Home Assistant OS 18.0.rc1 - first release candidate
Home Assistant OS 18.0.rc1 has been published as a pre-release.
The main change - migration to Linux kernel 6.18 for all platforms, Docker 29.5.3, containerd 2.2.4 and Buildroot 2025.02.14.
For Raspberry Pi, it is now possible to check and update bootloader firmware directly from Home Assistant OS through the CLI. In Home Assistant Core 2026.6.0, firmware should also appear as an update entity.
The new default swap size is now limited to a range from 1 to 4 GB. This should prevent swap from being too small on systems with low RAM and too large on systems with a lot of memory.
The disk image structure has also changed: the data partition is no longer created with a large amount of empty space. This should make writing the image to storage noticeably faster, while the data partition still expands on first boot as before.
For Open Virtual Appliance and aarch64 VM, images now come with a 32 GB size by default, so they no longer need to be expanded separately before use.
Another change - hassos/HassOS naming is being unified toward haos. This should not affect existing installations, but scripts and external tools that refer to old systemd unit names or helper binaries may need adjustments.
There is also an important warning for Raspberry Pi 5: bootloader version 2025-02-12 or newer is required, otherwise the image may hang during early boot.
Source:
github.com/home-assistant/op…