Home Assistant Themes and Plugins with HACS

I’m about to show you one HACS to customise your Home Assistant with plugins and themes. #HACS stands for Home Assistant Community Store.
When you add it to your #HomeAssistant you will be able to install and remove themes and plugins with a click of a button.
Themes and customisations as a whole become very popular these days. So I started to search for a solution and I found HACS and even more I like it.
I like it so much that I even decided to show it to you and to demonstrate you how you can install it and how to customise Home Assistant with themes and plugins.
Requirements:
To #install HACS you will need:
Working Home Assistant version 0.98.0 or higher (if you don’t have such check this video - • Raspberry Pi as SMART ... )
A GitHub account
And of course smashed subscribe button
Quick Warning
Everything you find in HACS that includes HACS itself is not tested by Home Assistant team. If your Smart Home depends on your Home Assistant it’s recommended to test these plugins and themes on a separate test Home Assistant installation first.
With that being said lets customise our Home Assistant now with HACS:
Steps for installing HACS:
Download the latest HACS release file (hacs.zip) from - github.com/cus...
Extract its contents into custom_components/hacs folder inside your Home Assistant configuration folder (folder where configuration.yaml is)
you have to have the following structure at the end: [HA_Config_dir]/custom_components/hacs
To enable Themes section in HACS - add the following lines to your configuration.yaml (if you already have these lines already, don't add them twice)
frontend:
themes: !include_dir_merge_named themes
Restart Home Assistant
Go to GitHub and create an account if you don't have such. Then go to - github.com/set...
Generate new Personal Access Token and copy your token
Go to Home Assistant \ Configuration \ Integrations and click on the "+" button
Search for HACS (if you don't find it clear your browser cache, check that you follow the exact steps above, and check Home Assistant logs for errors)
Paste your Personal Access Token from GitHub in the HACS dialog window
Click the "submit" button and you should have HACS installed
Steps to add Weather Card plug-in
URL: github.com/bra...
Search for weather-card in Plugins section of HACS and hit install
Add the following to your lovelace-ui.yaml or using the Raw config editor:
type: custom:weather-card
entity: weather.PUT_YOUR_WEATHER_ENTITY_HERE
name: Home
Steps to add iOS Dark Mode Theme
URL: github.com/bas...
Search for iOS Dark Mode Theme in Themes section of HACS and hit install
Add the following line to your lovelace-ui.yaml or use the Raw config editor:
background: var(--background-image)
to put different background follow the steps here - github.com/bas...
(optional) add the following to the same file to make the header smaller (you need to install custom-header from here github.com/may... as well)
custom_header:
background: 'rgba(155, 155, 155, 0.25)'
swipe_animate: fade
swipe_prevent_default: true
compact_mode: true
button_text:
options: '{{ hours24 }}:{{ minutesLZ }}'
AppDaemon apps
Apart from Themes you can use Home Assistant Community Store (HACS) to install plugins, scripts and AppDaemon apps. If you want to learn more about AppDaemon apps - appdaemon.read...
Question?
My question for you is do you like dark modes - say yes or no in the comments section bellow and I will know for what you are talking about.
Support my Work
Any sort of engagement on this channel does really help out a lot with the KZbin algorithm, so make sure you hit the subscribe, Like and Bell buttons If you enjoy this video.
I really hope that you find this information useful and you now have HACS with a lot of themes and plug-ins in your Home Assistant
Thank you for watching, stay safe and see you next time.
Kiril

[@tovmax1]

Thank you, the video was very useful for me. For just today early mourning, when I got up in the darkness and turned on my tablet with HA it was a really pain for my eyes. And then I thought that there must be some dark theme for HA out there. It's not a joke, I'm quite serious! I liked the IOS theme more. In general, HACS is a cool thing, I've never heard of that before. Thanks again for what you are doing, Kiril!

[@KPeyanski]

Wow like I know what you need. Comments like this make me happy. Please, try to add HACS and let me know what happened.

[@tovmax1]

Now I've installed HACS and everything mentioned in this video. And even some more - changed the background inside iOS theme to that beautiful ultraviolet-infrared one :) By the way, while installing HACS it was mandatory for me to clean the cash of my browser (Chrome) in order to find HACS in the integrations list.

[@KPeyanski]

Max Volkov well done! You now have a lot of things to try and play. Let me know if you find some hidden gem in the plugins or themes. Also I must admit that iOS dark theme is a beauty ;)

[@DrZzs]

I'm adding a link to this video to my newest video that'll be out in a few minutes :) Good work Amigo!!

[@KPeyanski]

Really? Wow you made my day, no no my week... how can I thank you?

[@KPeyanski]

Let me at least help you with something :D

[@pbk380]

Very good demonstration on installing HACS Paul

[@KPeyanski]

glad you like it :)

[@jimdavis3749]

Brilliant!! I am glad you don't forget to add the little things that make HA great and also a challenge. n00bs, everywhere, thank you.

[@KPeyanski]

Very glad that you like it. Do you have HACS working now?

[@NettoRockman]

Thanks! I would not have discovered HACS if it were not for your video.

[@KPeyanski]

Glad I could help!

[@mail4asim]

I have been messing around with this for weeks, and your tip about fixing the weather card @ 13:15 resolved my issue. Thank you !!!

[@KPeyanski]

Good job Asim. I guess you now have beautiful animated weather card in your HA :)

[@greggpalmer8901]

Thanks...just started using HA a few weeks ago and I love it. Thanks for your videos...very helpful. And yes, I do like dark mode

[@KPeyanski]

Thank you for your comment Gregg. You are on the right path with Home Assistant. I also like dark modes when this is not the main feature of the product :) BTW you should check Node-RED as well. I have videos about it if you are interested.

[@johnworoniuk477]

Awesome video this HACS looks a bit more user friendly when it come to installing plug-ins and themes. Nice find

[@KPeyanski]

Your comment was marked as "likely spam" for some reason I didn't saw it until now. Anyway I'm glad that you liked the video and I hope that you already have HACS installed :)

[@ChristianSkallerupBrgesen]

Great to find out that the indentations was causing All my problems.

[@KPeyanski]

That is my biggest pain with YAML as well ;)

[@DavidBeukes]

Thank you so much for this video! I'm glad I subscribed.

[@KPeyanski]

Thank you for this great comment, David! I'm also glad to have you here.

[@philmurphy3662]

Thanks for your video - this has been very helpful

[@KPeyanski]

Thank you too for the good words :) Happy to help.

[@jeroenkoot2011]

Great video helped me a lot only the custom header plugin is no longer available :( so im stuck with a solid one till another option comes by to make it transparent

[@KPeyanski]

Glad it helped! And thanks for commenting :)

[@stevelaminack1516]

Great video, got HACS installed but you moved to fast when you started showing how to enable themes. Where are you at 10:14? Where did you get the code to copy? Do I still need to do that or just hit install? Also my HACS interface only shows Lovelace and Themes, no "Plugins" or anything else.

[@KPeyanski]

HACS have changed a bit since this was shot. You can get the code from the video description or from my website, but not sure if it still accurate. I get that from the HACS website back then.

[@JohnSmith-nc4rv]

Thank you very much! This helped a lot.

[@KPeyanski]

Great to hear that and consider subscribing. More videos are coming every week.

[@peterspencer10]

Thank you for the video. I think it's a bit dated now though (things change so fast!) I tried putting the background image in the raw configuration in Lovelace and it tells me that I should add it in the Lovelace config panel. I don't see anywhere to do that though. Do you know how to do this?

[@KPeyanski]

yes it is just a little bit ;)

[@78wesley67]

I like dark themes, I've also made one and it is called Darkish Theme it is in the Theme list at HACS.

[@KPeyanski]

Thanks I will check it out later. You have to only click install to have it or there are some manual things that you have to do as well?

[@78wesley67]

@@KPeyanski click and done😉

[@SebtorDude]

Hello Kiril, Thank you for another fantastic video! Maybe I'm a noob but I have a problem with something very basic. I am running Hass.IO inside a Docker container and installed via Graham Garner's IOT Stack, like you explained in one of the previous videos. Now I want to install HACS. But how and where do I actually find my HA configuration folder? And will it stay installed if the Hass.IO container ever stops and has to be restarted?

[@KPeyanski]

Hello, your configuration folder should be exactly here: /usr/share/hassio/homeassistant If you see inside configuration.yaml and other .yaml files then this is the right one. Check it out and let me know what happened. For the second question - don't worry it will stay installed after you restart your HA container. I'm using the same installation and I'm pretty happy with the results so far. You made a right choice in my opinion. Good luck

[@SebtorDude]

Thank you for your quick reply! Yes, that was the solution. I did not know that the internal folder /config/ could be mapped to a different path inside the file system.

[@KPeyanski]

SebtorDude good I’m glad that you find it. Good job.

[@KPeyanski]

I remember one more thing. You can install "File Editor" from the "Supervisor" -> Add-on Store menu in Home Assistant its the easiest method for editing the configuration files by far.

[@R3BL_YOUTH]

hi, very nice video. Have you tried to chance the background from the iOS theme?

[@KPeyanski]

No, but I think it is not hard

[@ssinseeme]

thank you man it was a good tut

[@KPeyanski]

Thank you too. Did you manage to run it?

[@mustafacanpolat5395]

Çok teşekkürler, faydalı bir çalışma

[@KPeyanski]

Do not understand that! Hope it is good :)

[@mustafacanpolat5395]

@@KPeyanski very good bro thanx :)

[@geek545]

Thanks a lot man, this video is great and I was actually facing the same issues as you. Love Dark modes as well! Have you thought about using a ui-lovelace.yaml file instead of editing in the RAW editor? I think I will go with that approach, as it is a little messy to edit in the RAW editor. Please make more videos as we all discover the amazing HACS :D

[@KPeyanski]

Hi Jannik, thanks for your comment. I think I didn't have ui-locelace.yaml last time I checked. I don't know what will happen if I create one. Also I'm about to upload my next video in several minutes so stay around.

[@tomhitchcock383]

This is great, I wonder if you help me? I get as far as installing HACS, just as you do. But once completed it doesn't find it's way into my sidebar for me to then access. Any ideas?

[@KPeyanski]

Have you find a way already ? :)

[@rukako]

Great tutorial, do you know how to install supervisor?

[@KPeyanski]

yes, check my tutorial, and don't forget to change the URL in menu.sh because this issue is still not fixed - peyanski.com/raspberry-pi-as-smart-home-hub-video-tutorial/

[@ronm6585]

Thank you. I like some dark themes.

[@KPeyanski]

If you find any other good dark themes in HACS let us know here

[@ronm6585]

@@KPeyanski Yes sir, will do.

[@KPeyanski]

Thank you in advance for that ;)

[@walberg61]

most of the cards in HACS have resources but where do you put these resources? i tried to put them into ui-lovelace.yaml but with the new HASSIO that is not accepted. Resources like : url: /hacsfiles/button-text-card/button-text-card.js type: module

[@KPeyanski]

try with the Configure UI -> Raw configuration editor in the upper right corner of your home assistant.

[@MrDenisJoshua]

I just intall HACS also... but I have not "COmunity" menu on the left... I have HAKS menu And I don't have all that menu un up side... do you know hwy please ? Thanks in advance

[@KPeyanski]

Hi Denis. You can label the menu whatever you wish. The author of the plug-in changed the default name from "community" to "HACS" not so long ago (if I'm not mistaken here). So if you have HACS menu you are good to go. Also the latest HACS interface is a little bit different than the one in the video, but the idea and the integrations are the same

[@MrDenisJoshua]

@@KPeyanski Thanks a lot for the answer... but do you have a menu thet show you the installed apps please ? I have only 2 menu... Integrations and Frontend :-( Thanks again

[@naronaroyan323]

My Hacs does not look like that and it doesn't say "Community", does this mean this is something new or is it an old video and mine is the new? My Hacs tab just says Hacs...

[@KPeyanski]

Hey, check my updated video about HACS - kzbin.info/www/bejne/h4G7qYCJi5h1i7s

[@pablosergiohernandez]

700th Sub! woot, what i win?! ;)

[@KPeyanski]

You win a pinned comment. Thank you for the sub and the comment.

[@CarlBehrent]

Can you add the Github token to HACS if you have already installed and configured HACS?

[@KPeyanski]

I don’t understand. If it’s already installed, configured and working why would you want to add github token? Or you have older version of HACS installed differently?

[@CarlBehrent]

@@KPeyanski I dont recall doing the github token step when I originally installed HACS so was looking to check whether I did or not, and if not do it.

[@KPeyanski]

I understand now. You probably have older HACS version. If you wish to upgrade to the latest version you better start from scratch, but if everything is working and you are happy - stay as you are and don’t change anything.

[@CarlBehrent]

@@KPeyanski everything seems to be ok so will leave it. I have also added frontend: themes: !include_dir_merge_named themes to my config.yaml file and the Themes option doesnt display under Community alongside Installed, Integration etc.

[@KPeyanski]

@@CarlBehrent Do you have any errors/warnings in the home assistant logs?

[@onknight]

if your running a VM version how do get into that

[@KPeyanski]

You should have a supervisor menu if you are running Home Assistant in a VM (HassOS)

[@JeffreyHammerCam]

Great video!! My weather entity is not named "weather.home" "Entity not available: weather.home" would have been nice to include how to find the proper name for people not as comfortable with their environments. (Got mine dialed in) Also it would have been nice to include how to change the background images for the dark mode with this theme. YES to dark mode! :-D

[@KPeyanski]

Thank you Jeff. Very useful comment of yours. I will try to add these things in the video description. Because I cannot update the video once it's uploaded :) Dark mode (force) wins for now :)

[@KPeyanski]

Video description is updated as per your recommendations ;) Thank you one more time

[@jasonmarriott1058]

Hi, I don't get HACS in my list in integrations.. Any ideas

[@KPeyanski]

Clear your browser cache and check your home assistant logs

[@jasonmarriott1058]

@@KPeyanski I already did this as well as restarted my instances. Been running Home Assistant for some time now, and before I moved to new hardware I had HACS running but that was 6 months ago and things have changed allot with the install. Do I need to add something in Hassio repositories?

[@KPeyanski]

No need to add anything in the repos. Extract your logs from HA developer tools and send it to me in my Discord server - discord.gg/DtJdfv4

[@cassio2999]

Are you German???? aoying Baggrund noice

[@KPeyanski]

No, why? Do I look like German or I speak like one?