Home Assistant

I'm locked out!

The sections below deal with recovering from a situation where you are not able to sign in, or need to recover your data.

Forgot password

Home Assistant (including Supervised)

If you are still logged in to the web interface with your user, then you are in luck.

  1. Add a new user as an administrator and give the new user a password you can remember.
  2. Then log out, and log in with this new user.
  3. Reset your password via this new administrator account (and then delete this new account).
    • Your configuration will remain, and you don’t have to do a new onboarding process.

If you’ve forgotten your username, then deleting the files mentioned further below will be necessary to start a new onboarding process.

To reset a user’s password, via console

Use this procedure if you know the username, and you can access the Home Assistant console on the device itself (not the SSH terminal from the add-ons).

  1. Connect a keyboard and monitor to your device and access the terminal:
  2. Once you have opened the Home Assistant command line, enter the following command:
    • Note: existing_user is a placeholder. Replace it with your user name.
    • Note: new_password is a placeholder. Replace it with your new password.
    • Command: auth reset --username existing_user --password new_password
  3. You can now log in to Home Assistant using this new password.

To reset a user’s password, via the container command line

If you are running Home Assistant in a container, you can use the command line in the container with the hass command to change your password. The steps below refer to a Home Assistant container in Docker named homeassistant. Note that while working in the container, commands will take a few moments to execute.

  1. docker exec -it homeassistant bash to open to the container command line
  2. hass to create a default user, if this is your first time using the tool
  3. hass --script auth --config /config change_password existing_user new_password to change the password
  4. exit to exit the container command line
  5. docker restart homeassistant to restart the container.

To reset a user’s password, as an administrator via the web interface

  1. In the bottom left, select your user to go to the Profile page and make sure Advanced Mode is activated.
  2. Go to Settings > People and select the person for which you want to change the password.
  3. At the bottom of the dialog box, select Change Password.
  4. Enter the new password, and select OK.
  5. Confirm the new password by entering it again, and select OK again.
  6. A confirmation box will be displayed with the text Password was changed successfully.

To delete a user, as an administrator via the web interface

  1. Go to Settings > People and select the person which you want to delete.
    • Note: you cannot delete the owner.
  2. At the bottom of the dialog box, select Delete.
    • A confirmation dialog box will be displayed.
  3. To confirm, select OK.

Start a new onboarding process

If you lose the password associated with the owner account and the steps above do not work to reset the password, the only way to resolve this is to start a new onboarding process. If you have an external backup with an administrator account of which you still know the login credentials, you can restore that backup. If you do not have a backup, resetting the device will erase all data.

  • If you have a Home Assistant Green, reset the Green.
  • If you have a Home Assistant Yellow, reset the Yellow.
  • If you have a Raspberry Pi, delete all the authentication data.
    • Shut down Home Assistant.
    • Remove your SD card and access it from your PC.
    • Delete the following files from the .storage/ folder in your configuration folder:
      • auth
      • auth_provider.homeassistant
      • onboarding
      • hassio
      • cloud

Recovering Data for Home Assistant (including Supervised)

Unless your SD card/data is corrupted, you can still get to your files or troubleshoot further. There are a few routes:

  • Connect a USB keyboard and HDMI monitor directly to the Raspberry Pi.
  • Remove the SD and access the files from another machine (preferably one running Linux).

Connect directly

If you’re using a Raspberry Pi, you’re likely going to have to pull the power in order to get your monitor recognized at boot. Pulling power has a risk of corrupting the SD, but you may not have another option. Most standard USB keyboards should be recognized easily.

Once you’re connected, you’ll see a running dmesg log. Hit the enter key to interrupt the log. Sign in as “root”. There is no password.

You will then be at the Home Assistant CLI, where you can run the custom commands. These are the same as you would run using the SSH add-on but without using ha in front of it. For example:

  • core logs for Home Assistant Core log
  • supervisor logs for supervisor logs
  • host reboot to reboot the host
  • dns logs for checking DNS
  • etc (typing help will show more)

Accessing Files from the SD/HDD

Remove the SD and access the files from another computer

The files are on an EXT4 partition (hassos-data) and the path is /mnt/data/supervisor. These are easily accessed using another Linux machine with EXT support.

For Windows or macOS you will need third party software. Below are some options.