Now that you have a way to access your Home Assistant if things go south, the next thing you’re going to need is some sort of file editor and so Home Assistant Add-on number 2 is going to be Visual Studio Code.

This also adds a terminal button to your menu giving you instant terminal access right from the Home Assistant UI, nice! Add-on #2: Visual Studio Code/File Editor Not only that, but short of plugging in a keyboard and monitor, SSH can sometimes be the ONLY way to achieve certain things, so having SSH enabled should definitely be a priority. Having the ability to remotely login from another computer to the OS running Home Assistant, even when Home Assistant isn’t running is an incredibly simple but powerful feature, because as a beginner its quite possible that you will make a mistake that renders your Home Assistant offline and so being able to remotely login to troubleshoot and fix that problem is essential. Home Assistant Add-on number 1 is the SSH/Terminal add-on, which is in my opinion is one of the first things you need to get up and running as soon as you install Home Assistant.

But with lots of add-ons available to choose from, is there are any that are essential or must haves? In my opinion, there a couple that can definitely help to aid your Home Assistant experience! Let’s get into it! Video Add-on #1: SSH/Terminal If you are just getting started with Home Assistant, you may have heard a lot of people talk about something called add-ons, which do pretty much exactly what you think, they extend the core functionality of Home Assistant by allowing you to install applications that aren’t normally included out of the box.

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