Host Platform

The host platform allows ESPHome configurations to be compiled and run on a desktop computer. This is known to work on MacOS and Linux. On Windows WSL (Windows Subsystem for Linux) can be used to create a Linux environment that will run ESPHome.

The only configuration required is to optionally set a dummy MAC address that will be used to identify the configuration to Home Assistant (the native MAC address is not readily available.)

Note

HA will not automatically discover an ESPHome instance running on host using MDNS, and you will need to add it explicitly using the IP address of your host computer.

Many components, especially those interfacing to actual hardware, will not be available when using host. Do not configure wifi - network will automatically be available using the host computer.

# Example configuration entry
host:
  mac_address: "06:35:69:ab:f6:79"

Configuration variables:

  • mac_address (Optional, MAC address): A dummy MAC address to use when communicating with HA.

Build and run

The esphome run yourfile.yaml command will compile and automatically run the build file on the host platform.

See Also