Setting up remote access followed all the instructions for DuckDNS but not working

Third party integrations
1

• Home Assistant OS
• Core 2026.2.1
• Supervisor 2026.02.1
• Operating System 17.1
• Frontend 20260128.6
• Intel NUC6i5SYK

Just setting up Home Assistant on an Intel Nuc. I have a few devices connected and operating using a PC and the companion app working locally. I have now tried to implement remote access using the DuckDNS method and failed. I assume it is something to do with the Home Assistant SSL

I have spent several hours going through articles to try and find out what I have missed, but with no joy. Most of the articles talk about settings in the LetsEcrypt, but that option is not available in the version of DuckDNS on my system.

It would appear that all the articles I could find refer to older versions of Home Assistant and how to configure the remote access.

Below is the current configuration settings for all the devices involved. Any help would be great, as I have not got a clue where to go from here.

Duckdns settings as per Home Assistant web site.
XXXXXX.duckdns.org
Token xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Home assistant network setting
Home Assistant URL xhttps://XXXXXX.duckdns.org

Router port forwarding
Device External ports Internal ports Protocol
Start End Start End
homeassistant 443 443 8123 8123 TCP
homeassistant 8123 8123 8123 8123 TCP

Using Google Chrome to try to connect to Home Assistant via DuckDNS

Error message;

This site can’t be reached

ERR_CONNECTION_TIMED_OUT

Home Assistant companion settings
Home Assistant URL xhttps://XXXXXX.duckdns.org:8123/

Using Home Assistant companion to connect to Home Assistant returns the following message;

Web page not available
The web page at
xhttps://XXXXXX.duckdns.org:8123/?external_auth=1 could not be loaded because:
net::ERR_SSL_PROTOCOL_ERROR

I would love to know what it is I am missing, as it has now become a bit of a challenge to get it working.

x in front of https needed to post the topic.

2

Hello. I have a couple of questions. If you’ve done everything correctly, then everything is fine. The problem lies elsewhere.

  1. Have you created an account and URL at https://www.duckdns.org/
  2. Have you added/selected Let’s Encrypt in your Duck DNS configuration?
3

Hi,

I have setup a remote URL and I have been able to test it using a mobile phone network to connect. However I can only connect if I use http and not https.

I have set up the encryption and the certificates have been generated.

If I now change the following;

Companion Home Assistant URL to https
Network Home Assistant URL to https

and then modify the configuration.yaml to include

http:
  ssl_certificate: /ssl/fullchain.pem
  ssl_key: /ssl/privkey.pem

I believe this is all that has to be done to change over from http to https for external access. However when I restart the system I see the system disconnect from the local PC, but it never reconnects. At this point I do not seem to have any remote access to the server.

If I then edit the configuration.yaml file on the server and comment out the 3 line above and restart, I regain local remote access.

I assume that since all local remote access are using http that they should not be affected by the addition of the certificates for the https access?

4

To be able to use https obviously you need to issue certificates for your site (xxx.duckdns.org), most common way is to use LetsEcrypt services for this purpose.
DuckDns doesn’t provide certificates , just DNS names.

5

You have to add “server_port: 8123” to http before “ssl_certificate: /ssl/fullchain.pem”
Will be like this:

http:
  server_port: 8123
  ssl_certificate: /ssl/fullchain.pem
  ssl_key: /ssl/privkey.pem

Also make sure you select “Let’s Encrypt” in your “Duck DNS” configuration and using token from duckdns.org account.

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