For years, Home Assistant users have relied on HACS to discover custom integrations, dashboard cards, themes and other community-made goodies. It has been one of those essential additions that makes Home Assistant so flexible.
There was just one little catch: before you could use HACS, you had to install HACS.
Now, that extra step is going away.
Starting with Home Assistant 2026.11, the Home Assistant Community Store moves into Home Assistant itself as the new Marketplace. No separate HACS installation. No wondering whether you followed the installation instructions correctly. Just open Settings, find Marketplace, and explore.
Well, almost. There are a few things worth knowing before you fill your smart home with even more shiny new features.
What Is the Home Assistant Marketplace?
The Marketplace is Home Assistant’s built-in destination for finding, installing and updating community-made extensions.
If you have used HACS before, the good news is that the Marketplace is not an entirely new ecosystem. It is essentially HACS brought into Home Assistant Core, with the goal of making community content easier to access and manage.
The Marketplace supports four main types of content:
- Custom integrations: Add support for devices and services that are not included in Home Assistant Core.
- Dashboard cards and plugins: Give your dashboards new layouts, visualisations and controls.
- Themes: Change the appearance of your Home Assistant interface.
- Template macros: Reusable Jinja templates that help you avoid repeating the same logic across your configuration.
You can find it under Settings → Marketplace.
The Marketplace uses the same community catalog and repository structure as HACS. That means existing projects do not suddenly need to be rebuilt just because the shop has moved.
For developers, much of the publishing process also stays the same. For users, the biggest difference is that the store is now part of Home Assistant itself.
And for those of us who enjoy installing things just to see what they do? Well, perhaps it is time to practise a little self-control.
Perhaps.
Moving from HACS to Marketplace: What Happens to Your Existing Setup?
This is probably the best part of the announcement.
You do not need to manually migrate your HACS installation.
When Home Assistant 2026.11 starts for the first time after the upgrade, the Marketplace takes over your existing HACS installation automatically.
Your installed repositories, custom repositories and update entities carry over. Existing update entity IDs are retained, so automations and dashboards that depend on them should continue to work.
The old HACS custom integration is then removed, and the Marketplace takes its place.
In other words, you should not have to spend your evening reinstalling every custom integration while wondering why the living room dashboard suddenly looks like a half-finished renovation project.
What about dashboard cards and resources?
Existing dashboard resources are also considered in the migration.
The Marketplace serves dashboard resources from a new location, but the old /hacsfiles/ paths continue to work. If you manage dashboard resources through YAML, Home Assistant may provide a repair notification reminding you to update the paths.
That is useful because a working dashboard is not something most of us want to rebuild on a Wednesday evening.
Are there any exceptions?
Yes, and this is worth checking before upgrading.
HACS has also been used to manage AppDaemon apps and Python scripts. These are not supported by the new Marketplace.
Their existing files remain in place, and the apps or scripts can continue to work, but they will no longer receive updates through HACS or Marketplace. Home Assistant provides a repair notification identifying the affected items.
Blueprints are another important distinction: they are not installed through Marketplace. You continue to import them from supported URLs, such as GitHub repositories or the Home Assistant Community Forum.
Before you upgrade
I would recommend the following quick checklist:
- Make a fresh Home Assistant backup.
- Check whether you use any AppDaemon apps or Python scripts installed through HACS.
- Review any repair notifications after upgrading.
- Check dashboards that use manually configured resource paths.
- Confirm that your important custom integrations and automations are working as expected.
The migration is designed to be automatic, but that does not mean you should skip backups. Even a well-planned move deserves a safety net.
Does Marketplace Make Home Assistant Safer?
Now we get to the interesting part.
Bringing Marketplace into Home Assistant is a welcome usability improvement. It also introduces security measures around installing and managing community content.
However, there is an important distinction:
Built into Home Assistant does not mean officially supported by Home Assistant.
Marketplace content is still created and maintained by community developers. The fact that an integration, theme or dashboard card appears in the Marketplace does not mean that the Home Assistant project has independently audited its code or guarantees its security.
Think of Marketplace as a better-organised entrance to the community ecosystem, not a magic machine that turns every repository into production-grade software.
What security measures are included?
The Marketplace has several safeguards designed to reduce risk and prevent installation mistakes.
For example:
- Administrative permissions are required for installation and management.
- Users must acknowledge a warning about the risks of community content before installing or updating it.
- Replacing a built-in integration requires an additional confirmation.
- Downloads, archive extraction and file removal are restricted to designated directories.
- Downloaded content is checked against expected structures and certain file requirements before installation is accepted.
The catalog also distinguishes repositories that have been removed from those identified as critical. This helps Home Assistant respond differently to content that is no longer maintained and content considered harmful.
These measures matter. They help prevent accidental misuse, invalid installations and certain classes of malicious or malformed downloads.
But they do not eliminate the risk of running third-party code.
What does Marketplace not guarantee?
There is no automatic, comprehensive security audit of every community repository simply because it is listed in the Marketplace.
The system also does not use digital signatures or checksums to verify the integrity of every installed file.
That matters because custom integrations run within the Home Assistant environment, while dashboard cards execute in users’ browsers. Both can introduce risks if the code is malicious or poorly maintained.
The practical lesson is simple: Marketplace makes community content easier to discover and manage, but users still need to exercise judgement.
Five Ways to Be Smarter About Community Integrations
You do not need to become a software security researcher before installing a dashboard card. A few sensible habits will already help.
1. Check whether the project is maintained
Look at the repository’s recent activity, release history and issue tracker.
A project that has not been updated for years is not automatically dangerous. It may simply do its job perfectly. But if Home Assistant has changed significantly since the last release, compatibility and security deserve a closer look.
2. Read the documentation
Check what the integration actually does, which permissions or credentials it needs, and whether it sends data to external services.
If an integration needs access to an account or service, understand why before granting it.
3. Look beyond popularity
Stars, downloads and community recommendations are useful signals, but they are not security certifications.
A popular project can still contain bugs. A smaller project can be well maintained and carefully developed.
Look at the quality of the documentation, how issues are handled and whether the maintainer explains important changes.
4. Keep backups and update thoughtfully
Home Assistant automatically creates a backup before a normal update, but having a reliable backup strategy remains important.
For critical integrations, read the release notes before updating. If your home depends on a custom integration for heating, access control or another essential function, avoid making unnecessary changes right before leaving for a weekend away.
Your future self will appreciate the consideration.
5. Install what you need
It is tempting to install every interesting card, integration and theme you discover.
I know. The Marketplace is practically an invitation.
But every additional component creates another thing to maintain, update and troubleshoot. Keep the extensions that genuinely improve your setup, and be willing to remove those you no longer use.
Your Home Assistant configuration will thank you.
What Does This Mean for the Future of Home Assistant?
The move to Marketplace is more than a cosmetic change, even if the initial experience is deliberately familiar to existing HACS users.
By making community extensions a built-in feature, Home Assistant lowers the barrier for new users who want to go beyond the official integrations.
It also brings community content closer to the normal update and maintenance experience. That is a sensible direction for a platform whose flexibility depends heavily on the work of its community.
At the same time, the move does not mean every community extension will become an official integration. Community developers remain responsible for their projects, and users still need to consider compatibility, maintenance and security.
The Marketplace should make it easier to discover what is available. Over time, it may also help more users find useful projects that they would otherwise never have discovered.
And that is a good thing.
The trick will be maintaining the balance between accessibility and trust. Making installation easier is valuable, but users should never confuse a convenient installation process with a guarantee that the code is safe.
Should You Be Excited?
Yes, especially if you are new to Home Assistant or have avoided HACS because the initial setup felt intimidating.
For existing HACS users, the transition should be straightforward. Your installed content and custom repositories are carried over automatically, with a few exceptions worth checking.
For everyone else, Marketplace offers a simpler way to explore the wider Home Assistant community.
My advice? Make a backup, check the few migration exceptions, upgrade when you are ready, and explore the Marketplace one useful addition at a time.
And if you find yourself installing twelve new dashboard cards on the first evening, remember: you started this smart home project to make life easier.
You did not start it to create a second job maintaining a very sophisticated collection of YAML, JavaScript and questionable late-night decisions.
Although, if we are honest, that ship may already have sailed.
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