[SOLVED] Raspberry Pi Imager doesn't show customisation settings dialog for HA OS 13.1

Installation
1

I’m installing HA for the first time on a RP 5 using the RPI Imager v1.9.0 on MacOS. After selecting the device (RP 5), OS (HomeAssistant OS 13.1), and my media, I click “next”. What SHOULD happen is that the “Use OS customisation” dialog should appear, allowing me to enable SSH, set my host name, etc. I know how to access the Advanced Settings (using command-shift-X) and I can fill them out that way. But the resulting image does not use those settings; I receive a default HA OS image, which doesn’t have SSH enabled. I don’t have a keyboard or monitor, so I need SSH to be able to access the Pi remotely.

If I select the RPI OS, the customisation dialog comes up just fine, and the resulting image has SSH enabled, etc., as one would expect. But it’s not HA OS, of course. I found this page

which suggests reverting to an older version of the imager. I tried v1.7.2 as the OP did, and also 1.8.5, and the same thing happens. I uninstalled all 3 versions, restarted my computer, reinstalled 1.9.0 and 1.7.2, and still no customisation dialog.

I’m new to the RPI and HA, but am very familiar with Linux and the shell, and the RPI works well using the RPI OS and SSH. I’m reluctant to install HA Supervised, because it’s not well supported. (I actually tried it, and it hammered a lot of things, including the hostname(!), and VNC.)

From the posting, it appears to me that HA OS 13.1 does not identify itself to the Imager as an OS that can be customized. Is this possible? Does anyone have any idea why this might be happening, or how I can customise the installation when imaging the HA OS? Should I try an older version of the HA OS? If so, how would one do that?

Thanks in advance!

Update: I tried the Imager 1.9.0 on Windows 10 (on my Parallels VM) with the same results.

2

HAOS turns the computer it runs on into a headless appliance, by design. HA is then managed and configured via a web browser. HAOS is not a general purpose Linux Operating Systems, like Ubuntu or Debian. It is purpose-built Linux Kernel to run Home Assistant, and various other containers and Add-Ons.

Thus, you will not be able to customize the base image using the RPi Imager application.

3

Thanks for your prompt reply, ogiewon.

OK, I guess that makes sense. I guess it makes sense that customisation has been disabled. Interestingly, I imaged HA OS 12.4 by downloading the image from

https://github.com/home-assistant/operating-system/releases/download/12.4/haos_rpi5-64-12.4.img.xz

and the Imager presented the customisation dialog. But it didn’t enable SSH.

All I really need is Samba, so I’ll install the Samba share add-on and hopefully that will give me what I need. And I see there’s an SSH addon, too.

Lots of things to try, but I’m moving forward. I’ll install 13.1 and go from there.

Thanks again for the help!

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