it up today. The instructions were so easy to follow. I've now managed to get rid of No-IP, close ports on my router, remove reverse proxy settings from my Synology and still access HA and my other services so much more easily and securely. Thanks for this Lewis.

[@michelghantous9466]

Thank you very much. I am new to home assistant and started it from scratch few weeks ago with the help of KZbin videos. Most of them are yours and few from others. The good things about yours are up to the point with no secrets behind the scenes. Thanks again and keep your great videos.

[@DLWertz]

Absolutely incredible! I have a home assistant server running in my motorhome with a cellular router. I can't do port forwarding so this solved my access issue. Thank you for a clear and concise overview.

[@JS-up8ff]

I said it before and I will say it again: your videos are top notch. They are short but very complete. Keep this going, it's highly appreciated!

[@EverythingSmartHome]

Ah thanks so much, makes me very happy you find the content useful 🙏

[@SnowyPe]

I followed your tutorial and it works 100%.. I have been using it for the past month and have had zero issues. Thanks a mil for the tutorial steps.

[@Muscleduck]

Few tips for viewers: when first setting up the domain name, wait 15 mins before continuing on Cloudflare. Cloudflare couldn't find my domain the first 10-15 mins. Also, same goes for adding the Cloudflared repo to HA. It added but for some reason I couldn't find the CLoudflared add-on. I rebooted my Pi and did something else and by the time I came back the add-on was there. But absolutely brilliant video. And I love that you added the Plex tip. I know Cloudflare doesn't like Plex, but I'm contemplating using Loxone this way, as long as I've not fully integrated it into HA. I won't have to use the Loxone DNS anymore with the port forwarding. The Cloudflare tunnel seems safer.

[@l56havilland]

Thank you, thank you, thank you. Wow so many steps, watched video and followed your instructions in real time. Like others have said, DO NOT skip a step. Wonderful instructions, up and running!

[@simonpowell1442]

Great Video, Lewis. Perfectly timed for me as my whole duckDNS system fell over, and I've never been too keen on using it. Cloudflare offer a top class service. Cheers.

[@andycannan]

As others have commented, this is so straight to the point. No messing around explaining anything at the beginning but getting right into it. I am coming to your channel for everything from now on! Keep up the great content!

[@bridevalley]

Fabulous tutorial - covers all you need for remote access. I got myself into a bit of a pickle when some sort of dyslexia kicked in as I was adding the Cloudflare nameservers to my domain. Apart from that everything worked as described - many thanks. I like your direct style of presentation - much appreciated!

[@project-hq]

Just followed this guide and everything has worked perfectly, first time. Not often that happens. Thanks Lewis for a spot on tutorial. You are so good at these!!

[@EverythingSmartHome]

Thanks Dan!!

[@jamesgedney-higham456]

You always land the videos at the right time I need them, doing a HA rebuild and next step was to set up DNS and port forwarding... not anymore tunnel here I come, can't wait! P.s. 27! That's nothing we had that as a night temp in good old Yorkshire 😆

[@veerav579]

Never seen a spot on video. Such a great information every minute without wasting anyone’s time.

[@Mimbultonia]

Freenom is obviously now defunct - but was able to follow these instructions using a different domain provider (in my case IONOS) pretty easily. Great video - but worth updating with another domain provider)

[@cjano78]

any free replacement for freenom?

[@dpn1604]

Nice 1! I had started with cloud flare a while back but never completed the setup. Now, it's all done. Thank you!

[@pavolholes]

Same here 😂

[@EverythingSmartHome]

Awesome!

[@Jannick-mp7bf]

Very clear tutorial! Really helped me to set up remote access without opening any ports on my router.

[@shinydoc]

Thank you 🙏 I already used Cloudflare and some services with them, so just got another Domain Name with them (I think their prices are fair) and job was a good'un. Very straightforward, thank you again.

[@chrisdarby2719]

You amazing man! Once again blown away by how simple and well explained you make this stuff for idiots like me!!

[@waelali3519]

This worked so well!!! i also added the URL to the HA app and it just logged in immediately without wifi connection. great success. one more thing is that now whatever guide i follow, things just work without any hussle. because now i use NUC with HAOS on it. i used HA in container and VM before and it sucked, nothing worked properly and i alway had to go through back doors to make easy installations. now things just work! thank you for the great video!

[@doschlumm]

Great Video, Lewis. thanks for the detailed one. Some remarks for other newbies, you need to restart the HA so the repository will be shown. Also, remember to verify your email address from cloud flare (clicking the link in the email that was sent to you), otherwise it wont work.

[@hometumation1729]

He probado casi todas las opciones gratuitas de acceso externo a ha y realmente creo que esta es la opción mas sencilla Muchas gracias por tus videos! Saludos desde San Juan Argentina. 💪👍🏻

[@eduardocc555]

I like your videos and you have inspired me to double down on getting into home assistant, this works perfectly for me. In Cloudflared add-on there's a disclaimer about "Limitation on Serving Non-HTML Content" and that could affect adding Plex Server

[@EverythingSmartHome]

Yes that was a poor example on my part, I was using it as a demo for another web service but forgot about the ToS thing! Whoops!

[@chunkychops]

Excellent, and the process still works (generally). The freenom website was down, but I bought a 79p domain elsewhere and followed the same steps, except updating the NS records with the other domain provider instead. With the companion app, I had the option to set up the URL for when I'm off wifi, and the local address would be used when on local wifi (so if internet goes down I can still use the HA app in the house. Thanks for the instructions.

[@theattorney6072]

Hi, could you please explain how you did that ?

[@snador]

please explain how to do this :)

[@foortizs]

love Everything Smart Home, very informative videos, always right to the point!

[@antoniavivas6803]

been after this feature for more than 2 years and for one reason or another no other method has worked for me. Now I can finally ditch Nabu Casa. Thanks a ton mate.

[@hoctrimededebutry8655]

37° in my office today :-) Hello from France ! Thanks a lot for this quality video

[@88jsp88]

Hello, thank you very much for the tutorial, due to the characteristics of my network, nothing had worked for me until now to control HA remotely, thanks again man. And keep it up your videos are super interesting. You also helped me a lot with the Broadlink Remote. Thank you!!

[@PaoloPellizzari]

Very useful and clear as usual. Thanks Lewis!

[@weldonhostetler4442]

Wow this is so cool! Worked flawlessly. Love your videos!

[@pavolholes]

Nice! I was just setting up new HA at my mothers house and I was going to open a port (VPN is too much complicated for her). Since she doesn’t need any other services (like myself) I’ll use this method. Perfect timing Lewis!

[@EverythingSmartHome]

Nice one, seems like a great solution!

[@mathesonstep]

That's awesome that this is all free now, you can probably combine this with cloudflare access for additional security without much hassle

[@derekluckhurst9406]

Thanks, Informative as usual and so easy to follow

[@danielsmit-sw2zc]

Again very good video. Thanks for the info. Was a quick and easy proces thanks to you.

[@zulkarnainbadron8679]

Great, straight forward, very useful! Thanks a lot!

[@actionward]

great video, I had struggled to get the other methods working and this one has. Thank you 🙂

[@EverythingSmartHome]

Thanks for watching!

[@LS-on6qf]

another fantastic video, big thanks! it works like a charm

[@makaveli7771]

27 degrees I am jealous. I am sitting in the 40s here in London. Another epic video I was going to use a paid for droplet to open up other services but your method is great. Thank you

[@EverythingSmartHome]

That was the inside temperature, was worse outside but yeah you guys have it even hotter! Although in my defence, us Scots arent used to hot weather 😂

[@makaveli7771]

@@EverythingSmartHome hi again Lewis, hope you had a chilled day, can you please rescue, I followed your guidance everything worked like a charm, however I had to restore my HA to 2 days ago (pre cloudflare add-on) and now I can't get it to work even with a new domain i, uninstalled the add-on many times, no luck, can you please help. I get FATAL: Failed to create tunnel. Please check the Cloudflare Teams Dashboard for an existing tunnel with the name homeassistant and delete it:

[@makaveli7771]

And there is nothing to delete in the given link

[@makaveli7771]

I managed to access the teams dashboard, I had to create a zero trust account though where a payment method was required but not charged. Back and running now after deleting the tunnel. Many thanks for the straight forward tutorial :)

[@yurikm83]

Thank you !!!!!! Finally, an easy and fast way for the Remote Access

[@JosueMorales93]

Thanks for this video! super easy to follow!

[@cho26504]

I don't always comment but you saved me in setting this up, Thanks!!!

[@SoumalyaGhoshAVM]

Thanks for the video. Extra thanks for putting this up even during this heat wave.

[@EverythingSmartHome]

Haha totally worth it! 🙌

[@OwlishGeorge]

That's a pretty elegant solution! Personally I'll stick with my Traefik/Cloudflare combo as it works well for my situation, but I like this tunnel option for setting up family members with similar functionality.

[@PaulDerbyshire007]

same here, using Traefik/Cloudflare

[@AutodimRO]

very nice tutorial. got it working in 10 minutes. subscribed!

[@richardheb2489]

Hi Lewis, so good videos ! Thanks. I hope you’ll keep informing and teaching the community for a long time 👏🙏. (UPDATED) I tried this, but no way to get through the process with Freenom ! And no answer to my emails to them … too bad, I’ll try the ‘old way’ ! 😊. NO ! it worked.... I had parameters on Safari that were preventing the Captcha from working... I switched off : "block pop-ups" and "block cookies". Then everything went smooth...

[@PhillyStafford]

Thanks for this. I just set it up and it was easy AF 💪

[@oliviermeunier1594]

Just simple,clear...impressive as usually ;-)

[@EverythingSmartHome]

Thanks dude!

[@Abdominazer]

Thank you for the effort ! Works brilliantly.

[@SMGGM]

Love this tip and the easy way of also using my own domain. Living in Belgium with extreme temperature too so will bookmark this one and do it once it gets a bit colder :D

[@EverythingSmartHome]

Haha, stay cold my friend!

[@stijnmoke6184]

Same here in belgium :) i already did it in the evening, its a very nice and easy to follow guide ! appreciated !

[@VlkSamotar]

Thank you, I like your videos. You're helping me create my smart home.

[@ken7481]

You are a gift to the home automation community

[@SnowyPe]

Super thankful for this tutorial..1st attempt and I have access to Ha via my mobile handset

[@surfingnoid]

Well done and thank you for this!

[@TechMeOut5]

Excellent video! great job!

[@ChrisValcke]

glad to see this one released!! best way to get secure connection. Stay cool :)

[@EverythingSmartHome]

Thanks, I'm trying!!

[@gerry2345]

I like this vid. Good example and good instructions.

[@nadavtamam6555]

Works like a charm! Thanks

[@nicsteyn7274]

Thank you for the fantastic video. got it to work just had to wait for all the online services to activate witch took about 3 hours. but it all works thank you for the realy clear instructions

[@EverythingSmartHome]

Wow that's long, I wonder if there was an influx of users all trying at the same time! Glad you got it working!

[@nspcontent960]

I followed another one of your videos using duck dns but that had stopped working just followed this and got it working great, thank you

[@TienTaioan]

Freenom seems stopped working for me. All the domain names I tried are not available. How did you make it?

[@kensteeplejack]

That is brilliant, I have been having some problems of late with the duckdns, and 4G access, but this works a treat thankyou

[@robdunn8832]

Awesome info, thanks for this. Though if you already have google home and/or alexa setup using nabu casa, would there be much of a configuration change to switch over?

[@lidbergtech]

This is great! I will be doing this to my setup asap!

[@EverythingSmartHome]

Good luck!

[@Pablinho10.]

This is a tutorial on how to make a tutorial. Amazing work!

[@m0t0rh3ad]

Great and very useful! Thanks a lot!

[@simonqreed]

Brilliant, I tried the duckdns method, but struggled with double nat, followed this tutorial and now have HA and Plex running perfectly... remotely!

[@pbjordi]

My router won't let me touch port 443, so I tried this solution instead and it works great, however freenom does no longer provide free hostnames, I ended up buying a cheap from cloudflare directly. Thank you so much for sharing this guide!

[@dylanbudd2986]

an excellent solution! I just moved house so I'm setting everything up again. Using duckdns I couldn't access my home assistant on my work laptop (lunchtime only of course) because they block duckdns addresses but with this i should have no problem accessing it. I did find freenom annoying as i tried to get a domain 5 times and got a technical error so in the end i just purchased a domain from fasthost for £1. Which means it's a .uk address! excellent video of course!

[@harryscarheadsam]

Thank you so much! I would suggest to enable "Always Use HTTPS" in Cloudflare>SSL/TLS>Edge Certificates

Awesome solution! Will try it later today.

[@EverythingSmartHome]

Enjoy!

[@M-Fenix2112]

👏👏👏👏👏 amazing job man love your all video 🤛💪 keep going

[@EverythingSmartHome]

Aww thanks buddy! 🙏

[@INSIGHTSAU]

Brilliant video as usual. I’m sticking with Nabu though just to support the development.

[@EverythingSmartHome]

Great decision 🙌

[@clairerovic]

Same same

[@salemyr]

@@EverythingSmartHome Can't use port forwarding at my cabin due to CG NAT issues on LTE connectivity, so I have been forced to use Nabu Casa there, but I would rather have Nabu Casa at home. Exited to give this a try, thanks for the video!

[@Hurricanepkt]

I have added it as a sanity backup for me.

[@EverythingSmartHome]

Thanks for watching!

[@daoudsheikh3462]

brilliant video was very easy and simple to follow the only thing that was missing was the url to github to copy and paste in my browser but went to your website to get the url 10/10

[@Zyck3r]

Great work, it helped me well.

[@volodymyrb8448]

Finally I did it, thank you very much ))

[@maykinit]

You sir are the best! Thank you so very much! Excellent video, presentation, instruction! Where is your patreon?

[@mfadetoblack]

Took a bit to get it all working. For some reason took a long time for the additional host to take, I used it for my NAS instead of the built in DDNS option. Tip: If you had duckdns and dnsmasq installed make sure to turn it off or this won't take. Learnt that the hard way.

[@Hiwinders]

I also had trouble getting things to take. But for me DuckDNS had nothing to do with it (and is still installed and running). Problems I had seem to be related to DNS cache on my computer needing to be flushed. Perhaps a Mac thing.

[@mfadetoblack]

@@Hiwinders Im also on a mac, but as soon as I turn off the 2 add-ons it worked. Now I am getting deceptive warnings from google everytime I visit my own tunnel.

[@piotrskorupski2617]

Top man!! As always, really clear and straightforward tutorial! The only problem I've encountered is that I cannot access domain I created, from my PC. But it is clearly some sort of issue with my browser (all three of them) or something along these lines - I will figure this out at some point. It is all running as it should be from my HA app on my mobile device. Thank you so much for this detailed tutorial. As it stands, I am fully paid up with Nabu Casa (and probably will keep paying my subscription) as I truly believe this money is going towards supporting amazing project.

[@dmhprime]

So much easier than trying to get duckdns to work. Love it! Thanks, dude.

[@ajueket]

Thank you. This worked for me!!

[@jindrichzika1200]

Great information. 👍

[@dennisruss9431]

Great video - thank you!

[@savage169]

Hey, great video :). Any chance you have set this up with HA running in a docker stack? (No add-ons)

[@FloWmo619]

Nice. Thanks for the great Video mate!

[@EverythingSmartHome]

Thanks buddy!

[@CamykDr]

Awesome tutorial, i gave up with duckdns. Now everything works as it shoud work. Thank you for video.

[@getoutmore]

Perfect, thank you. Can you please provide the link to the securing Homeassistant video you talked about? I don't see it linked. Thanks

[@Cic0r]

Thank you VERY much for the tutorial! :)

[@panniechristou9644]

Great Video , thanks well done !

[@philgriffiths1970]

This is just what I've been looking for! Stuck behind CGNAT and looking for alternatives to Nabu Casa, I was getting frustrated. Just one question, - is the Let's Encrypt (seen at 07:00) provided by Cloudflare or is it to do with the add-on I can see on your system at 5:26?

[@ignacioalcauza]

Great video, thanks!!

[@stevemasonf1]

Worked perfectly for me Thanks.

[@First2ner]

Thanks, this helped me 100%

[@588908]

thank very much!!! great tutorial! keep the good work !

[@EverythingSmartHome]

Thanks, I'll try!

[@slickbackwood]

I do something very similar, I have a VPS that is running linux, it has wireguard running on it. Then I have a docker running NGINX proxy manager running on it. That is set up to forward HA traffic through the WG tunnel to home assistant. That way I can use my domain and its all using LetsEncrypt and WG encryption. Plus the proxy manger only uses domain info and users from the internet have to know the exact url.

[@EverythingSmartHome]

Not a bad setup at all!

[@kognitro]

Excellent video, in fact excellent channel. I've only just started with home assistant in the last week. I think most would agree that HA has a steep learning curve. That's inevitable given the power of the platform. I've got so much further in learning the basic concepts. Today I got my HA available externally using your guide. I decided not to use freenom as reviews suggest it's not a great service. You are only a user and don't own the domain. They can take the domain back at any time, and some say it happens on a regular basis. I appreciate this makes it entirely free,, but I want a domain I can keep and a service I can trust.

[@daviddavidorganico]

Please, what domain did you use? I probably will not use freenom too.

[@theattorney6072]

​@@daviddavidorganico which one did you use now ?

[@gabsta5]

I couldn't use port forwarding due to some strange UPC config with IPv6... You saved me!

[@jabolko1k]

you are the best. just what i needed thank you

[@EverythingSmartHome]

Appreciate you 🙏

[@PiyushNikam]

That additional hostname thing is next level! Been using this addon for nearly a month, but never noticed it. Thanks a lot man!!!

[@EverythingSmartHome]

Glad it helped! 🙌

[@tochimoreno]

hey, excelent video..thank you very much. question, there are a way to so this without the add-on? maybe a container for the cloidflare tunnel.