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This project provides a basic system for managing a user environment using theNix package manager together with the Nix libraries found inNixpkgs. Itallows declarative configuration of user specific (non-global) packages anddotfiles.

Before attempting to use Home Manager please readthe warningbelow.

For a systematic overview of Home Manager and its available options, please see:

• Home Manager manual
• Home Manager configuration options
• 3rd party Home Manager optionsearch

If you would like to contribute to Home Manager, then please have a look at"Contributing" in the manual.

Home Manager is developed againstnixpkgs-unstable branch, which often causesit to contain tweaks for changes/packages not yet released in stableNixOS.To avoid breaking users' configurations, Home Manager is released in branchescorresponding to NixOS releases (e.g.release-25.11). These branches getfixes, but usually not new modules. If you need a module to be backported, thenfeel free to open an issue.

Unfortunately, it is quite possible to get difficult to understand errors whenworking with Home Manager. You should therefore be comfortable using theNixlanguage and the various tools in the Nix ecosystem.

If you are not very familiar with Nix but still want to use Home Manager thenyou are strongly encouraged to start with a small and very simple configurationand gradually make it more elaborate as you learn.

In some cases Home Manager cannot detect whether it will overwrite a previousmanual configuration. For example, the Gnome Terminal module will write to yourdconf store and cannot tell whether a configuration that it is about to beoverwritten was from a previous Home Manager generation or from manualconfiguration.

Home Manager targetsNixOS unstable and NixOS version 25.11 (the currentstable version), it may or may not work on other Linux distributions and NixOSversions.

Now when your expectations have been built up and you are eager to try all thisout you can go ahead and read the rest of this text.

You can chat with us on IRC in the channel#home-manager onOFTC. Thereis also aMatrix room, which is bridged tothe IRC channel.

Home Manager can be used in three primary ways:

1. Using the standalonehome-manager tool. For platforms other than NixOS andDarwin, this is the only available choice. It is also recommended for peopleonNixOS or Darwin that want to manage their home directory independentlyof the system as a whole. See"Standalone installation" in themanual for instructions on how to perform thisinstallation.

2. As a module within a NixOS system configuration. This allows the userprofiles to be built together with the system when runningnixos-rebuild.See"NixOS module" in the manual for a description ofthis setup.

3. As a module within anix-darwin system configuration. This allows the userprofiles to be built together with the system when runningdarwin-rebuild.See"nix-darwin module" in the manual for adescription of this setup.

Home Manager provides both the channel-based setup and the flake-based one. SeeNix Flakes for a description of the flake-based setup.

Home Manager has basic support for internationalization throughgettext. The translations are hosted byWeblate. If you would like to contribute to thetranslation effort then start by going to theHome Manager Weblateproject.

This project is licensed under the terms of theMIT license.