The Easiest Free Way To Do Home Assistant Remote Access!

[@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 ?

[@lixxus-m]

@@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

[@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.

[@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.

[@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 🙏

[@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?

[@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!

[@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.

[@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.

[@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.

[@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!

[@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 :)

[@TheSalwayCannans]

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!

[@cooperised]

Still gonna use Nabu Casa, not because it's any better but because the $5 per month supports the dev effort for Home Assistant.

[@EverythingSmartHome]

Absolutely, Nabu Casa rocks!

[@jezlawrence720]

Price point is too high for a DIY thing like home assistant. If it was more like ten bucks a year, so less than a dollar a month I would snap it up and so would a lot of other folk. Paying for convenience needs to be at convenience prices.

[@Johnsormani]

Cooperised Plus 1 on that. And also the google tts is of higher quality than the free version

[@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.

[@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.

[@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.

[@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.

[@veerav579]

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

[@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 😆

[@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!

[@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!

[@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!

[@chrisdarby2719]

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

[@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 :)

[@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!

[@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!

[@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!!

[@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...

[@TheStupidcomment]

Bro this video is legit. I used a different service than freenom cos it's not working anymore. But all other steps are valid at the time of writing this comment. I subbed and liked and smashed everything.

[@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 ?

[@Jannick-mp7bf]

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

[@mathesonstep]

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

[@alex_ortiz]

Great video, although I believe Plex and video streaming services are against the terms of service of cloudflare.

[@EverythingSmartHome]

They are indeed good point, forgot to mention that - it was more just an example of an internal service but a poorly chosen one by me! But yes, good spot!

[@alex_ortiz]

@@EverythingSmartHome It is such a great an easy setup for remote access. I have a CG-Nat and wish I could access my Plex server as well with this method. Its easy though for HA and again, great video. I didn't realize this was also a way to connect Google home and Alexa. Do you have examples of that process, or is it pretty straight forward like Nabu Casa?

[@EverythingSmartHome]

I've covered both Google home and Alexa connections in the past that should work with this no problem!

[@stephanhackett5012]

@@EverythingSmartHome Many have gotten there Cloudflare account permanently closed because of Plex specifically. I would recommend you make note of this somehow (via pinned message maybe?). I think they actively monitor for Plex specifically because of its popularity and its high bandwidth requirements that tax CF servers.

[@hvddrift]

I think a good follow up video would be how to create firewalls and an advanced topic of using WARP for your companion apps. Also using an authenticator. I tested Cloudflare tunnel and put a simple geographic firewall on. It blocked so many scans from all the usual suspects.

[@AMillionInAOne]

Thanks, good suggestions!

[@jdcpr]

Thanks for sharing. I was able to follow your video and be up and running in less than 10 mins. Now ready to expand HA utility.

[@shanchanti]

Hi is freenom working for you? I'm unable to create a new domain.

[@hoctrimededebutry8655]

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

[@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!

[@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

[@fabrystyle7799]

Hi @Lewis, Please, this solutions doesn't work anymore, any suggestions? Freenom website is down!!!

[@ashoktvm]

any other sites? freenom is temporarly no longer providing free domain

[@mous2K2]

Hey, i've noticed some connection issue theses days. when i've looked to freenom page my domain is no longer shown. Do you encounter same issue on your side ?

[@barrybach]

Incredibly easy to follow and setup. Thank you!!

[@cho26504]

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

[@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!

[@foortizs]

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

[@osamaalmatary6423]

freenom free domains aren't available now what is the alternative options for this ?

[@AutodimRO]

there are 0.99c domains. check godaddy

[@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!!

[@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.

[@ken7481]

You are a gift to the home automation community

[@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!

[@huublucassen7607]

Nice video, i have Cloudflare up and running and both Google Assistant and Apple Home are 100% functioning. I have 2FA and Ip-ban active and use a strong password, but i still would like to add an extra security layer, e.g. Cloudflare Zero Trust. My HA instance still “feels” exposed to the internet, the security mainly depends on whether there are no weak spots or exploits in HA itself. Do you have experience with Cloudflare Zero Trust and would it be possible to implement it in conjunction with, in particular, Google Assistant, if so could you make a video about it?

[@brakahiphop]

Definitely the best way to get remote access to HA. Awesome video however I would have recommend to put the security video you made in the description or at the beginning of the video instead of the end of it. Also, it could be great to show the people how to setup their app to access their HA on the go, using their mobile data plan. :) Keep up the good work. Its pretty much what every HA users expect it to be. I'm just being picky ;)

[@juanjo_segura]

Yeah, video was awesome, but I also would like to know how can I use it remotely with the mobile app instead of from the browser Edit: answering myself, it's very easy to do that. When you make the login on the app, just write your domain and login.

[@benriefourie115]

​@@juanjo_segura thank you!

[@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 !

[@santisoifer471]

Hi there! do you anyone know a new way to do this? (freenom does not work anymore). Thank you!

[@SnowyPe]

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

[@harryscarheadsam]

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

[@romeesna6917]

I am getting a Bad gateway, 502 error. I get the image where browsing is working and Cloudflare too, but my host gets error. What should I do? Contact my host or could it be a Cloudflare problem?

[@conroe_au]

This was impossibly easy. Why have I taken so long to set it up! Thank you Lewis, from a fellow Lewis. PS: the link to HA security recommendations seems to have disappeared. Will hunt that down now

[@haniidankova7068]

You can indeed add a subdomain even if the main domain is used for another purpose. Simply add the subdomain to the HA Cloudflare external hostname and restart the addon.

[@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?

[@Rahditzzz]

Is there an alternative to freenom? No domains can be registered.

[@Craigslistmist]

Quick question: with this method, google home app is not letting me connect to the external website. Getting error that it is not secure. I added the site to “allowed” - still no luck. I am using before the domain name. Any suggestions or help will be greatly appreciated. Thanks so much!

[@kevinmerrison6700]

Really useful as always. Is there a good alternative to Freenom as not working at the moment? Also struggling with setting up new Green with HTTPS, pity it's not pre-set HTTPS from factory? Final bit to fix will be static IP, locked myself out trying, but thankfully had done your backups set up so recovered in about 30 mins. TVM

[@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

[@ibryxx]

Im not sure if this is the easiest method to access homeassistant remotly, but your tutorials are the easiest and on point no bull$it for suree 😅💯

[@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.

[@weldonhostetler4442]

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

[@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?

[@dmhprime]

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

[@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

[@simonqreed]

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

[@VlkSamotar]

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

[@Johnsormani]

I just have my home assistant and all other pc‘s on a zerotier network. Which allows me to use HA natively. It’s free up to 50 devices. What is interesting to me is the ability to have connections with hardware behind another network, like your second house, office etc. I just set up a wireguard tunnel just for this purpose.

[@TheUnofficialMaker]

Excellent, at 5:42 I had to restart HA before the repository would show up.

[@solsson]

Thank you! I had the same problem.

[@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!

[@cserajesh]

Thank you for this great Content I was struggling to resolve the Bad Gateway 400 error after seeing your video I resolved this easily

[@savage169]

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

[@GallikDaniel]

An excellent solution, not only for connecting to the home assistant. I wonder what the limitations are on the Cloudflare side, since it is completely free.

[@ranaway34]

Thank you for the video, freenom is down and cant accept new registrations. Is there a good working alternative?

[@AutodimRO]

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

[@actionward]

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

[@EverythingSmartHome]

Thanks for watching!

[@PlayerLeonardo]

freenom is not working atm, do you have any alternative sugestion?

[@bertdebondt]

same here look at my post above.

[@PaoloPellizzari]

Very useful and clear as usual. Thanks Lewis!

[@נתיברחנין]

Thanks for the great video. Do you know about other sites like freenom?

[@SoumalyaGhoshAVM]

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

[@EverythingSmartHome]

Haha totally worth it! 🙌

[@RLR997TT]

Wondering if anyone has a solution for the now expired freenom domain registrations. Mines now gone over the year and I'd like to renew but it appears not possible

[@geoemm]

Can you make a video on how to cast your home assistant dashboard and rtsp camera to a google nest hub if you have set up external access with the Cloudflare method? Because when I am trying to cast the dashboard with the scripts i am getting this error- "Failed to call service script/cast_mushroom. Home Assistant Cast requires your instance to be reachable via HTTPS. Enable Home Assistant Cloud or set up an external URL with valid SSL certificate"

[@Truthhurts4real]

Thank you so much, I did this for my Unraid server but I did not know they had one for HA.

[@danielsmit-sw2zc]

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

[@yurikm83]

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

[@kensteeplejack]

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

[@CamykDr]

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

[@gabsta5]

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

[@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?

[@neal3691]

Thank you so much. This was incredibly helpful.

[@RichardKirman]

I found one issue with the Cloudflare, when following the link from the log to authorise the tunnel, it would get the message "pending nameserver update", this persisted for many days after setup i found the fix was... - go into the freenun domain name settings and tick "Use default nameservers (Freenom Nameservers)" and then hit "change nameservers to save the changes. - go back in and change the name servers to the ones specified by Cloudflare. as this video shows I hope this helps others

[@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!

[@Pablinho10.]

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