Check Your Home Assistant Configuration Before You Restart
You copied an automation from a forum into configuration.yaml. You restart Home Assistant. It doesn't come back.
This is the most common way to lose Home Assistant for an evening: one wrong indent, one missing quote, and it refuses to start. Home Assistant has its own configuration checker — the trick is to run it every time, before every restart, including the day you are in a hurry.
The usual advice is to SSH into the server and run the checker inside the container by hand. Here is the version without any of that.
The one-click check
Commandeck has a free button pack for Home Assistant. Install it once and you get two buttons that do the remembering for you.
- Open Commandeck and add your server as a machine (its address, your user name, your password or SSH key).
- Menu ☰ → Button Packs → Linux → Home Assistant (Docker) → Install, and pick that machine.
- After editing a file, click Is my configuration valid?
It runs Home Assistant's own checker, shows its report, and ends with a verdict in one line:
- Valid — restarting is safe.
- Problems found — do not restart until they are fixed; the report above shows what is wrong.
- It will start, but some parts will be ignored — restarting is safe, the parts listed stay off until you fix them.
Then, instead of restarting from the Home Assistant page, click Restart Home Assistant. It checks the configuration first and refuses to restart if it is broken. If it is fine, it restarts Home Assistant and waits until its page answers again.
Nothing to type, no container name to look up: the pack finds Home Assistant by its image, whatever you called it.
It restarted, but something is missing?
The same pack answers the questions that come next.
An integration did not come back. Click What failed to start? — it lists the integrations that did not load, and points out the custom ones, which are the usual cause after an update.
The Zigbee or Z-Wave stick is not found. Click Is my Zigbee or Z-Wave stick seen? It checks both ends — does the server see the stick, is it handed to the container — and prints the exact line to add if it is not.
Something keeps failing. Click Recent errors: everything that went wrong since the last start, each message once instead of the same warning 300 times — ready to paste into a forum post or your AI assistant.
The rest of the pack
The pack is free and has thirteen buttons. The ones people click most:
| Button | Answers |
|---|---|
| Is Home Assistant running? | The version it runs, whether Docker had to restart it after crashes |
| Is there a newer version? | How many monthly releases you are behind, and which notes to read before jumping |
| Are the backups happening? | The newest backup and how old it is |
| Update Home Assistant | Refuses to start without a backup from the last 24 hours, then updates and waits until it answers |
| Database & disk space | How big the history database has grown, and whether the disk is close to full |
Every command is visible before you install, and you can edit any of them afterwards. The pack is for Home Assistant Container — the Docker install. Running Home Assistant OS (the Green, the Yellow, a Raspberry Pi image, a virtual machine)? This pack is not for you: Home Assistant OS has no Docker you can reach.
Running on your server means SSH
Your Home Assistant server is a different machine from the computer you're sitting at, so these buttons reach it over SSH. That part is Commandeck Pro — $29 once, for good, with a 14-day trial that asks for no card and no account. The pack itself, like every pack, is free.
Nothing leaves your computer: no account, no cloud, no server of ours in the middle. Your machines and passwords stay on your device.
Related: Update Your Server Without SSH-ing In · Run Docker Commands as One-Click Buttons · new here? Start with the Beginner Guide.