| title | description |
|---|---|
Configuration.yaml |
Configuring Home Assistant via text files. |
While you can configure most of Home Assistant directly from the user interface under {% my config %}, some parts need you to edit configuration.yaml. This file contains integrations to be loaded along with their configurations. Throughout the documentation you will find snippets that you can add to your configuration file to enable specific functionality.
If you run into trouble while configuring Home Assistant, refer to the configuration troubleshooting page and the configuration.yaml examples.
The easiest option to edit configuration.yaml is to use the {% my supervisor_addon title="Studio Code Server add-on" addon="a0d7b954_vscode" %}. This add-on runs VS Code, which offers live syntax checking and auto-fill of various Home Assistant entities (if unavailable on your system, use {% my supervisor_addon title="File Editor add-on" addon="core_configurator" %} instead).
If you prefer to use a file editor on your computer, use the {% my supervisor_addon title="Samba add-on" addon="core_samba" %} to access the files as a network share.
The path to your configuration directory can be found in the Home Assistant frontend by going to {% my system_health title="Settings > System > System Health" %}
Right under the version you are running, you will find what path Home Assistant has loaded the configuration from.
If you use Home Assistant Container, you can find configuration.yaml in the config folder that you mounted in your container.
If you use Home Assistant Operating System, you can find configuration.yaml in the /config folder of the installation.
If you use Home Assistant Core, you can find configuration.yaml in the config folder passed to the hass command (default is ~/.homeassistant).
Most integrations in Home Assistant that do not interact with devices or services can reload changes made to their configuration in configuration.yaml. To do this, go to {% my server_controls title="Developer Tools > YAML" %} and scroll down to the YAML configuration reloading section (alternatively, hit "c" anywhere in the UI and search for it).
If you can't see your integration listed there, you will need to restart Home Assistant for changes to take effect.
To test any changes to your configuration files from the command line, check out the common tasks for operating system, supervised, container, core for how to do that. Configuration changes can also be tested using the UI by navigating to {% my server_controls title="Developer Tools > YAML" %} and clicking "Check Configuration". For the button to be visible, you must enable "Advanced Mode" on your {% my profile title="User Profile" %}.
The preferred way of migrating to a new system is by {% my supervisor_backups title="making a backup" %}.
If you run the container or core installation methods, you will need to manually make a backup of your configuration folder. Be aware that some of the files you need start with ., which is hidden by default from both ls (in SSH), in Windows Explorer, and macOS Finder. You'll need to ensure that you're viewing all files before you copy them.