What settings are invalid in packages?

Configuration
1

I get

The camera_snapshots package contains invalid settings

with

$cat /homeassistant/packages/camera_snapshots.yaml

homeassistant:
  allowlist_external_dirs: [ '/homeassistant/camera-snapshots' ]

and
$ cat /homeassistant/configuration.yaml

default_config:

group: !include groups.yaml
automation: !include automations.yaml
script: !include scripts.yaml
script manual: !include_dir_named scripts
scene: !include scenes.yaml

homeassistant:
  packages: !include_dir_named packages

so where can I read about invalid settings in packages?

2

As I understand it (I think I have this right)… Assuming you are running HAOS here.

Why would that be an external directory? You should remove this…

That will look in a folder named ‘packages’ in your config folder. Your config folder and your homeassistant folder are sym-linked and are essentially the same folder.

This is all assuming you are not changing the default HAOS folder set-up, that is.

Personally I would make it clearer by using ./packages . The ‘.’ means the current folder, which would be where the configuration.yaml is located, which should in turn be the config folder.

3

As I whould like to write camera snapshots there:

4

packages and ./packages are absolutely the same thing and are not related for the topic.

5

Yes, it was a suggestion not a requirement.

6

If you can put it in your main configuration.yaml file then you can put it into a package file.

If you can’t put it in your main configuration.yaml file then you can’t put it into a package file.

a package file nothing but a mini configuration.yaml file and it requires all of the same structure and syntax rules.

7

Earlier today I tried the same config in Docker. No luck. Whenever I had allowlist_external_dirs HA would complain:

2026-01-15 17:48:16.538 WARNING (MainThread) [homeassistant.core_config] Package foo contains invalid customize

Having homeassistant: alone seemed fine, though.

Odd.