Home Assistant ships with more than a thousand built-in integrations. That sounds great until you sit down with a fresh install and realize you have no idea which ones are worth your time and which ones are deprecated, broken, or just not what they sound like.
This is a curated list of the integrations and add-ons we recommend in 2026, separated into a starter pack for new installs and a power-user set for established systems. We also flag a few popular ones to skip.
The starter pack: install these first
1. HACS (Home Assistant Community Store)
HACS is the gateway integration. It is not a connection to a device or service; it is an in-app store for community-developed integrations, dashboard cards, themes, and AppDaemon apps that have not been merged into the core Home Assistant codebase. Many of the most useful additions to Home Assistant (custom Lovelace cards, niche device integrations, themes) live in HACS.
Installation requires running a one-line install script via the SSH or Terminal add-on, then adding the HACS integration through Settings, Devices and Services. The full process takes about 5 minutes. After that, browsing HACS is the easiest way to discover what is possible.
2. Mobile App
The official Home Assistant Mobile App (iOS and Android) is the single most underrated integration. Once installed and signed in, it does three things that change how you use Home Assistant:
- Pushes notifications from automations directly to your phone.
- Reports your location (with permission) so you can trigger automations on arrive-home or leave-home.
- Exposes phone sensors (battery, charging, Bluetooth proximity, focus mode, etc.) to Home Assistant.
The location and sensor features alone enable a huge category of automations: lights on when you arrive, away-mode when the last person leaves, do-not-disturb syncs with phone focus modes, low-battery warnings, and more. Install on every household member's phone.
3. Mosquitto MQTT broker (add-on)
If you plan to use Zigbee2MQTT, ESPHome, or any device that talks MQTT, install the Mosquitto MQTT add-on. It is the local broker that handles all the MQTT message traffic on your network. Installation is one click from the Add-on Store; configuration usually requires no changes from defaults.
You can skip this if you are using ZHA (the alternative Zigbee integration that does not require MQTT) and have no other MQTT devices. But Mosquitto is a small, well-maintained piece of software, and having it installed prepares you for the next MQTT-based device you inevitably add.
4. ESPHome (add-on)
ESPHome turns cheap ESP32 and ESP8266 microcontrollers into Home Assistant devices defined by YAML config. The HA add-on is the easiest way to manage ESPHome devices: compile firmware, push updates over wifi, view logs, all from the Home Assistant UI.
If you have any interest in DIY hardware (custom sensors, smart outlets, garage door openers built from $5 chips), install ESPHome early. Even if you do not plan to build your own devices, ESPHome auto-discovers existing ESPHome-flashed products from vendors like Athom and Apollo Automation.
5. Mushroom cards (via HACS)
The default Home Assistant Lovelace cards are functional but not pretty. Mushroom is a collection of dashboard cards by community developer piitaya that look better, scale to mobile cleanly, and add interaction patterns the defaults lack (tap to toggle, hold to open settings, etc.).
Install from HACS under Frontend. Once installed, you can use mushroom-light-card, mushroom-temperature-card, and a dozen others throughout your dashboards. Most attractive Home Assistant dashboards you see on Reddit are built with Mushroom.
The next-level pack: install when you have time
6. Frigate NVR (add-on)
Frigate is a self-hosted network video recorder with on-device object detection. Point it at your IP cameras (RTSP feed) and it tracks people, vehicles, packages, and other objects in real time. It generates Home Assistant entities you can use in automations ("if person detected on front porch after 10 PM, turn on porch light").
Frigate is the heaviest add-on on this list by CPU demand. Running it on a Raspberry Pi works for a single camera but starts to struggle with two or more. A mini PC with an Intel N100 (or better) is the realistic platform. Coral USB accelerators dramatically improve detection performance and are still a good investment in 2026 despite supply intermittency.
7. Bambu Lab (via HACS)
For 3D printer owners, the Bambu Lab integration brings printer status, print progress, AMS filament inventory, and webcam feeds into Home Assistant. Automations like "notify when print finishes" or "turn on overhead light during printing" become straightforward.
This integration works with X1 Carbon, P1 series, and A1 series printers. The community-maintained version is on HACS and is the recommended path; Bambu Lab does not officially publish a Home Assistant integration.
8. Folder Watcher
Folder Watcher is a quiet but useful integration that turns file-system events into Home Assistant entities. Watch a folder, get an entity that fires when files are added, modified, or removed. Useful for triggering automations based on backup completion, document scans, screen recordings, or any other file-creating process.
9. Plant integration
The built-in Plant integration pairs a temperature, moisture, and light sensor (typically a Xiaomi Mi Flora or similar Zigbee device) with thresholds for a specific plant species. Get notifications when your monstera needs water or your fiddle-leaf fig is getting too cold. Indoor gardeners will find this useful; outdoor gardeners less so because the sensors are not weatherproof.
10. Apple Home (HomeKit Bridge)
The HomeKit Bridge integration exposes Home Assistant devices as HomeKit accessories, which lets iPhone users control them through the Apple Home app. Useful for household members who want voice control via Siri or who prefer the Apple Home interface for everyday use.
Power-user integrations worth knowing
For more established setups, these are the integrations and add-ons that come up repeatedly in advanced automation discussions:
- AppDaemon: write automations in Python instead of YAML. The right choice for anyone whose YAML files have grown beyond 500 lines.
- Node-RED (add-on): visual flow-based automation editor. Some people love it, others find it harder to maintain than YAML at scale.
- SQL sensor: query the Home Assistant database directly to build derived sensors (week-over-week energy use, average overnight temperature, etc.).
- Generic Camera: turn any RTSP or MJPEG feed into a Home Assistant camera entity without going through Frigate.
- Local Calendar: a self-hosted calendar integration that does not depend on Google. Pairs well with travel-mode and away-mode automations.
- UniFi (Network and Protect): for the many homes running Ubiquiti gear, the UniFi integrations expose device presence, network bandwidth, and Protect camera events to Home Assistant.
Integrations to skip
Three categories worth skipping in 2026:
- Deprecated cloud-only integrations. Tuya's official integration is a good example. The local Tuya integration via HACS works better; the official cloud integration is rate-limited and unreliable.
- Anything that requires a cloud account for a device on your local network. If a vendor's HA integration only works when you give them a cloud login for a device sitting in your living room, walk away. Local integration alternatives almost always exist.
- Voice assistant integrations with major cloud providers. Home Assistant Cloud (Nabu Casa) handles Alexa and Google Assistant integrations natively. The third-party "Alexa Media Player" was popular for years but has had reliability problems; for most users it is not worth the maintenance.
How to keep up
New integrations land in Home Assistant releases every other Wednesday. The official Home Assistant blog publishes a release-notes post each time, which is the best single source for what is new. HACS itself surfaces integrations sorted by stars or recent activity. The r/homeassistant subreddit is the community-driven view of what is gaining traction.
Once your starter pack is installed, the recurring habit is just opening HACS occasionally and seeing what is new in the categories you care about. Most users do not need more than 20 integrations active at any time.
For setting up the underlying server hardware that runs all these integrations, see our Home Assistant server hardware guide. For the specifics of getting Zigbee devices into Home Assistant via the Zigbee2MQTT route, see our Zigbee2MQTT setup guide.
Frequently asked questions
What is the most useful Home Assistant integration to install first?
HACS (Home Assistant Community Store). It is not an integration in the strict sense; it is the gateway that lets you install community-developed integrations and dashboard cards that are not in the core Home Assistant codebase. Almost every other interesting integration on this list either comes through HACS or has community alternatives that do.
What is HACS in Home Assistant?
HACS (Home Assistant Community Store) is a third-party tool that adds an in-app store for community integrations, dashboard cards, themes, and AppDaemon apps. It does not come pre-installed; you install it manually once, then use it to install everything else.
What is the difference between an integration and an add-on?
Integrations connect Home Assistant to a specific device, service, or protocol (e.g., the Hue integration, the OpenWeatherMap integration). Add-ons are separate programs that run alongside Home Assistant on the same hardware (e.g., the Mosquitto MQTT broker add-on, the Frigate NVR add-on). Both extend Home Assistant; they just do it differently.
Do I really need the Home Assistant Mobile App?
If you want push notifications from automations, location-based triggers (arrive home, leave home), or to expose phone sensors to your automations, yes. The Mobile App is the cleanest way to do these. You can technically achieve some of this through other means, but it is more work.
Curated with AI assistance via Charmed.