home-assistant.io/source/_docs/configuration/basic.markdown

---
title: "Setup basic information"
description: "Setting up the basic info of Home Assistant."
---

As part of the default onboarding process, Home Assistant can detect your location from IP address geolocation. Home Assistant will automatically select a unit system and time zone based on this location. You may adjust this during onboarding, or afterwards at {% my general title="Settings > System > General" %}, network related configuration is found under {% my network title="Settings > System > Network" %}.

If you prefer YAML, you can add the following information to your `configuration.yaml`:

```yaml
homeassistant:
  name: Home
  latitude: 32.87336
  longitude: 117.22743
  elevation: 430
  unit_system: metric
  currency: USD
  time_zone: "America/Los_Angeles"
  external_url: "https://www.example.com"
  internal_url: "http://homeassistant.local:8123"
  allowlist_external_dirs:
    - "/usr/var/dumping-ground"
    - "/tmp"
  allowlist_external_urls:
    - "http://images.com/image1.png"
  media_dirs:
    media: "/media"
    recordings: "/mnt/recordings"
  legacy_templates: false
```

<div class='note'>

  You will not be able to edit anything in {% my general title="Settings > System > General" %} in the UI if you are using YAML configuration for any of the following: name, latitude, longitude, elevation, unit_system, temperature_unit, time_zone, external_url, internal_url. Additionally, some options are only visible after "Advanced Mode" is enabled on your {% my profile title="User Profile" %}.

</div>

{% configuration %}
name:
  description: Name of the location where Home Assistant is running.
  required: false
  type: string
latitude:
  description: Latitude of your location required to calculate the time the sun rises and sets.
  required: false
  type: float
longitude:
  description: Longitude of your location required to calculate the time the sun rises and sets.
  required: false
  type: float
elevation:
  description: Altitude above sea level in meters. Impacts sunrise data.
  required: false
  type: integer
unit_system:
  description: "`metric` for Metric, `us_customary` for US Customary. This also sets temperature_unit, Celsius for Metric and Fahrenheit for US Customary"
  required: false
  type: string
temperature_unit:
  description: "Override temperature unit set by unit_system. `C` for Celsius, `F` for Fahrenheit."
  required: false
  type: string
time_zone:
  description: "Pick your time zone from the column **TZ** of [Wikipedia's list of tz database time zones](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_tz_database_time_zones)"
  required: false
  type: string
currency:
  description: "Pick your currency code from the column **Code** of [Wikipedia's list of ISO 4217 active codes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_4217#Active_codes)"
  required: false
  type: string
  default: "EUR"
external_url:
  description: "The URL that Home Assistant is available on from the internet. For example: `https://example.duckdns.org:8123`. Note that this setting may only contain a protocol, hostname and port; using a path is not supported."
  required: false
  type: string
internal_url:
  description: "The URL that Home Assistant is available on from your local network. For example: `http://homeassistant.local:8123`. Note that this setting may only contain a protocol, hostname and port; using a path is not supported."
  required: false
  type: string
customize:
  description: "[Customize](/docs/configuration/customizing-devices/) entities."
  required: false
  type: string
customize_domain:
  description: "[Customize](/docs/configuration/customizing-devices/) all entities in a domain."
  required: false
  type: string
customize_glob:
  description: "[Customize](/docs/configuration/customizing-devices/) entities matching a pattern."
  required: false
  type: string
allowlist_external_dirs:
  description: List of folders that can be used as sources for sending files.
  required: false
  type: list
allowlist_external_urls:
  description: List of external URLs that can be fetched. URLs can match specific resources (e.g., `http://10.10.10.12/images/image1.jpg`) or a relative path that allows access to resources within it (e.g., `http://10.10.10.12/images` would allow access to anything under that path)
  required: false
  type: list
media_dirs:
  description: A mapping of local media sources and their paths on disk.
  required: false
  type: map
legacy_templates:
  description: Enable this option to restore pre-0.117 template rendering. Which renders all templates to string, instead of native types.
  required: false
  type: boolean
  default: false
language:
  description: "Default language used by Home Assistant. This may, for example, influence the language used by voice assistants. The language should be specified as an RFC 5646 language tag, and must be a language which Home Assistant is translated to."
  required: false
  type: string
  default: "en"
country:
  description: "Country in which Home Assistant is running. This may, for example, influence radio settings to comply with local regulations. The country should be specified as an ISO 3166.1 alpha-2 code. Pick your country from the column **Code** of [Wikipedia's list of ISO 31661 alpha-2 officially assigned code codes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_3166-1_alpha-2#Officially_assigned_code_elements)"
  required: false
  type: string
{% endconfiguration %}

## Reload Core Service

Home Assistant offers a service to reload the core configuration while Home Assistant is running called {% my developer_call_service service="homeassistant.reload_core_config" %}. This allows you to change any of the above sections and see it being applied without having to restart Home Assistant. To call this service, go to the "{% my developer_services %}" tab under {% my developer_services title="Developer Tools" %}, select the {% my developer_call_service service="homeassistant.reload_core_config" %} service and click the "CALL SERVICE" button. Alternatively, you can press the "Reload Location & Customizations" button under {% my server_controls title="Developer Tools > YAML" %}.