The exception here is anyone who is running Home Assistant in a Docker container, since Home Assistant’s add-ons are effectively containers themselves. If you’ve gone that route, you will need to expose the files manually on your server as you would any other directory. This guide won’t be covering that.

Just in case you’re not sure, you can check what installation method you’ve used by opening your Home Assistant instance in a browser and navigating to Settings > About.

To install the add-on, head to Settings > Add-ons and click “Add-on store” at the bottom of the page. Now search for “samba” and click on the “Samba share” add-on. Hit “Install” and then head to the “Configuration” tab at the top of the screen.

Here you can define a few basic login credentials, like the username and password you’ll use to gain access. You can tweak other settings here, but most of the basic settings can be left as-is. You can manually add any folders you specifically want access to here. You might also want to enable the “Enable Compatibility Settings for Apple Devices” toggle if you’re coming from a Mac.

Click “Save,” and you’ll be invited to restart the add-on, which is necessary for your configuration to be actioned. You’re now done. Access your Home Assistant server using a Windows, Mac, or Linux computer as you would any other share by using a file explorer, navigating to the “Network” browser, and selecting the “homeassistant” host (or whatever it is you decided to call it).

Exposing your backups folder

The main reason I installed the Samba share add-on was to easily expose my backups folder. I did this because I wanted a way of uploading my Home Assistant shares to iCloud (you could use OneDrive, Google Drive, and others) so that I had some cloud-based redundancy if the whole operation went kaput.

This was necessary for me because my Home Assistant server runs in a VirtualBox virtual machine, and it’s an easy way to access the drive on the Mac mini powering my server. I wrote an Automator script that copies the contents of the backups folder to iCloud Drive (by triggering the script every day using an Apple Calendar event).

You could get more creative and devise scripts to copy it elsewhere, or use an app like Syncthing to achieve a similar outcome. Just remember that the share needs to be mounted on the machine that’s responsible for this task.

Editing files like configuration.yaml and others

The configuration.yaml file might be the only file you ever find yourself manually editing on your Home Assistant server. It’s used primarily to call integrations that haven’t been integrated into the core Home Assistant UI, like those you might find on the Home Assistant Community Store. You can also use the file to make changes to the way Home Assistant works, like adding items to your sidebar menu.

On top of this, there are other files in the config folder you might want to make changes to, like scripts.yaml and scenes.yaml if you prefer writing YAML code to using Home Assistant’s UI.

Either way, while you can absolutely use the File editor add-on (installable via the add-on store) for this, it’s not as quick as finding the necessary file in your file explorer and opening it up with Notepad, TextEdit, or your favorite text editor.

Adding and removing media

Another sharepoint you’ll get access to with the Samba share add-on is the media folder. While you probably don’t want to store your entire music or video collection within your Home Assistant directory (we’d recommend something like the open-source media streamer Jellyfin instead); there are some reasons you might want to copy media.

For example, if you’re setting up a poor man’s custom alarm system, you might want to transfer a suitable siren or alarm noise to play via your smart speakers. You might also want to add a range of notification sounds to your server that trigger when certain events happen, like a garage door opening or a camera identifying a package.

Whatever your reason, there’s no easier way than simply dragging a few MP3 or WAV files into the media server and calling it a day.