HELP 🧠 Home Assistant Setup Help – Pi 5 + Touchscreen Display (All-in-One Display/Host)

[floral marlin]

Hey everyone!
I’ve been experimenting with different setups for Home Assistant and could use some guidance. Here's my situation:

🛠️ Current Setup:

-Raspberry Pi 5 with the official touchscreen display 2

I want to use it as the Home Assistant host , and also the dashboard display on the same device

✅ What I’ve tried:

Works well for displaying the dashboard
BUT: Using the containerized HA install doesn’t give me access to add-ons (like File Editor, Samba, ESPHome, etc.)
Kind of limited compared to full HAOS```

```HAOS for Pi (flashed via Raspberry Pi Imager)
Runs great as a headless server
But: No built-in option to show the dashboard on the Pi’s display (as it’s not a desktop OS)```

**❓What I’m trying to achieve:**

I'd love to have a self-contained Pi 5 setup:
Run HAOS (for full add-on support)
Display the dashboard locally on the touchscreen without needing a second device

**💡My Questions:**

Is there an add-on or workaround that would allow HAOS on Pi to display its own dashboard on the connected touchscreen?
OR — Is there a way with Ubuntu+kiosk that I can run a more complete HA experience (with add-ons)?
I can do tests locally on a NUC (generic x86), so suggestions for that path are welcome too.

[errant ravine]

the short answer is...No

if you had a mini PC you could run a standard OS with GUI and run HAOS on a VM in the background. but you are realistically not doing that on a rpi

[floral marlin]

thanks for the answer that is sadly not what i wanted to ear hahah sheers

[floral marlin]

and an other question , why is the no addon version available to use as a program in ubuntu with kiosk and not the other one ? disk usage ?

[errant ravine]

addons are essentially docker containers and are run by the "supervisor" which is not designed to be used on anything other than HAOS

also whilst on the subject of a rpi, you should not be using an SD card. it will be slow and fail pretty quickly.

[floral marlin]

i mean , for my project since i will use it as a host / display , the no addons version is lightweight enought to not fail , it just display the cctv of friend house and 2 3 other automation

and the raspberry pi sent me the best rpi5 version with biggest ram ( cc package for review )

[errant ravine]

the way the recorder works means it will burn through write cycles. its fine for short term testing but for long term use you should get a proper drive

[floral marlin]

alright , ill get the ssd hat then 🙂

[floral marlin]

but for the moment i am making tests on the nuc but idk why with the generic flashed with balena its installing in the usb drive itself lol , so ill use the method to install ubuntu and then replace the os like the tutorial on the website

[errant ravine]

you just boot ubuntu from a flash drive and use it to write the haos image to the drive

you flash the image of haos to the drive you want to boot it from.

[floral marlin]

you have a like to the flashdrive version of ubuntu ? cause i can only find the one the install

nvm

[errant ravine]

you boot ubuntu with a flash drive then use that to write the image to the drive inside the system

[floral marlin]

when you install you can select "try " so ill do it like so hehe

[errant ravine]

yeah you boot it as a live enviroment

[floral marlin]

thnaks now it is booting w/out the usb hahah maybe it also was the reason why it was slow asf

thanks man you have been really helpful todday , ill set everything tomorow GG