Table of Contents
Home Assistant HACS
HACS (Home Assistant Community Store) is a custom integration that provides a UI to manage custom elements in Home Assistant.
Basically HACS is where most of the new integrations are accessible. Home Assistant itself includes a lot of intergations, and many more can be added via the plug-in engine, but HACS adds a very wide range of widgets and integrations which are maybe more experimental, but that increases the types of devices you can integrate.
Installation
Installing HACS is a bit more complex than installing a classican add-on. You should carefully read this page to understand what you need to do.
First of all, check the requirements.
Download HACS, following the instructions here. Use the OS/Supervised instructions if you have installed Home Assistant on bare metal as i suggested.
Last step is to to complete the basic installation, according to this page.
Usage
After HACS is installed and started, you will find a dedicated HACS page in the Home Assistant sidebar. From this page, you can search for and install the various additional stuff provided by HACS.