Unlocking Homey Pro – Jailbreak & Storage Expansion – part 4

Introduction part 4 (last one)

Welcome to the finish line. If you’ve followed the guide so far, you technically have a “Super Homey” sitting on your desk. Physically, it has 8GB of RAM and 32GB of storage. It boots up, your flows work, and everything seems normal.

But there is an invisible wall. If you navigate to Settings -> General -> Storage in the app, it likely still reports ~8GB Total Storage. Why? Did we buy the wrong chip?

Understanding the Problem – The Partition Table

Think of your hard drive (eMMC) like a plot of land. When we restored your backup in Part 3, we didn’t just copy the files; we copied the “property lines” (the partition table) from your old 8GB module. So, even though you moved your house to a massive 32GB plot of land, the fence is still set up at the 8GB mark. The system simply ignores the vast open space outside the fence.

To fix this, we need to move the fence. But Homey locks this down tightly. This is where we need to be a little clever.

The Solution – “Jailbreaking” & Resizing

We are going to use a script developed by the brilliant community experts (shout out to Sepp and Fille!). This script does two things:

1. It temporarily grants “Root” (Superuser) access, allowing us to modify system files.
2. It finds the “User Data” partition and expands it to fill every last byte of available space on the new chip.

Windows 11 Users MUST READ

Before we dive into the code, I need to save you from a major headache. If you are using Windows 11, you might hit a brick wall where every attempt to connect via SSH (whether on port 2222 or the Sandbox port 22) results in a stubborn “Connection Refused” error.

I spent hours pulling my hair out trying to figure out why my PC refused to talk to the Homey, only to realize the culprit was a missing driver. Windows 11 doesn’t automatically install the necessary USB driver to handle this specific connection. To save you the frustration I went through, you must install this driver manually before you proceed. Here is how to fix it. The USBipd-win is a driver that allows local connection though USB.

Download the version that fits your windows PC (https://github.com/dorssel/usbipd-win/releases I use the x64 version) and install. Then continue…

The Tools You Need

• The Boot Script: You can download the file Homey Pro Jailbreak 2026 (contains 2 folders explained later)
• USBipd-win driver (if on Windows 11 – as described above)
• RPiBoot (Windows): A small utility from the Raspberry Pi foundation that lets your PC “talk” to the CM4 module directly via USB. Download link: Raspberry Pi USB Boot Tool (must be installed AFTER the windows 11 usbipd
• Putty: A terminal emulator to see what is happening. (download from https://putty.org/index.html or from Windows Store)
• Linux File Systems for Windows by Paragon Software (free trial for 10 days): https://www.paragon-software.com/home/linuxfs-windows/ 

When the above tools have been installed you are ready to continue…

The Expansion Process

This part requires you to be methodical. Read twice, click once.

Enter DFU Mode (One Last Time): Unplug Homey. Hold the pinhole button. Plug in USB. Wait for Orange LED. You are an expert at this by now.

Find the hidden drives: Run the RPiBoot tool on your PC (Find the Raspberry folder and run the Raspberry Pi USB boot Storage CM4 or similar wording). It will detect the Homey and, instead of mounting it as a drive, it will inject the custom boot script, that will make all drives visible.

Now we need to get Windows to talk to the Linux partitions. Open the Linux File Systems for Windows by Paragon app.

Locate the three ext4 partitions in the list: ROOTA, ROOTB, and USER. They are currently unmounted and invisible to Windows.

For each of these three partitions, do the following:

1. Click the menu icon next to the partition.
2. Select Mount Volumes in and change it to Read-Write (This is crucial!).
3. Click the Mount button

Open File Explorer (Win + E). You will now see a cluster of new drives. It might look messy, but we only need to focus on ROOTA and ROOTB.

Injecting the Jailbreak Files

Locate the two folders etc and home inside the Jailbreak zip file you downloaded earlier. We need to copy these into the system:

1. Copy both folders into the drive named ROOTA (Important: NOT BOOTA).
2. Next, copy the exact same two folders into the drive named ROOTB (Important: NOT BOOTB).
3. When Windows asks if you want to replace existing files, confirm Yes/Replace for all items.

Finalizing the Jailbreak

This step is critical. You must safely Unmount/Eject all the Compute Module drives via the Paragon app (click the eject symbol next to the 3 drives) or Windows (can be done from system tray) before unplugging.

If the eject fails or says the drive is “busy,” close all open windows related to the files (File Explorer, Notepad, or what apps you have running that could interfere etc.) and try again. Be patient—it often takes a couple of attempts to release the drives properly.

Reboot for the last part

Pull the plug and let Homey Pro restart normally (not in DFU mode). It will now download and install the OpenSSH in order to finalize the setup. This will only be done once.

Putty – Setting up superuser

To talk to the Homey Pro 2023, we need an SSH client. Putty is the standard tool for this. It might look like it was designed in the 90s, but in the command-line world, function beats form every time. Looks like the old-fashioned DOS prompt that some of us old guys remember 🙂

Step 1- Find your IP

We need your Homey’s local IP address. The easiest way is to visit my.homey.app, click the gear icon (Settings) in the bottom left, and look under General.

Step 2 – The First Connection

Open Putty and fill in the following details:

• Host Name (or IP address): [Your Homey’s IP] (e.g., 192.168.1.113)
• Port: 2222

Click Open.

The “Security Alert” Popup: If you see a warning popup about a security key, CONGRATULATIONS! This means your jailbreak is working. The warning just means Putty hasn’t met your Homey before. Click Accept to proceed.

Step 3 – Logging In

You are now at the login prompt. You are not logging in with your personal Homey account. The jailbreak script created a specific system user for us.

Remember: Linux is case-sensitive. Type these exactly as shown:

login as: homey-pro
password: pro

Step 4 – Secure the Door

The system will immediately force you to change the password for the homey-pro user.

Current password: pro
New password: [Your chosen password]
Retype new password: [Your chosen password]

Note: Once you successfully change the password, the connection will close, and Putty will disappear. This is normal.

Step 5 – Reconnect

Open Putty again and connect exactly as you did in Step 2 (IP Address and Port 2222). You won’t get the security warning this time.

Log in as homey-pro again, but this time use the new password you just created.

If all went well, you are now looking at a green command prompt. You are in.

Putty – Expanding the Storage – Command by Command

We are now going to run a series of 7 commands to resize the partitions. You might notice that every command starts with sudo. This is Linux-speak for “SuperUser Do” – basically telling the system to run the command with administrator (Root) privileges. The homey-pro user has these rights, but you have to ask for permission each time.

Pro Tip: Copy and paste these commands directly into Putty to avoid typos. One wrong character here can ruin your day. 

Command 1: Inspecting the Map

sudo fdisk -l /dev/mmcblk0

(Enter your password if prompted).

This command lists all the partitions on your disk. You will see a list of device names ending in p1, p2, p3, etc. We are looking for two things here:

• /dev/mmcblk0p2 (Extended) – 7.2G: This is a “container” partition that holds other partitions inside it. It currently blocks us from using the full space.
• /dev/mmcblk0p9 (User) 2.7G: This is where your apps live. It is currently small (~2.7 GB), but we want it huge.

Command 2: Expanding the Container

First, we need to make the “Extended” container (partition 2) bigger so it covers all the new empty space on your 32GB chip.

sudo parted /dev/mmcblk0 resizepart 2 100%

If it warns you that the partition is in use, type y and press Enter to continue.

Command 3: Verify the Container

sudo fdisk -l /dev/mmcblk0

Check the list again. The partition ending in p2 should now be much larger (around ~29 GB and not 7.2).

Command 4: Expanding the User Partition

Now that the container is big, we can expand the actual User partition (number 9) to fill that space.

sudo parted /dev/mmcblk0 resizepart 9 100%

Command 5: Verify the User Space

sudo fdisk -l /dev/mmcblk0

Look at /dev/mmcblk0p9. It should now show a size of approx. 24.6 GB. Success!

Command 6: Resizing the File System

We have made the partition bigger, but the file system inside doesn’t know it yet. It still thinks it’s living in a small apartment. This command tells it to stretch out and get comfortable.

sudo resize2fs /dev/mmcblk0p9

Command 7: The Reboot

sudo reboot now

Your Homey will restart (Putty will say something like “Remote side unexpectedly closed network connection”. If it does not restart try to pull the plug.

Victory

Plug your Homey Pro back into its regular power supply. Give it a generous 5-10 minutes to boot up and settle down (it might do a file system check on the first boot).

Open your Homey App and go to Settings -> General -> Storage.

Take a moment to enjoy the view: ~26GB Free Space and 8 GB of RAM

You have successfully built a beast. You now have 4x the storage and 4x the RAM of the stock model. But what does this actually mean for you?

• Unlimited Insights: You can log data for years without Homey deleting old entries to save space.
• Heavy Apps: Install memory-hungry apps like Home Assistant Community or complex image recognition flows without fear of crashing.
• Future Proofing: As Athom updates the OS, it will likely get bigger. You are now safe for years to come.

You took a risk, you voided a warranty, and you came out on the other side with better hardware. Welcome to the club.

LAST PART – Create a new backup!

Make a new System Backup from the DFU (like you did in part 2). You must make a new backup as this one will include the new partitions and remember the larger storage – otherwise it will be gone if you restore the previous one. After performing the backup you are good to go.

Final thoughts

The root access will be removed when updating the firmware once a new one is released. But does not matter as you have already upgraded the partitions. Everything will keep working. If you want root access again you know how to get it…

The Homey Pro Backup service works fine after the upgrade.

Want to help?

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Comments and questions??

You are always welcome to leave a comment or share similar experiences in the comment section below (go there).
Have a great day. 🍀

The Roadmap

We are still going to take this step-by-step to ensure you don’t end up with a bricked device. I’ll have this paragraph in each post in order to easily go back and forth:

• Part 1: The Strategy & Shopping List

• Part 2: Backing up the Homey OS

• Part 3: Swapping the CM4 Module & Restoration from backup

• Part 4: Unlocking Potential – Jailbreak & Storage Expansion