Home Assistant

The era of open voice assistants has arrived

2024-12-19T00:00:02+00:00

We all deserve a voice assistant that doesn’t harvest our data and arbitrarily limit features. In the same way Home Assistant made private and local home automation a viable option, we believe the same can, and must be done for voice assistants.

Since we began developing our open-source voice assistant for Home Assistant, one key element has been missing - great hardware that’s simple to set up and use. Hardware that hears you, gives you clear feedback, and seamlessly fits into the home. Affordable and high-quality voice hardware will let more people join in on its development and allow anyone to preview the future of voice assistants today. Setting a standard for the next several years to base our development around.

We’re launching Home Assistant Voice Preview Edition to help accelerate our goal of not only matching the capabilities of existing voice assistants but surpassing them. This is inevitable: They’ll focus their efforts on monetizing voice, while our community will be focused on improving open and private voice. We’ll support the languages big tech ignores and provide a real choice in how you run voice in your home.

The era of open, private voice assistants begins now, and we’d love for you to be part of it.

Introducing Home Assistant Voice Preview Edition
Conclusion
- See what voice can do today

Introducing Home Assistant Voice Preview Edition

Our main goal with Voice Preview Edition was to make the best hardware to get started with Assist, Home Assistant’s built-in voice assistant. If you’re already using other third-party hardware to run Assist, this will be a big upgrade. We prioritized its ability to hear commands, giving it an industry-leading dedicated audio processor and dual microphones - I’m always blown away by how well it picks up my voice around the room.

Next, we ensured it would blend into the home, giving it a sleek but unobtrusive design. That’s not to say it doesn’t have flair. When you get your hands on Voice Preview Edition the first thing you’ll notice is its premium-feeling injection-molded shell, which is semi-transparent, just like your favorite ‘90s tech. The LED ring is also really eye-catching, and you can customize it to your heart’s content from full gamer RGB to subtle glow.

It’s hard to convey how nice the rotary dial is to use; its subtle clicks paired with LED animations are hard not to play with. Most importantly, the dial lets anyone in your home intuitively adjust the volume. The same can be said for the multipurpose button and mute switch (which physically cuts power to the microphone for ultimate privacy). We knew for it to work best, it needed to be out in the open, and let’s just say that Home Approval Factor was very front of mind when designing it.

We also worked hard to keep the price affordable and comparable to other voice assistant hardware at just $59 (that’s the recommended MSRP, and pricing will vary by retailer). This isn’t a preorder, it’s available now!

Why Preview Edition

For some, our voice assistant is all they need; they just want to say a couple of commands, set timers, manage their shopping list, and control their most used devices. For others, we understand they want to ask their voice assistant to make whale sounds or to tell them how tall Taylor Swift is - this voice assistant doesn’t entirely do those things (yet). We think there is still more we can do before this is ready for every home, and until then, we’ll be selling this Preview of the future of voice assistants. We’ve built the best hardware on the market, and set a new standard for the coming years, allowing us to focus our development as we prepare our voice assistant for every home. Taking back our privacy isn’t for everyone - it’s a journey - and we want as many people as possible to join us early and make it better.

Built for Home Assistant

Many other voice assistants work with Home Assistant, but this one was built for Home Assistant. Unlike other voice hardware that can work with Assist, this doesn’t require flashing firmware or any assembly. You plug it into power, and it is seamlessly discovered by Home Assistant. A wizard instantly starts helping you set up your voice assistant, but critically, if you haven’t used voice before, it will quickly guide you through what you need to get the best experience.

Get up and running with Voice Preview Edition in minutes with our new wizard

This is not a DIY product. We’ve worked to make the experience as smooth as possible, with easy and fast updates and settings you can manage from the Home Assistant UI.

Advanced audio processing

If you have been following our work on voice, you know we’ve tried a lot of different voice assistant hardware. Most available Assist-capable hardware is bad at its most important job - hearing your voice and then providing audiovisual feedback. That was really what drove us to build Voice Preview Edition.

Voice Preview Editions mics and audio processors effortlessly hear commands through loud music it is playing

Our Assist software could only do so much with substandard audio, and its functionality is massively improved with clear audio. The dual microphones combined with the XMOS audio processing chip are what makes it so capable. Together, they allow Voice Preview Edition to have echo cancellation, stationary noise removal, and auto gain control, which all adds up to clearer audio. This combined with an ESP32-S3 with 8 MB of octal PSRAM - one of the fastest ESP and RAM combinations available - makes for an incredibly responsive device. This is the best Assist hardware you can buy today, and it will continue to give a great experience as Assist’s feature set expands in the years to come.

Bringing choice to voice

Assist can do something almost no other voice assistant can achieve - it can run without the internet 🤯. You can speak to your Voice Preview Edition, and those commands can be processed completely within the walls of your home. At the time of writing this, there are some pretty big caveats, specifically that you need to speak a supported language and have pretty powerful hardware to run it (we recommend a Home Assistant system running on an Intel N100 or better).

Diagram of cloud vs local speech processing

If you use low-powered Home Assistant hardware, there is an easy and affordable internet-based solution; Home Assistant Cloud. This privacy-focused service allows you to offload your speech-to-text and text-to-speech processing, all while being very responsive and keeping your energy bill low. Speech-to-text is the harder of the two to run locally, and our cloud processing is almost always more accurate for more languages (visit our language support checker here).

Our goal is for Assist to run easily, affordably, and fully locally for all languages. As someone who has seen the rapid development of this technology over the past several years, I’m optimistic that this will happen, but until then, many languages have a good range of choices that provide strong privacy.

Fully open and customizable

We are sharing the design files if you want to 3D print a new case... these ones were inevitable

We’re not just launching a new product, we’re open sourcing all of it. We built this for the Home Assistant community. Our community doesn’t want a single voice assistant, they want the one that works for them – they want choice. Creating a voice assistant is hard, and until now, parts of the solution were locked behind expensive licenses and proprietary software. With Voice Preview Edition being open source, we hope to bootstrap an ecosystem of voice assistants.

We tried to make every aspect of Voice Preview Edition customizable, which is actually pretty easy when you’re working hand-in-hand with ESPHome and Home Assistant. It works great with the stock settings, but if you’re so inclined, you can customize the Assist software, ESP32 firmware, and XMOS firmware.

Connecting Grove sensors allows you to use your Voice Preview Edition as a more traditional ESPHome device - here is it acting as a voice assistant and air monitor.

We also made the hardware easy to modify, inside and out. For instance, the included speaker is for alerts and voice prompts, but if you want to use it as a media player, connect a speaker to the included 3.5mm headphone jack and control it with software like Music Assistant. The included DAC is very clean and capable of streaming lossless audio. It can also be used as a very capable ESP32 device. On the bottom of the device is a Grove port (concealed under a cover that can be permanently removed), which allows you to connect a large ecosystem of sensors and accessories.

We’ve also made it quite painless to open, with easy-to-access screws and no clips. We even included exposed pads on the circuit board to make modifying it more straightforward. We’re providing all the 3D files so you can print your own components… even cartoon character-inspired ones. We’re not here to dictate what you can and can’t do with your device, and we tried our best to stay out of your way.

Community-driven

The beauty of Home Assistant and ESPHome is that you are never alone when fixing an issue or adding a feature. We made this device so the community could start working more closely together on voice; we even considered calling it the Community edition. Ultimately, it is the community driving forward voice - either by taking part in its development or supporting its development by buying official hardware or Home Assistant Cloud. So much has already been done for voice, and I can’t wait to see the advancements we make together.

Conclusion

Home Assistant ~~values~~ champions choice. Today, we’re providing one of the best choices for voice hardware. One that is truly private and totally open. I’m so proud of the team for building such a great working and feeling piece of hardware - this is a really big leap for voice hardware. I expect it to be the hardware benchmark for open-voice projects for years to come. I would also like to thank our language leaders who are expanding the reach of this project, our testers of this Preview Edition, and anyone who has joined in our voice work over the past years.

The hardware really is only half the picture, and it’s the software that really brings this all together. Mike Hansen has just written the Voice Chapter 8 blog to accompany this launch, and this explains all the things we’ve built over the past two years to make Assist work in the home today. He also highlights everything that Voice Preview Edition was built to help accelerate development.

See what voice can do today

Voice Chapter 8 - Assist in the home today

2024-12-19T00:00:01+00:00

As you have probably already read, we launched our Home Assistant Voice Preview Edition today. The culmination of the past several years of open-source software progress on Home Assistant’s home-grown voice assistant, Assist. A sizable group of dedicated developers has been working together on adding and honing its many features, and if it’s been a while since you tried Assist, you should use this launch as a chance to jump back in and see the progress we’ve made.

Home Assistant Voice Preview Edition has been launched to build on this work, continuing the momentum we’ve already built and accelerating our goal of not only matching the capabilities of existing voice assistants but surpassing them. We had an early production run of Voice Preview Edition (a preview preview 😉), and we tried to get them in the hands of as many of our language leaders and voice developers as possible - and we’re already seeing the fruits of their efforts with language support improving over the past month alone!

I’d like to highlight in this voice chapter all the things you can do with Assist today. I also want to give the state of our development, what the limitations are, and where your support can be best applied.

Assist in the home today
Speech Processing
Conclusion

Assist in the home today

Origins of Assist

Early versions of Assist via chat - things have come a long way

Voice control for Home Assistant goes back further than most people assume, with some of the groundwork we use today being added as far back as 2017. The major turning point came when we refocused our efforts and declared 2023 the Year of the Voice. This was an effort to focus development and find areas where our community could make the most impact. During the Year of the Voice Assist was added to voice, intents were improved, languages added, wake words were created, and we established great local and cloud options for running voice. Shortly after Year of the Voice many more features were added, including integrated AI, timers, and even better wake words. Year of the Voice got the ball rolling, and Voice Preview Edition will continue its momentum.

Commands

Assist is the underlying technology that allows Home Assistant to turn commands (“turn on the light”) into Actions (light.turn_on). Commands, or as we call them intents, allow you to control pretty much every aspect of your smart home, including on, off, play, pause, next, open, close, and more. We also have intents that give you helpful information like what’s the time, weather, temperature, and so on. Lastly, there are a bunch of other useful miscellaneous things, like adding items to a shopping list and setting timers. If you’re interested, there is a full list here.

Timers

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When we asked our community timers were a top-requested ability. You can not only set a timer, pause, increase, decrease or cancel it, but you can also set commands to trigger after a set amount of time, for example, “turn off the TV in 15 minutes”. You can also just say “Stop” without a wake word, to silence the timer’s alarm. On our Voice Preview Edition, when you set a timer the LED ring counts down the last seconds and flashes when it’s done.

Exposing devices and Aliases

This sets us apart from other voice assistants: we allow you to expose and effectively hide devices from your voice assistant. For example, you could choose not to expose a door lock but instead just expose the sensor that knows if the door is closed. It puts you in the driver’s seat on what voice can do in your home. We also introduced aliases to allow you to give devices multiple names, allowing you to speak more naturally with Assist.

Room context

If you tell your Assist hardware what room it is in and ensure other devices are organized by room, you can give commands like “turn off the lights”, and without specifying anything, it will turn off the lights in the room you are in. This feature also works with media players (play/pause/next) and timers.

Wake words

Our community is donating small amounts of time to improve wake words with our tool.

Wake Words are the unique phrases that initiate a voice assistant to listen and start processing a command. Wake words originally had to be processed on Home Assistant via an add-on like openWakeWord, meaning the Assist hardware needed to continuously stream audio to Home Assistant. Shortly after Year of the Voice microWakeWord was released, which brought wake word processing on-device for faster responses. It is improving fast thanks to our community using our fast and easy tool to donate samples of their voice. There is a growing list of wake words, and the on-device options include “Okay Nabu” (default and most reliable), “Hey Jarvis”, and “Hey Mycroft”. Both of these wake word engines were built by the Home Assistant community and are open source, giving the world two great free and open wake word engines!

Speech Processing

The Assist pipeline in all its glory

Assist can’t understand spoken words and needs something to take that audio and turn it into text - all this together is called an Assist pipeline. This speech processing is really CPU intensive, so it can’t happen on the Voice Assistant Hardware, and sometimes your Home Assistant system can’t even handle it. One important step we made was adding speech-to-text and text-to-speech capabilities to Home Assistant Cloud, which allows low-powered Home Assistant hardware to offload speech processing to the cloud. Home Assistant Cloud doesn’t store or use this data to train on - clouds don’t get any more private than ours. It is also the most accurate and power-efficient way to process speech. We’ve put considerable effort into local speech processing, building the add-ons and a new protocol they use to speak to Home Assistant, but they are very reliant on language support from the community.

Language support

See if your language is supported with our checker.

Assist aims to support more languages than other voice assistants, and this has been a massive undertaking for our community - We need more help. The first step for language support is getting the commands (intents) right, and we have over 25 major languages that are ready to use today. Our wake words are also getting better at understanding different accents thanks to our Wake Word Collective tool.

Text-to-speech

We built our own text-to-speech system, Piper, and it now supports over 30 languages. It’s a fast, local neural network-powered text-to-speech system that sounds great and can run on low-powered hardware (it’s optimized for Pi4!). It was built with the voices of our community, and if you don’t see your native tongue, add your voice!

Speech-to-text

There is one area that holds back the rest of our language support more than others, and that’s local speech-to-text. Building a full speech-to-text model needs big compute resources and terabytes of samples, which is currently outside our reach. We use Whisper for local speech-to-text processing, an open-source project from OpenAI, and we’re grateful it exists. For some languages, it works great and doesn’t require a lot of system resources to run well, but for others, you need a pretty beefy system to get acceptable results. In our opinion, only about 15 languages are ready to be run locally on reasonable hardware (an Intel N100 or better) - that’s why before you begin dreaming up your perfect all-local setup, we recommend checking language support.

We’re always looking for new solutions for low-powered hardware, and are now building another tool that uses much less complex sentence recognition. This could even run on a Raspberry Pi 4, but it would only be able to identify predefined sentences, so if you go off script you may need to call in an AI to help Assist understand your needs. Our language leaders are hard at work putting together the needed translations, but if you want to learn more visit Rhasspy Speech.

In general, even when your language is supported, you’ll almost always get better results from Home Assistant Cloud. Use the free trial to see what works best for you. Also, you can use both, we know someone using an automation to switch the Assist pipeline to an all local setup when their internet is down.

AI and Assist

Our default local conversation agent mixed with AI is great for natural language and speed

Another aspect where we beat the competition hands down is the integration of AI into our voice assistant. You can choose from some of the biggest cloud AI providers like ChatGPT, Google Gemini, and Claude (paid accounts required). You can also run it locally via Ollama if you have a modern graphics processor with enough VRAM, allowing you to build the most capable offline voice setup around.

Our intents (Assist’s built-in sentences) are getting better at understanding most commands, but AI processes commands in natural language, meaning if you get the device’s name ever so slightly off, it can still figure things out. It also provides the ability to ask outside the built-in intents. For instance, if you tell it “It’s a bit cold in here”, it may raise the temperature on your thermostat, but it could forgo any home control and just tell you to put on a jacket - results are not yet consistent. More useful is its ability to take multiple sensors and provide context. For instance, you could ask it for an air quality report, and it could review the CO2 levels and tell you to open a window it observes is shut. All this is experimental, and having an AI control your home is not for everyone, but what’s important is that you have the choice.

Conclusion

So many new innovations and improvements for Assist have happened in the past couple of months, and this speaks to the power of having good hardware to build our software on. Voice Preview Edition is the best open voice hardware available today, and even with it only in the hands of a couple of hundred people today, it’s making a noticeable difference. Whether that’s writing code, improving language support, making blueprints, or even just reporting bugs. The momentum we will build having this in the hands of thousands will be game-changing - it’s why we’ve declared that the era of open voice assistants has arrived.

In the comments sections, we always have a couple of people saying, “but I don’t use voice, what about improving (this or that)”. The good news is that improving Assist and Home Assistant’s other features are already happening in tandem (check out our roadmap for the complete picture of our priorities). In the end, only a fraction of our development goes towards voice, and our budget is what Amazon’s voice team probably spends on pizza parties 😆. A great side effect is the problems we’re solving with voice are benefiting other parts of Home Assistant, for example, our integration of AI was driven by voice.

We really think voice is an integral part of a well-rounded smart home ecosystem. It’s especially important for improving the accessibility of home control to all members of the household. There needs to be real options in the space, most importantly ones that give you full control and a real choice on privacy.

Home Assistant Voice Preview is available at retailers today,

Understanding Our Community: The 2024 Home Assistant Survey

2024-12-16T00:00:00+00:00

As Home Assistant continues to grow and evolve, so does our commitment to making it more inclusive, accessible, and aligned with the diverse needs of our community. To that end, we’re launching an annual survey—and we hope you’ll participate!

A big part of building our roadmap going forward was focusing more on research, which led the team to bring me (Annika) in as a Senior User Experience Researcher. We could keep assuming our community’s wants and needs, but we’d rather base our decisions on data-driven insights 😉. With this survey, we aim to better understand not just how you use Home Assistant, but also who you are as a person, a smart home user, and a member of our community. This knowledge will help us:

Tailor our future work to address the needs of our community.
Identify trends and shifts in the smart home landscape over time.
Ensure Home Assistant and its ecosystem reflect the values and priorities of those who use it.

We understand that some of the questions we’re asking touch on sensitive topics. Rest assured, your responses are completely anonymous, and all questions are optional. If you’re ever uncomfortable, you can skip a question—but for the results to be recorded, you must hit the submit button at the end of the survey. This survey isn’t short; we recommend setting aside around 20 minutes to complete it. Fill out the survey here or read more about what we’re trying to learn below.

~Annika

What we’re hoping to learn

We’re curious about how you began your smart home journey and what drives your decisions today in your home. From the types of devices you use to how your household interacts with your smart home. We want to learn who is using Home Assistant, not just the primary user, but also those living in your smart home. These insights allow us to understand the varied experiences and expertise within the community. For example, knowing your professional background helps us identify areas where your day-to-day knowledge intersects with smart home technologies. We are also asking about neurodiversity, which can help us understand how our community processes and interacts with information. By learning about these differences, we can make our communication and platform design more inclusive. Again, we can understand if you prefer not to share this information.

One area we’re trying to understand better is how you personally resonate with the values of the Open Home. We believe in privacy, sustainability, and choice—but how important are these values to you?

Your data

First and foremost, the survey is entirely anonymous, and you can skip any question you don’t want to answer. For sensitive questions (e.g., gender), we provide options like “prefer not to say” or open text fields.

Once collected, the data will be anonymized and aggregated to ensure your privacy. Because we cannot identify individual responses, certain data rights (like deletion requests) won’t be applicable after submission. Please note around halfway through the survey there is a partial submit point, once you click continue the previous answers will be recorded. The data will be stored and handled according to GDPR standards. For more details, see our User Research Agreement.

How you can help

This isn’t a short survey and should take around 20 minutes - don’t hesitate to return later to complete it. For the results to be recorded, you must progress past the partial submission point or hit the submit button at the end of the survey. While responding to the survey, be aware that there is no right or wrong answer. It is about you as a person, your experience, opinions, and feelings. Don’t overthink your responses, but stay with the answers that come to your mind intuitively. The more detail, the better - your insights will help shape our future directions. Also, share it with friends, family, or anyone who uses Home Assistant.

Fill out the Survey here

The survey opens on Monday, December 16, and closes on Monday, January 20. Once we’ve analyzed the data, we’ll share the results and insights with the community. By participating, you’re helping us build a better Home Assistant - one that grows with its users and stays true to its values. Thanks for your support!

2024.12: Scene you in 2025! 🎄

2024-12-04T00:00:00+00:00

Home Assistant 2024.12! 🎄

Holidays are coming, and it is time for the last release of the year! 🎉

2024 has been a crazy year for Home Assistant. Not just in terms of features like drag-and-drop dashboards, organization capabilities like labels, and the countless improvements to our voice efforts. But also the founding of the Open Home Foundation, and even more in the growth of our lovely community as we’ve risen up to become the #1 open source project on GitHub! ❤️

However, the year ain’t over yet! This month, we want to learn about all your “What the heck?!” moments with Home Assistant. Tell us about any little annoyances, bugs, ideas, or suggestions. You can read all about it in the WTH announcement blog, or join the conversation on our WTH forums!

Honestly, the biggest announcement of the year has yet to come though… 🤫 I’m pretty sure it is voice hardware related. 😉 So make sure you aren’t missing the live stream on 19 December! 📺 You will not be disappointed! 🎁

Before you check out everything in this release, I just want to close this year with a big thank you to every single person in our community, which includes you!

Thank you for using Home Assistant! ❤️

Happy holidays! And for the last time in 2024: Enjoy the release!

../Frenck

Improved scene editor experience
Voice
Revised Integration Quality Scale
Integrations
- New integrations
- Noteworthy improvements to existing integrations
Other noteworthy changes
Translations for units of measurement
We’ve upgraded to Python 3.13
Patch releases
Need help? Join the community!
Backward-incompatible changes
All changes

Improved scene editor experience

ScenesScenes capture the states you want certain entities to be. For example, a scene can specify that light A should be turned on and light B should be bright red. [Learn more] are a great way to set the mood in your home. They allow you to capture the state of your devices at a specific moment and restore it later, using a button on your dashboard, an automation, or even a voice command.

One of the common frustrations with editing scenes in Home Assistant is that it would immediately activate and apply the scene if you opened the scene editor. Not the best experience if you are doing some midnight tinkering and accidentally activate a scene that turns on all the lights in the house, waking up everyone. 😅

@karwosts & @marcinbauer85 to the rescue! 🦸‍♂️ As of this release, the scene editor has two modes. A review mode and an edit mode.

The “review mode” is how your scene will open, and it will show you the scene as it is currently set up, but it will not apply it. You can then switch to the “edit mode”; only then will the scene activate, allowing you to adjust the actual scenery and snapshot it again once you are happy with the changes.

Additionally, if you prefer YAMLYAML is a human-readable data serialization language. It is used to store and transmit data in a structured format. In Home Assistant, YAML is used for configuration, for example in the configuration.yaml or automations.yaml files. [Learn more], you can edit scenes directly from the scene editor by selecting “Edit in YAML” from the three-dotted overflow menu in the top right corner.

Voice

It has almost been two years since we started our journey into building our very own open source voice assistants, with the goal of letting users control Home Assistant in their own language.

Today, we are getting even closer to the finish line. Not just with the features that ship in this release, but you might have heard about our voice hardware that is coming soon…

With some help from Santa 🎅 and his elves, we have prepared a product launch YouTube live stream on 19 December 2024, at 20:00 GMT / 12:00 PT / 21:00 CET!

Curious? Be sure to join the live stream, hit like 👍, subscribe to our channel, and the little bell 🔔 to get notified when we go live! You really don’t want to miss this one!

But before we get there, let’s dive into the features that ship in this release!

Let your voice assistant fall back to an LLM-based agent

Exactly 6 months ago, we bridged the gap between our default conversation agent and the wonderful (and scary) world of LLMs. We allowed you to experiment and let an LLM-based conversation agent control your home instead of relying on our built-in sentences.

This choice was an interesting first step. LLMs are generally much better at interpreting natural language and more knowledgeable about the world than our default agent. However, they are often slow and/or expensive. And let’s face it: Even if the demos are cool, 90% of the commands we say in our homes are simple: “Turn this on” or “Turn that off”.

Today, we’re finally allowing users to mix these worlds. Starting from this release, you can set up a voice assistant that targets our fast, community-driven conversation agent first and only falls back to an LLM-based agent if no matches are found.

This allows you to mix the pros of both worlds with almost none of the cons.

Specific known commands will be processed locally and extremely fast, and the power of an LLM will only be used for more complex queries that Home Assistant does not natively understand.

Language leaders are accelerating the pace

It is no secret: our voice hardware will be revealed on 19 December 2024. Language leaders have already got their hands on the device, and are working extremely hard to polish support for their language.

The number of contributions to our intents repository (where we store the supported sentences) skyrocketed during the last month, which we all truly appreciate. More and more languages are becoming usable or even complete! You can follow the progress here.

We won’t list them all, but rest assured, someone is likely working hard to ensure your native language works seamlessly, so you can use it comfortably at home.

A faster voice experience

Our default conversation agent was built from the ground up to match a sentence to its underlying intention extremely fast and on cheap hardware.

Release after release, we added more use cases and sentences to Home Assistant, and our sentence-matching logic became slower and slower. In some languages, a non-matching sentence could take more than 15 seconds to process!

This release adds a lot of love to this matching logic; we completely reengineered the way we match sentences. On top of that, language leaders spent some time reducing the complexity of their sentences. Some languages saw a 99% reduction in the number of possible combinations!

The results speak for themselves:

Revised Integration Quality Scale

The Integration Quality Scale (IQS) is a way we classify the “quality” of an integration. It gives users an idea of what to expect from an integration. You might have noticed our IQS indicator listed on each integration documentation page.

The scale was initially introduced in 2018 and aimed more at the technical side and code of an integration back then. Over the years, it didn’t really evolve with the rest of Home Assistant and the general expectations of our community. It was time for a change!

Over the last few months, we have worked with the community to revise and improve the scale. Involving not just our community developers but also documentation writers, user experience designers, and anyone interested in the community.

As a result, the new Integration Quality Scale is not just focused on the code but even more on the overall user experience. It is now a more holistic view of the integration, and we hope it will help everyone make better decisions about what to use in their homes.

We now have a total of 4 scaled tiers:

🥉 Bronze: The new minimum set of requirements we’ve set for new integrations.
🥈 Silver: Ensuring reliability and robustness of integrations.
🥇 Gold: Ensuring a gold standard user experience, including documentation.
🏆 Platinum: The epitome of quality, supreme code quality, and optimal performance.

We also have four additional (non-scaled) special tiers:

❓ No score: For integrations that are not yet scored against the new scale.
🏠 Internal For integrations Home Assistant itself uses, like the automation engine.
💾 Legacy For older integrations that can’t be set up through the UI.
📦 Custom For custom integrations, as we can’t score those.

You can read all about these tiers, what they have been designed for, and a summary of their characteristics on our dedicated Integration Quality Scale page.

We sincerely hope this new scale will not just help our users, but also our community developers to understand what is expected by providing a clear path to improving their integrations. To help with that, we have now extensively documented every rule and requirement for each tier in our developer documentation.

Integrations

Thanks to our community for keeping pace with the new integrationsIntegrations connect and integrate Home Assistant with your devices, services, and more. [Learn more] and improvements to existing ones! You’re all awesome. 🥰

New integrations

We welcome the following new integrations in this release:

Acaia, added by @zweckj
Adds support for Acaia coffee scales to Home Assistant.
Music Assistant, added by @jozefKruszynski
The integration for Music Assistant is making its way into Home Assistant! 🎉
NASweb, added by @nasWebio
Brings in support for the NASweb automation system to Home Assistant.
Nord Pool, added by @gjohansson-ST
Pulls in latest energy prices from the Nord Pool energy market as sensors.
Sky Remote, added by @dunnmj
Control your Sky box using automations or from your Home Assistant dashboards.

Noteworthy improvements to existing integrations

It is not just new integrationsIntegrations connect and integrate Home Assistant with your devices, services, and more. [Learn more] that have been added; existing integrations are also being constantly improved. Here are some of the noteworthy changes to existing integrations:

The UniFi Protect integration now has support for fingerprint and NFC events. You can even automate on the specific fingerprint or NFC scanned! Awesome, @RaHehl!
The TP-Link integration now supports the H200 hubs and adds more energy-monitoring sensors for Tapo devices. It also exposes new entities like a motion sensor switch, a child lock switch for thermostats, and the last water leak alert timestamp. Thanks to @sdb9696, @rytilahti, and @ryenitcher!
@starKillerOG added selector entities for bitrate, framerate, and vehicle tone to the Reolink integration. Additionally, a tilt position sensor for PTZ cameras has been added. Thanks!
@fwestenberg updated the Stookwijzer integration, with some new sensors, right on time for the winter season. Nice!
The Habitica integration now provides actions for quest handling, scoring habits, and rewards. It also adds calendars for your to-do and daily reminders. Nice, @tr4nt0r!
The eQ-3 Bluetooth Smart integration now provides several helpful switches and sensors (like away mode, boost, battery). Thanks, @EuleMitKeule!
@YogevBokobza added Switcher Lights support to the Switcher integration. Thanks!

Other noteworthy changes

There are many more improvements in this release; here are some of the other noteworthy changes this release:

@jpbede added a download snapshot button to the camera entity information dialog. Super nice! Thanks!
The UI now displays durations using a timer format (like 03:26:00) in natural language (3h 26min). Thanks @piitaya!
Support for new units of measurement has been added:
- Units for area sizes (and conversions between metric and US). Thanks @mikey0000!
- @jschlyter has added support for MW, GW, TW, GWh, and TWh. Nice!
- µV has been added as a unit of electric potential. Thanks @tr4nt0r!
- Lastly, mL/s has been added as a unit of volume flow rate. Thanks @zweckj!
If you are editing an automation using YAML via our UI and you make a mistake… you will now actually see the parsing error message in the UI. This is really helpful! Thanks, @karwosts!

Translations for units of measurement

Over the last few years, we have been working hard to make every little bit of Home Assistant accessible for everyone by providing translations for every part of the system. 🌐

However, we still have some edge cases, where we are not able to provide translations for everything. One of those edge cases is the units of measurement. 📏

Although units do not need translation (like °C or kWh) in most cases, many sensors in a home might use specific and non-standardized units. For example, a sensor that measures the number of “people” in a home or one that tells you how many “movies” are in your collection.

So, suppose you now have a sensor with a custom measurement unit, like the amount of “movies” in your collection. In that case, integrations can now provide translations for those units. 🎉

Several integrations have already added translations for their units, including Jellyfin, Lyrion Music Server, Transmission, Pi-hole, QBitTorrent, NextDNS, Mastodon, and Mealie!

We’ve upgraded to Python 3.13

This release comes packaged with Python 3.13! 🐍

Wondering what that means? Python is the programming language that powers Home Assistant behind the scenes.

Why does it matter? Every new Python release brings improvements that we can tap into—better performance, fewer bugs, and a smoother developer experience for our contributors. Plus, Python 3.13 offers a speed boost to Home Assistant overall—what’s not to love? 🚀

Running Home Assistant OS or using the Home Assistant Container? No sweat—we’ve got you covered. The upgrade to Python 3.13 is handled automatically. Just update Home Assistant as usual, and you’re good to go.

Easy, right? 😎

Patch releases

We will also release patch releases for Home Assistant 2024.12 in December. These patch releases only contain bug fixes. Our goal is to release a patch release every Friday.

2024.12.1 - December 6

Bump elmax-api to 0.0.6.3 (@albertogeniola - #131876)
Fix deprecated call to mimetypes.guess_type in CachingStaticResource (@bdraco - #132299)
Bump tesla-fleet-api to 0.8.5 (@Bre77 - #132339)
Add missing UnitOfPower to sensor (@robinostlund - #132352)
Removes references to croniter from utility_meter (@dgomes - #132364)
Bump upb-lib to 0.5.9 (@gwww - #132411)
Bump pydeako to 0.6.0 (@Balake - #132432)
Bump aiohttp to 3.11.10 (@bdraco - #132441)
Bump aioesphomeapi to 28.0.0 (@bdraco - #132447)
Update exception handling for python3.13 for getpass.getuser() (@allenporter - #132449)
Bump hass-nabucasa from 0.85.0 to 0.86.0 (@ludeeus - #132456)
Fix nordpool dont have previous or next price (@gjohansson-ST - #132457)
Bump deebot-client to 9.2.0 (@edenhaus - #132467)
Point to the Ecovacs issue in the library for unspoorted devices (@edenhaus - #132470)
Bump tplink python-kasa dependency to 0.8.1 (@sdb9696 - #132472)
Bump samsungtvws to 2.7.2 (@epenet - #132474)
Update frontend to 20241127.5 (@bramkragten - #132475)
Update frontend to 20241127.6 (@bramkragten - #132494)
Fix google tasks due date timezone handling (@allenporter - #132498)

2024.12.2 - December 10

Enable additional entities on myUplink model SMO20 (@astrandb - #131688)
Bump pydrawise to 2024.12.0 (@dknowles2 - #132015)
Fix API change for AC not supporting floats in SwitchBot Cloud (@SeraphicRav - #132231)
Update pyrisco to 0.6.5 (@agmckaybro - #132493)
Fix PyTado dependency (@erwindouna - #132510)
Bump pycups to 2.0.4 (@bdraco - #132514)
Update debugpy to 1.8.8 (@frenck - #132519)
bump total_connect_client to 2023.12 (@austinmroczek - #132531)
Bump aiounifi to v81 to fix partitioned cookies on python 3.13 (@Kane610 - #132540)
Update twentemilieu to 2.2.0 (@frenck - #132554)
Bump yalexs-ble to 2.5.2 (@bdraco - #132560)
Bump plugwise to v1.6.1 (@bouwew - #131950)
Bump plugwise to v1.6.2 and adapt (@bouwew - #132608)
Fix config flow in Husqvarna Automower (@Thomas55555 - #132615)
Bump ZHA dependencies (@puddly - #132630)
Bump plugwise to v1.6.3 (@bouwew - #132673)
Bump yt-dlp to 2024.12.06 (@joostlek - #132684)
Revert “Bump pyezviz to 0.2.2.3” (@srescio - #132715)
Bump intents to 2024.12.9 (@synesthesiam - #132726)
Update frontend to 20241127.7 (@bramkragten - #132729)
Bump reolink-aio to 0.11.5 (@starkillerOG - #132757)
Catch Hydrawise authorization errors in the correct place (@dknowles2 - #132727)
Pass an application identifier to the Hydrawise API (@dknowles2 - #132779)
Bump deebot-client to 9.3.0 (@edenhaus - #132834)
Bump aioacaia to 0.1.11 (@zweckj - #132838)

2024.12.3 - December 13

Bump python-linkplay to v0.1.1 (@silamon - #132091)
Bump pydaikin to 2.13.8 (@weltall - #132759)
Fix pipeline conversation language (@synesthesiam - #132896)
fix AndroidTV logging when disconnected (@chemelli74 - #132919)
Guard Vodafone Station updates against bad data (@chemelli74 - #132921)
Bump led-ble to 1.1.1 (@bdraco - #132977)
Change warning to debug for VAD timeout (@synesthesiam - #132987)
Fix LaMetric config flow for cloud import path (@frenck - #133039)
Update frontend to 20241127.8 (@bramkragten - #133066)
Bump pysuezV2 to 1.3.5 (@jb101010-2 - #133076)
Bugfix to use evohome’s new hostname (@zxdavb - #133085)
Bump py-aosmith to 1.0.12 (@bdr99 - #133100)
Bump deebot-client to 9.4.0 (@edenhaus - #133114)
Bump aiowithings to 3.1.4 (@joostlek - #133117)

2024.12.4 - December 17

Simplify recorder RecorderRunsManager (@emontnemery - #131785)
Fix fibaro climate hvac mode (@rappenze - #132508)
Bump yt-dlp to 2024.12.13 (@joostlek - #133129)
Fix strptime in python_script (@gjohansson-ST - #133159)
Bump yalexs-ble to 2.5.4 (@bdraco - #133172)
Bump starlink-grpc-core to 1.2.1 to fix missing ping (@MrConorAE - #133183)
Bump aiolifx to 1.1.2 and add new HomeKit product prefixes (@Djelibeybi - #133191)
Revert “Simplify recorder RecorderRunsManager” (@emontnemery - #133201)
Revert “Improve recorder history queries (#131702)” (@emontnemery - #133203)
Bump incomfort-client to v0.6.4 (@jbouwh - #133205)
Bump yalexs-ble to 2.5.5 (@bdraco - #133229)
Set code_arm_required to False for homekit_controller (@bdraco - #133284)
Allow load_verify_locations with only cadata passed (@mib1185 - #133299)
Bump imgw-pib to version 1.0.7 (@bieniu - #133364)
Fix fan setpoints for flexit_bacnet (@lellky - #133388)
Bump holidays to 0.63 (@gjohansson-ST - #133391)

Need help? Join the community!

Home Assistant has a great community of users who are all more than willing to help each other out. So, join us!

Our very active Discord chat server is an excellent place to be at, and don’t forget to join our amazing forums.

Found a bug or issue? Please report it in our issue tracker, to get it fixed! Or, check our help page for guidance for more places you can go.

Are you more into email? Sign-up for our Building the Open Home Newsletter to get the latest news about features, things happening in our community and other news about building an Open Home; straight into your inbox.

Backward-incompatible changes

We do our best to avoid making changes to existing functionality that might unexpectedly impact your Home Assistant installation. Unfortunately, sometimes, it is inevitable.

We always make sure to document these changes to make the transition as easy as possible for you. This release has the following backward-incompatible changes:

Brother Printer

The month of 'What the Heck?!' 2024

2024-11-30T00:00:00+00:00

TL;DR: For all of December 🎄, we are opening up to share any issue, idea, suggestion, or annoyance you have with Home Assistant on our community forums!

Welcome to the month of “What the heck?!”: Third edition

It’s back! 🎉 We are thrilled to announce the third edition of the month of “What the heck?!” (WTH for short). Every two years, we take the time to pause, listen, and dive deep into the little things that maybe you go “What the heck?!” about Home Assistant.

We’ve been growing really hard for years now with over a million Home Assistant-powered smart homes out there, and, as of this year, we are also the #1 open source project on GitHub!

A lot has happened since the last edition two years ago. Lots of effort went into making a voice-controlled Home Assistant a reality. We have implemented new dashboards and cards (with drag-and-drop!), added organization capabilities with labels and categories, and so much more! But did everything turn out the way it should? Did we miss things? Or, worse, did something start to annoy you?

That is what this month is about! This year, we are kicking it off in the month of December as a nice closing activity for this year, and we can’t wait to hear from 👉 YOU 👈!

Lowering the barrier for sharing WTH?! moments

We realize reporting bugs on our GitHub might be a steep hill and, for some, maybe even a bit scary. You need a GitHub account to report an issue following issue templates and forms, and the report itself needs to be written in a way that a developer can work with. Above all, we use our issue tracker to track actual issues and bugs, not small feature requests or annoyances.

While this is a common and reasonable process to collect, track, and process bugs, our issue tracking-process might not be the ideal way to learn about your “What the heck?!” moments, small tweaks, and improvements that can make us all enjoy Home Assistant even more.

Today, we have opened up a Community Forum category as a safe, lower-barrier place to talk about your Home Assistant “What the heck?!” moments. More importantly: discuss and vote on topics your fellow home automators have brought up.

What are we looking for?

Just as with previous editions, I sent out a related question on my socials earlier this week:

🎅 𝘚𝘢𝘯𝘵𝘢 𝘮𝘪𝘨𝘩𝘵 𝘣𝘦 𝘭𝘪𝘴𝘵𝘦𝘯𝘪𝘯𝘨… If you could ask for one small Home Assistant improvement this holiday season, what would it be?

The answers to this question pretty much capture the goal behind this month: Finding those nice quality-of-life features and little annoyances, highlighting inconsistencies, suggestions for things that could be streamlined more, and even big-ticket items. All of those things would make Home Assistant even more awesome for everyone.

I’ve received many responses on these social media posts on X, Mastodon, and Bluesky. Most of the responses there are exactly what we are looking for this month. I’ve picked a few from these platforms to show you what I mean:

“Makes exposing entities to HomeKit the same as to Alexa & Google” (Peter Hardy-vanDoorn)
“Polygon zones would be so very helpful instead of just the base circle” (KrispKiwi)
“Edit a scene without activating it. I can only edit my sleep scene after everyone goes to sleep or in YAML.” (codebuild21)
“The possibility of catching errors in automations and being able to take actions when they occur 🙂” (Sergio Mayoral)
“Not Fancy! Better backup management, especially pruning options!” (Alex Alami)
“Persist my prefered dashboard across my different devices/browsers.” (Carlos Sánchez López)
“Home Assistant voice hardware!” (Paulus Schoutsen) 😆

These are all great topics for the month of “What the heck?!”, I hope they inspire you for more topics to share 💖.

Roadmap

As you might be aware, we also create and publish a bigger, high level, roadmap for the greater direction of Home Assistant. A few weeks back, Madelena and JLo shared the 2024 Year-end update of our roadmap.

This year’s month of “What the heck?!” is thus different in this regard, as in previous editions we didn’t have any roadmap in place. For this year’s WTH, the product team will also be watching for items that will help shape and prioritize our roadmap for the near future.

As a matter of fact, many items on this year’s roadmap that we’ve worked on have their origins or have been shaped by topics from the previous WTH from 2022. For example, the ability to organize automations and the ability to drag-and-drop cards on your dashboards.

Why December?

In the previous editions, we had this month in October; this year, we decided to move it to December. We figured, the holiday season is perfect for this event. 🎄

Many of us have a bit more time on our hands during the holidays, whether that’s tinkering with automations, exploring our new dashboards, contributing to our project, or simply enjoying engaging our active and vibrant community.

Start sharing your WTH!

👆That title says it all really. Start sharing your “What the heck?!” moment, browse through all the WTH moments others brought up, and vote for the ones you feel the same about.

We are excited about this month and looking forward to everything brought up!

Join us on the forums!, or read the FAQ below.

So, when does Home Assistant trigger this moment for you?

FAQ

“Great! I have multiple things! Should I put all my stuff in a single topic?!”

No, please create multiple, smaller topics. There is no limitation on how many forum topics one can create for WTH. Each topic can be voted on, picked up, and maybe even resolved. Also, having multiple things stacked in a single forum topic makes resolving, discussing, and voting on them hard.

“Is everything reported going to be fixed/addressed?”

Sorry, but the answer here is no; there is no guarantee that it will happen. The goal is to lower the barrier reporting things for one month. Code contributors will definitely join the effort and address a few of the listed things. Still, in the end, the number of submissions in WTH is, in general, simply too much to address. However, we have picked up a lot of items over the years (including bigger topics); it helps us shape our roadmap.

“I really want this new integration or add-on to be implemented, so I can use my devices. Is this the right place for it?”

No, this event is not for requesting new add-ons or device/services integrations. Please use the “Feature Requests” forum category instead.

“My WTH topic is one of the top-voted ones, so it is going to be fixed/addressed, right?”

This is not a contest. Voting will help with visibility and give a sense of the suggestion’s impact. However, it might be difficult or too big to implement. A topic with lots of votes is more likely to be noticed by a contributor, but it is not guaranteed to be picked up.

Topics with a lot of engagement, of course, help us shape our future roadmap.

“I’ve found a bug and am comfortable with GitHub. Where should I report my issue now?”

If you are comfortable using GitHub, please, by all means, file an issue report on GitHub instead.

Home Assistant Yellow gets CM5 support in HAOS 14

2024-11-27T00:00:00+00:00

We launched our Home Assistant Yellow over two years ago, with the design philosophy that it would grow and extend its capabilities with its users’ needs. Need more storage, add an NVMe drive. Need Matter over Thread instead of Zigbee, change the firmware.

Thanks to Raspberry Pi providing us with an early sample, we have been able to add Compute Module 5 (CM5) compatibility to the Home Assistant Yellow, which will be included in Home Assistant OS 14 (along with some other hardware support). This gives current and future users a great option to get more performance if they need it, but we must say that CM4 is still more than enough for most Home Assistant users’ needs.

As part of the Open Home Foundation, we fight for privacy, choice, and sustainability in the smart home. The Yellow achieves all three, and this announcement only improves the choices available and long-term sustainability.

Using Compute Modules

When designing Yellow to give our users the ability to expand the capabilities of the device we chose Raspberry Pi’s Compute Module platform. It allows users to increase the RAM, add eMMC, built-in Bluetooth, or even get more speed 😉 - without having to replace the Yellow - all you need to do is get a new module. This is also great for the repairability of the product over its lifetime.

Though it was designed for the Compute Module 4 (CM4), we always hoped it would be compatible with its future successors. Over the past couple of months, we’ve been updating firmware and testing early hardware, and it is indeed compatible. Due to changes on CM5, the installation method is slightly more complex than it was on CM4, which is detailed below.

What CM5 could bring

I must admit, it is fun to play with the latest and greatest hardware (while also finding new uses for the hardware it replaces - old Pi products make great Wyoming satellites). In most use cases, such as running automations or connecting an average home’s worth of devices, the majority of users will not notice any difference between a Green, CM4, or CM5.

For certain power user needs CM5 might provide big improvements. Some Pi 5 users have seen nearly 3x improvements in ESPHome compilation times; saving a minute or two per device can really add up in big deployments. Another area where CM5 can excel over CM4 is running local speech-to-text processing if you’re using Assist fully locally.

Installing on CM5

For the Home Assistant Yellow, we have two ways to install Home Assistant OS onto the Compute Module. One is very easy and quick (using USB 2.0), while the other is more complex (using rpiboot). Unfortunately, due to firmware differences with CM5 it cannot boot off USB 2.0 devices (though the USB 2.0 ports work once the device is booted).

If you already have a Yellow running Home Assistant OS, upgrading to CM5 can be a drop-in replacement, but in some circumstances it can be more complex,

CM4 Lite (no eMMC) with NVMe storage - Update to the latest HAOS (version 14.0 or greater - as of writing 14.0 is still pre-release, we recommend you wait for the stable release, but if you want to get the pre-release today either join the beta channel or explicitly install 14.0.rc2), power it down, swap the CM4 Lite for a CM5 Lite, and you’re good to go.
CM4 with eMMC (regardless if you are using NVMe or not) - Download a backup of your Home Assistant, power down your system, and install Home Assistant OS on the CM5 using rpiboot (the more complex installation method). Once installed restore the backup.
New Yellow with CM5: You will need to install Home Assistant with rpiboot (the more complex installation method).

For full details on how to set up your Home Assistant Yellow visit our documentation.

CM4 is still great

If you have, or were looking at getting, a Home Assistant Green or Yellow with a CM4, both are more than capable. A third of all Home Assistant users are using Pi 4 class hardware.

In fact, according to our opt-in analytics, more people are using Pi 3 hardware than Pi 5 hardware (granted the Pi 5 has only had official support since February this year). Home Assistant continues to get updates that improve its speed on all hardware, most recently faster backups and reboots. This allows people to keep hardware running longer, and in the end that is our goal 🌎.

CM4 is not only powerful enough for most users, it also has a long life ahead of it. Raspberry Pi has even confirmed that they will fully support CM4 until 2034💪, and will continue to manufacture them.

Other additions to HAOS 14

On the topic of newly supported hardware, our release of Home Assistant OS 14 will bring support not only for CM5 but also for the Hailo-8 AI accelerator. This is the AI accelerator found in the Raspberry Pi AI Kit or the even more powerful Raspberry Pi AI HAT+ released last month, which is exclusively for the Raspberry Pi 5. For those using a Pi 5 they can now offload AI processing, like object or person detection, to this efficient add-on.

Conclusion

We’re incredibly proud that, all this time later, the Home Assistant Yellow continues to be one of the best options for power users. We are excited to see how our users take advantage of CM5, and it’s great to see CM4 continue to be a great option with long-term support.

Event wrap-up - GitHub Universe '24

2024-11-18T00:00:00+00:00

In case you missed it, we had a pretty huge presence at this year’s GitHub Universe, their global annual developer conference. 2024 was the culmination of many years of our community growing, and there were some really big moments—our community meetup in San Francisco, awards, rising in GitHub’s rankings, and being a part of the event’s Day 2 keynote.

After a few years of being in 2nd place, we are now the #1 open source project on GitHub with over 21,000 contributors helping build Home Assistant. We also won the Wonderfully Welcoming award for being the 2nd most active project for new contributors. This is really just scratching the surface of the week we spent together in San Francisco, and I (Missy Quarry, your Community & Social Media Manager) would like to share the highlights with everyone who couldn’t make it this year.

Community comes together
We are number 1!
Open Source - ⭐️ of the show
Connecting with the community

Community comes together

What started as a simple request to attend the event tumbled into not only being a part of the Day 2 Keynote of GitHub Universe ❗❗ but being offered a venue at GitHub HQ for a community meetup. It picked up from there - interviews, speaking on panels, and after-parties - this 2-day event spun into a 7-day trip to San Francisco. Not only was this my first event as a part of an open source project, but it was also my first time meeting Paulus and Frenck in person. Paulus is taller than I expected 😅 and Frenck has legs! 😱

While there is a lot of good news for us that came out of GitHub Universe (and I will get to that), I would be a poor community manager if I didn’t start this out with the first in-person meetup I coordinated for Home Assistant. 😌

I knew immediately that I needed custom swag for the event, and got to work with our Graphic Artist, Clelia. We wanted to make sure it was connected to where we were holding the meetup and that it was collectible - we landed on postcards and pins in the shape of stamps.

Limited edition San Fran postcard and badge

And, of course, you can’t go to an event without stickers, so we took our Home Assistant and ESPHome logos with an Open Home Foundation badge and made holographic stickers. ✨

The event itself ended up being a small gathering, but it was filled with amazing connections and conversations. Paulus and Frenck talked for over an hour about the status of Home Assistant and what we’re working on right now, then took questions from the community members. It was great talking to everyone who attended - being able to bring people from different aspects of life together energizes me, and I am excited to plan whatever the next meetup will be. 👀

We are number 1!

It was an honor just for Home Assistant to be asked to speak at the Day 2 Keynote; what we didn’t know when we started this ride was that the keynote would announce something new: we are the #1 open source project on GitHub by active contributors!! 🎉 Not only that, on the rankings for first-time contributors, we moved up to 2nd place, and an Open Home Foundation collaboration partner, Zigbee2MQTT, is also now in the top 10! 🥳 This is all featured in the GitHub Octoverse 2024 report, which is a really interesting read.

Our friends at GitHub did a great job of making sure we were surprised by this news—and believe me when I say we lost our collective minds when they revealed it to us. 😎 We also found out that we’ve won GitHub’s Wonderfully Welcoming Award, which recognizes how we attract and support new contributors to our project.

Open Source - ⭐️ of the show

Paulus and Frenck were at keynote rehearsals Friday, Sunday, and Monday to be prepared for Wednesday. So I picked up my badge Monday morning, which was a hackable board with an e-ink display programmed to show our names - the little details they put into this event were quite pleasing. 🤩

There was a community session where GitHub showed off a little of what they would reveal on Day 2. At the breakout session, I was able to share our pain points about moderating a community directly on GitHub, and it was good to hear how other projects do this on the platform.

Paulus, Frenck and myself at the Day 1 keynote

Day 1 is when we had our booth in the Open Source Zone, but I was also set to represent Home Assistant at a panel. The session was called Cha-ching! How to attract funding for your open source projects; I was very excited to tell our story since Home Assistant is funded by y’all - the community - through our Home Assistant Cloud subscription, and not investors. I was pleasantly surprised to hear that others on the panel shared our approach to building a sustainable project through community support! I had great conversations with several people working on other open source projects like Homebrew and Ladybird.

Our booth was a great success, and we had so many members of the community come up to us to let us know how much they love Home Assistant, along with some people who had never heard of us curious to learn more. We were surprised to hear that some people had not yet tried the new Sections dashboard, which we were demoing at the booth. It was really useful to get this feedback in person. All of them took stickers. 😆

Our booth in the Open Source Zone

Day 2 was when Paulus and Frenck took the stage, and I got there early to ensure I got a good seat up front. We had not only a good crowd in person, but Joost hosted a watch party on the Community Stage in our Discord server!

Their final message to the crowd - what are you going to build?

The guys did amazing up on stage! 🤩 It was wonderful to see Paulus explain why Home Assistant was built and how it connects to GitHub’s ambitious goal of 1 billion developers. Frenck shared not only what we’ve done to grow the largest open community on GitHub, but also how the community collectively shapes the project’s direction. Kyle Daigle, a fellow Home Assistant user and GitHub COO, joined Frenck and Paulus on stage and did a really fun Home Assistant live demo. Paulus also shared how he secured the future of the project by giving it to the Open Home Foundation, and its mission to bring privacy, choice, and sustainability to the smart home. Catch their segment here, but I would recommend watching the entire keynote - GitHub is doing good stuff for new developers. 😌

After the keynote, Paulus and Frenck both did interviews, and even gave away an extra Home Assistant Green we brought to the guest speaker representing Hack Club. We spent the rest of the day on the show floor, meeting more of the community and enjoying all the fun.

Connecting with the community

It was an amazing event, and so nice to meet my colleagues Paulus and Frenck after months of working with them remotely. Most of all, it was great to meet the community, get feedback and hear how Home Assistant improves their lives. Thanks to everyone who took the time to talk to us! 🥰

GitHub was an incredible host, and it was nice to give something back to them after so many years of support they have given this project. At Universe, they gave us a platform to explain how important our community is and how your support has kept Home Assistant thriving and continuously growing - becoming the top open source project on the platform. The next time you see a blog from me should be when I announce Home Assistant Community Day. 😌

Roadmap 2024 Year-end Update: Full steam ahead!

2024-11-15T00:00:00+00:00

TL;DR We are making great progress on our roadmap, and moving forward onto the next priorities on the roadmap. 🚂🚃🚃🚃🚃🚃🚃🚃🚃

As we had previously mentioned, the goal of the roadmap is to provide a North Star for all of our product initiatives to follow in a coherent and consistent direction. At the State of the Open Home in April this year, we introduced to our community our first roadmap. We intend to keep our community informed every half year, and this is our first update to our public roadmap.

We are happy to report that we have made good progress on the product initiatives on our roadmap so far, thanks to our core maintainers along with the help of the team at Nabu Casa, the commercial partner of the Open Home Foundation. Most of the product initiatives in the 2024 roadmap have matured according to plan, and now the team has begun to focus on the ones that we had planned for next.

- Madelena & JLo

Home Assistant: “A Home-Approved Smart Home”
Home Assistant Cloud
Open Protocols
- Z-Wave
- Matter
- Zigbee
What’s next?

Home Assistant: “A Home-Approved Smart Home”

The theme of the Home Assistant roadmap is to improve the Home Approval Factor of our platform, ensuring the adoption of Home Assistant by other household members within a smart home.

This can be done by improving the touchpoints that all members of the household will interact with, such as automations, dashboards, and voice assistants, while maintaining the power and depth of the platform for our power users and admins. Our plan is categorized into the following product areas:

Automations

In good shape: Make automations easier to organize

For a long time, the ability to organize automation was at the top of our feature requests. Therefore, organizing automations was our first focus on the automation product area.

We gave users the ability to categorize automations, which makes the process of managing, editing, debugging, and searching automations much simpler. The categories are up to the users to define. For instance, I personally created categories per functionality such as “Smart Heating” or “Smart Cleaning”, and I particularly like my “Tests” categories where I keep all the automations that are currently being tested in my home.

On top of categories, users can now attach labels to automations, just like any other entity found in Home Assistant. Labels can be used to filter the automation list further, but what I am most interested in is the automation capabilities of the labels themselves. I saw some great ideas in the community, one of them that struck me was the idea to label some automation as “Not Guest Friendly” and deactivate them when a guest mode was activated. It’s nice to see labels as a tool to automate everything, even your automations themselves. 😀

All in all, Home Assistant truly made automations easier to organize in the past 6 months. We could still work on that, no opportunity is ever really done, but for the time being, we are considering this one done so that we can focus on bigger problems.

Newly in progress: Make automations easier to create

Automations are one of the cornerstones of Home Assistant, but it’s not an easy task to create them, especially if you are just starting out. There are a dozen things to know before you start and a dozen things to learn along the way.

Last year we redesigned our action picker and replaced a single option with an obscure name, “Call Service”, with hundreds of neatly categorized entries that we called “Actions”. This improved the automation creation process by quite a margin.

Today, the automation editor feels like it has progressed at two different speeds; our actions are easy to use, but our triggers and conditions are not. So we have begun bringing the same level of convenience that we previously brought to actions to our beloved triggers and conditions.

Our goal is to make our automation editor more approachable without losing what makes us unique: Its capabilities.

Later priority: Make blueprints easier to use

Blueprints are amazing, they represent what makes the Home Assistant community truly great: Sharing what you learned with others.

We are aware that using (and sharing) blueprints is not the most straightforward process today. For now, this is the next opportunity we want to tackle inside the automation stream.

Dashboards

In good shape: Make customization of dashboards easy and intuitive

With the stable release of the new Sections view layout in Home Assistant 2024.11, our work on making customization of dashboards easier is now in good shape! The learning curve for creating nice dashboards has been vastly reduced, and we are seeing more and more people being interested in and being able to create high-quality dashboards that are usable for everyone in the household.

Screenshots showing the conversion of a view in masonry into sections

Work will continue with the dashboard working group. The group is currently looking into standardizing the appearance of our default cards. Please reach out to us if you are a frontend developer who would like to contribute and be part of the journey!

Newly in progress: Make default dashboards more useful and relevant

Now that we’ve made customization of dashboards easier than ever, what’s next? We understand that it can be intimidating for users when they are faced with a blank slate. Some may be full of ideas on how they would like to fill their dashboards up, but some would prefer if Home Assistant came with something useful out-of-the-box. Therefore, we are now looking into making dashboards easier, even if you don’t know how to create one.

Case studies of many dashboards of our users

Over the past year, we have looked into dozens of case studies - dashboards created by many of you, from the most popular to the most pragmatic - and began to notice patterns in how our users organize their dashboards. Home Assistant is unique compared to other smart home platforms in that our dashboards are not just about controlling devices. After all, the perfect app is no app, as in, opening an app to control your light bulb is less convenient than simply flicking a light switch, or better yet, just automating it.

What we see our users have built instead are dashboards that help them keep track of information for their daily lives at a glance, and keep a birds-eye view of everything that is going on around their homes. For example, while you can automate Home Assistant to notify you when energy usage is too high, or you can ask Assist the current power usage, our dashboards shine at data visualization and its ability to tell you lots of information you need by just glancing at it.

Currently, our default dashboard simply dumps every single entity that a home has onto one page, making it wildly unmanageable as the smart home grows. While it can automatically group entities by areas, we have learned that areas are not the only way users look at their dashboard information. What we saw instead are dashboards that are specialized and focused on the functions of a home, such as energy usage, security and safety, and network status, on complex objects, such as a car and a 3D printer, or on information unrelated to the home itself, such as weather, neighborhood information, or even rocket launches. While we can simply show every entity by domain, we know we can make these function-focused dashboards much more useful by exposing insights by curating and juxtaposing information.

Next priority: Improve privacy in user, guest, and public access

The inability to fine-tune access to Home Assistant by guests or other members of the family has been a pain point requested by many of our users. We want to investigate ways to mitigate this while improving the privacy of the household. Our research on what privacy means to users will hopefully bring more clarity to this before we start working on it.

Voice Assistants

In good shape: Improve Assist capabilities out of the box

Assist, our private voice assistant, received a lot of love over the last 6 months. Our first focus was to improve its capabilities out of the box, without needing to tinker with it. We added a lot of features that were heavily requested by the community, features that bring us one step closer to feature parity with our non-private competitors.

We brought area awareness, which allows you to target devices in the same area without mentioning the area (like “Close the curtains” or “Turn off the lights”). We brought floor support, which allows you to target devices across areas on the same floor; very useful for homes with an open floor design (for example “Turn on all lights on the first floor”).

Timers running on an S3 Box, with countdown text and a loading bar!

We implemented timers, allowing any voice assistant device to “ring” when a timer ends, including supporting the creation of multiple timers. You can also pause and resume them and add or remove time from them. You can combine commands with timers by giving a delayed command, allowing you to perform an action after a specific amount of time (like “Turn off the TV in 30 minutes)”.

We also brought the ability to control media via voice. Pausing or resuming them, controlling the volume, and going to the next track. This, combined with the area awareness capability mentioned above made for some really interesting short commands that work in a room with a TV playing or music streaming, such as “Pause”, “Resume” and “Next”.

Finally, our on-device wake word engine called microWakeWord became much faster and much better at recognizing wake words. This is the result of using real voice data in the training process to fine-tune the models. With Wake Word Collective, you can now contribute by lending your voice to improve our community-driven, privacy-focused voice assistant! You can read more about it in this blog post.

In progress: Make Assist easier to start with

So Assist is more capable, but what about getting started with Voice?

Voice is hard because it is a combination of great software and great hardware. Up until recently, we primarily focused on making the software experience great and relied on readily available hardware to power our voice assistants.

A teaser of our voice hardware

However, this is changing - over the past 6 months, we have built our own hardware! It will be the first voice assistant hardware built from the ground up to work with Home Assistant, fully open source (firmware and hardware), and it is going to be released very soon. It is truly the missing hardware piece to a more approachable voice experience in Home Assistant, and we cannot wait to see what you will build with it.

Later priority: Make Assist more conversational

The more functionality we add to Assist, the more we reach its transactional limitations. Indeed, today, an interaction is one way, from a user (issuing a command) to Assist (acting on that command). We would like to improve this, allowing more conversational interactions with Assist.

In the future, Assist will be able to ask for clarifications before fulfilling a command, such as requesting the duration of a timer if it was not part of the original command or asking for confirmation before processing critical actions, such as unlocking all doors. On top of that, we would like to allow the conversation to start from Assist, and not from the user, such as greeting someone when they enter a room. This pairs very well with LLM-based conversation agents due to their ability to retain context, but we will make sure these types of complex interactions are also possible with our default conversation agent.

Research

In good shape: Build local LLM infrastructure

In the past six months, we’ve introduced support for LLM local tools and Ollama, pushing our efforts to make AI more accessible and private for experimentation within Home Assistant. We’ve also dedicated significant effort to creating realistic benchmarks, focusing on natural, conversational use cases rather than edge cases. This approach lets us better understand performance and user experience in day-to-day interactions.

Our latest benchmark for local language models (LLMs) can be explored here, showcasing how models like qwen2.5 perform in realistic settings. With these insights, we’re continuing to refine LLM integrations and to ensure that LLMs can be depended upon for common use cases at home.

You can now expand LLM capabilities by allowing them access to your scripts. This feature lets you precisely control what the LLM does in specific situations, while still benefiting from the flexibility and natural language processing that AIs excel at.

In progress: Investigate on privacy

Since our last roadmap update, we have expanded the product and design team working on the Home Assistant project, and we have hired our first ever dedicated user researcher!

While we are ramping up our user research pipeline, we have started working on investigating what privacy means to our users. Of the three Open Home values, privacy, choice, and sustainability, while we have a pretty solid understanding of choice and some understanding of sustainability, the idea of privacy can benefit from more clarity. We have interviewed a handful of users on this topic recently, and we can’t wait to show you what we have found.

Home Assistant Cloud

Home Assistant Cloud, powered by our commercial partner Nabu Casa brings, to the many, the hard-to-reach features of Home Assistant usually reserved for power users with expensive hardware at home, with no compromise on privacy.

In recent months, the Nabu Casa team has been hard at work in bringing peace of mind to using Home Assistant. For the cloud backup feature, the Home Assistant team and the Nabu Casa team are now working closely together on a comprehensive revamp of backup integrations, to create an easy one-stop solution to a good backup strategy. We are also working to ensure users have a smooth onboarding for backing up to Home Assistant Cloud, as well as other third-party backup locations.

The team had to postpone some features in favor of others like WebRTC. They had successfully released the infrastructure needed to support WebRTC, both STUN servers for every Home Assistant user and TURN servers for every Home Assistant Cloud subscriber, enhancing real-time communication capabilities within Home Assistant. Two-factor authentication (2FA) is one of the postponed features, but it is still in the Nabu Casa pipeline.

Open Protocols

We remain committed to supporting open smart home standards, including Z-Wave Zigbee, Matter, and Thread, aligning with our Open Home mission to offer choice, privacy, and sustainability through locally controlled, cloud-independent devices.

In the past six months, we have made significant steps towards certifications, ensuring our open standards implementations are up to industry standards.

Z-Wave

In September, Paulus, the founder of Home Assistant, announced his new role on the Z-Wave Alliance Board of Directors, representing Nabu Casa. Serving on the board will allow Nabu Casa to contribute meaningfully to Z-Wave’s development and ensure that the needs of Home Assistant users and open-source values are represented.

As interest in Z-Wave devices in our ecosystem continues to grow, this has driven Home Assistant to advance the Z-Wave JS stack and create its own Z-Wave hardware. While we are working on the certification of our Z-Wave implementation, our work on building our own Z-Wave antenna has also been progressing smoothly. We base the design of our antenna on the Z-Wave Reference Application Design to create a Z-Wave antenna with the best performance in the market.

Matter

As one of the first in the industry, in June, we proudly announced that Home Assistant is now based on the latest Matter 1.3 specification. Since then, we continued to update our Matter implementation to improve the reliability and compatibility of Matter devices, and Matter certification should hopefully happen any day now soon!

We have brought expanded device support and performance improvements to Home Assistant’s Matter integration. Air purifiers, room air conditioners, and thermostats are now better supported, along with custom clusters, which allow Home Assistant to detect data changes in real-time, improving network efficiency.

Update entities now provide firmware updates via official Matter update channels, while event entities provide more event types, allowing you to react to single-press or double-press events with ease. Additional features include water valve support, operation state tracking for appliances, and smoke and CO sensor integration. Matter 1.3 power and energy sensors are also supported, providing useful data for the energy dashboard.

In the meantime, we will continue to work on Matter 1.4 compatibility, as well as making device commissioning easier and working with Thread credentials. We have made major strides forward and hopefully we will be able to get through some of our roadblocks soon.

Zigbee

The Zigbee Home Automation (ZHA) integration got a massive overhaul during Summer. The whole integration has been split into a separate codebase, making it easier to maintain and improve. This is a huge step forward for the integration, and took months of work to get done. This change will make the integration easier to maintain and improve in the future, including allowing code contributors to contribute more easily.

What’s next?

We hope that you can feel the results of all this work. Given the positive feedback we have received from our users, we will continue to follow our roadmap to work on the next product initiatives.

We will also start preparing for the roadmap for next year. It will have a new theme, and we would like to have our community be more involved in the process of its creation. Planning has already begun, and we hope to announce it at the next State of the Open Home. Last but not the least, please get in the comments and give us your feedback - we read it all!

See you next year!

- Madelena & JLo

2024.11: Slick dashboards and speedy cameras

2024-11-06T00:00:00+00:00

Home Assistant 2024.11! 🎉

It is November already, and we are closing in on the end of the year, but we are not slowing down!

Before we dive into what this release has to offer, I want to take a moment to thank everyone who has contributed to the Home Assistant project. You might have heard this already, but going to share it again:

We are number one! 🥇

GitHub published its annual Octoverse report, highlighting the platform’s biggest trends and projects. It named Home Assistant 2024’s largest open-source project, with over 21,000 contributors over the year. That includes you! ❤️

Continuing the festivities, this release is a big one! The new dashboarding system we have been working on all year is now out of its experimental phase and generally available! 🥳 Exciting, everyone can now create beautiful dashboards with ease!

To top it off, this release also supports faster and lower-latency camera streams using WebRTC, supported by the Open Home Foundation. This is a huge improvement! 🎉

Enjoy the release!

../Frenck

Sections dashboard no longer experimental!
- Convert your old dashboards to sections view layout
- Precise mode for card sizes
Low latency cameras using WebRTC
Integrations
Other noteworthy changes
- Live logs
Voice
- Home Assistant intents improvements
- Join the Wake Word Collective
Patch releases
Need help? Join the community!
Backward-incompatible changes
All changes

Sections dashboard no longer experimental!

This release marks a big milestone in our pursuit of making dashboards easier to customize and use for everyone, aka Project Grace! The sections view layout, together with its drag-and-drop 🐲 capabilities and responsive design, is now out of its experimental phase, and ready for primetime! This means that, as of this release, you will get our awesome feature-rich and easy-to-use dashboard editing experience when you create a new dashboard. 🎉

Over the past few months, we have worked hard to iterate and listen to your feedback to ensure that our new dashboard is easy to customize for both beginners and advanced users alike. We have added new capabilities such as resizing cards, visibility options, wider sections, new badges, and, most recently, adding the new heading card.

To finish this journey, we are adding two more features to this release.

Convert your old dashboards to sections view layout

Screenshots showing the conversion of a view in masonry into sections

This release includes a way to convert individual dashboard views from the old masonry view layout to the new sections view layout. When you change the view type to sections, you get a button to convert the view. All the cards of the old view are then copied and placed in an imported cards section in the new view, and you can then easily drag-and-drop them into the right sections.

Please note that cards placed within the imported cards section are only visible to users once moved to a section above the fold. This ensures that cards do not get accidentally shown in the wrong sections while you are still working on the dashboard.

Screenshot of the imported cards section

If you are not ready for the new layout yet, no worries! Your old dashboard view is kept when a new dashboard is created, giving an excellent way for masonry view veterans to try out sections while keeping all the hard work they have put into customizing their cards.

Alternatively, you can move each card one-by-one from another view. All moved cards will also be temporarily placed in the imported cards section.

Precise mode for card sizes

Examples of cards using precise mode

If you love tinkering with your dashboards and fine-tuning card sizes with more precision, you now have even more control over the size of cards. In the layout options of a card you can now enable “Precise mode”, which will give you three times more options for the card widths!

Precise mode is applied on a card-by-card level. While a normal section is divided into 4 columns, precise modes gives you 12 columns, which allows you to align 2, 3, 4, or 6 buttons side-by-side.

Low latency cameras using WebRTC

Lots of effort has gone into this new and amazing feature for this release: WebRTC! 🎉

Not sure what WebRTC is? No worries! Let us try to explain. If you are watching a camera in Home Assistant, you might have noticed it is sometimes a bit slow and delayed. WebRTC support is going to change that!

Camera streams will now try to use WebRTC whenever possible. WebRTC is a standard that makes a peer-to-peer connection for lower-latency audio and video streaming. You are probably using this technology a lot already, for example, when having an online video call. When you’re away from home, it will try to find the fastest and most direct path between your Home Assistant instance and the camera you are trying to view.

The Open Home Foundation will host the negotiating network infrastructure (STUN servers) for free for all Home Assistant users and enable the capability to use WebRTC for peer-to-peer connections whenever possible. If you are using Home Assistant OS or our containers, after you update this will automatically work out of the box.

Sometimes, a direct connection between the client (like your browser or mobile app) and the camera is not possible; in those situations, the camera stream needs to be relayed by an external server. Home Assistant Cloud now provides this relay server (TURN server), and it’s included as one of the many benefits available to all subscribers!

So, no matter where you are, you should always be able to watch your cameras via this low-latency technology. If, for whatever reason, WebRTC is not available, it will fall back to using the old method of streaming to ensure you can always see your camera feeds.

So, after reading all of this, what changed? Well, camera feeds will do everything they did before, but will be faster, more responsive, and less delayed! 🎉

Integrations

New integrations

We welcome the following new integrations in this release:

LG ThinQ, added by @LG-ThinQ-Integration
Integrate your LG ThinQ devices, such as air conditioners, refrigerators, and washing machines. LG built and provided this integration! It’s super nice to see a manufacturer providing an integration for Home Assistant.
Husqvarna Automower BLE, added by @alistair23
Integrate your Husqvarna lawnmower using Bluetooth.
Palazzetti, added by @dotvav
Integrate your Palazzetti pellet stove; control the stove, fan speeds and get the current temperature.

Noteworthy improvements to existing integrations

@joostlek has extended the Spotify integration with a whole bunch of new sensors for the current song playing. You can now, for example, automate putting your house into party mode 🎉 when the song playing is danceable enough 😎 Awesome job!
The LinkPlay integration now has multiroom support! Group and ungroup your devices to play music in sync or individually straight from Home Assistant. Thanks @silamon!
Staying in the audio department, @mj23000 added shuffle and repeat controls to the Bang & Olufsen integration. Nice!
The ViCare integration now supports room sensors and hot water storage sensors. Thanks for that @CFenner!
@starkillerOG added sensors to track the total number of installations and integrations to the Analytics Insights integration. Nice!
The Habitica integration now supports sensors for gems, mystic hourglasses, and calendars for to-dos and daily tasks. Thanks @tr4nt0r!
@YogevBokobza added support for the Switcher Runner S12 to the Switcher integration. Thanks for that!
The Husqvarna Automower integration keeps receiving love from @Thomas55555. This release adds work area and progress sensors. Nice!
@bdraco added support for the SwitchBot Meter Pro to the SwitchBot integration. Thanks!
The SwitchBot Cloud integration now supports locks! Thanks @miterion!
A little more technical, but @jbouwh added support for MQTT device-based auto discovery. This allows MQTT devices to be set up and discovered once instead of separately for each entity; which is much more efficient. Nice improvement!

Now available to set up from the UI

While most integrationsIntegrations connect and integrate Home Assistant with your devices, services, and more. [Learn more] can be set up directly from the Home Assistant user interface, some were only available using YAML configuration. We keep moving more integrations to the UI, making them more accessible for everyone to set up and use.

The following integrations are now available via the Home Assistant UI:

Local file, done by @gjohansson-ST
Onkyo, done by @Nebula83
Smarty, done by @joostlek

Farewell to the following

The following integrationsIntegrations connect and integrate Home Assistant with your devices, services, and more. [Learn more] are also no longer available as of this release:

Bloomsky. Their service shut down.
Google Domains. The domain registration service by Google has been shut down.
Spider. The service is no longer available.

Other noteworthy changes

There are many more improvements in this release; here are some of the other noteworthy changes:

Image entities now have a snapshot action, allowing you to save the current image in the entity to a file. Nice @NickM-27!
@Petro31 added (limited) template support to the “at” field of time triggers. This allows you to template the time of that trigger in, for example, a blueprint automation.
Nautical miles (nmi) is now a valid distance unit. This means you can now use this as a unit for your distance sensors. Thanks @mib1185!
@tetele added blueprints for template entities! This allows for easier re-use and sharing of common blueprints for sets of templated entities. This is an advanced feature and is only available using manual YAML configuration.
@MindFreeze and @matthiasdebaat have improved the network settings user interface. It is now easier to manage and configure your network settings, including nicer handling of IP addresses, improved Wi-Fi configuration, and better visibility on the URLs Home Assistant is using for your instance.
We now indicate if a custom integration is overriding a built-in integration. This makes it easier to spot if a custom integration is taking over a built-in integration while you are wondering why you didn’t get the latest features Home Assistant releases bring. Thanks, @MindFreeze!

Live logs

Sometimes, if something does not work as expected, you might resort to a more technical tool for finding out what is going on: The logs.

Previously, if you looked at the logs of, for example, an add-on or the Home Assistant Supervisor, you would only see the last 100 log lines. You would have had to refresh the page to see new log entries.

Well, no more! As of this release, the logs are now streaming live! 🎉

Screen recording demonstrating logs showing up as they happen.

And not just that, you can scroll back in time to see previous log items. That’s a pretty cool improvement. 😎

Voice

Last year, 2023, was the Year of the Voice for Home Assistant. And while this year isn’t specifically dedicated to voice, everyone is still working hard towards the goal of letting users control their homes with their voice in their own language.

As you might have heard through many community channels 🕵️‍♀️, we are working to make this a reality for everyone. We are hard at work getting our Home Assistant voice satellite hardware ready and available for selling and shipping! 🤗

Stay tuned for more information on that soon!

Home Assistant intents improvements

One of the things we are working on is the Home Assistant intents. This is a way for a voice assistant to understand the intention behind your spoken sentences. This is a very crucial part of a local voice assistant.

In this release, we decided to align and combine Canadian French and French languages for the time being. Though we understand it is a unique dialect, this is about giving Canadian French users a lot more voice features.

These intents are built and maintained by the community, and we are very grateful for their work. For example, @piitaya and @jlpouffier have made a great effort to lead the French language intents mentioned above.

Nevertheless, we want to ensure everyone can use Home Assistant in their own language, so we need your help! Help the community by contributing to the intents for your language. You can find more information on how to do that in our developer documentation.

Join the Wake Word Collective

Another essential part of voice is the Wake Word! And this is where everyone, no matter your skill level, can help out with just a minute of your time!

Wake words are the words you say to wake up your voice assistant. For example, “Hey Google” or “Alexa”. As we are building our own voice assistant with our own wake words, we need to train our models to recognize these words, regardless of your accent, language, gender, or age.

So, get your whole home involved 🏠! Take a minute to help us out by recording your voice saying the wake word. It is super easy, and you can do it right from your browser or mobile, no need to install anything!

Help us improve our wake words today! ❤️

You can read more about the Wake Word Collective in our dedicated blog post.

Patch releases

We will also release patch releases for Home Assistant 2024.11 in November. These patch releases only contain bug fixes. Our goal is to release a patch release every Friday.

2024.11.1 - November 8

Bump intents to 2024.11.6 (@synesthesiam - #129982)
Fix Trunks in Teslemetry and Tesla Fleet (@Bre77 - #129986)
Update sense energy library to 0.13.3 (@kbickar - #129998)
Bump google-nest-sdm to 6.1.4 (@allenporter - #130005)
Add missing placeholder description to twitch (@epenet - #130013)
Bump agent-py to 0.0.24 (@ispysoftware - #130018)
Don’t create repairs asking user to remove duplicate ignored config entries (@emontnemery - #130056)
Fix KeyError in nest integration when the old key format does not exist (@allenporter - #130057)
Don’t create repairs asking user to remove duplicate flipr config entries (@emontnemery - #130058)
Add missing string to tedee plus test (@zweckj - #130081)
Force int value on port in P1Monitor (@klaasnicolaas - #130084)
Fix typo in insteon strings (@KelvinDekker - #130085)
Update frontend to 20241106.1 (@bramkragten - #130086)
Bump python-roborock to 2.7.2 (@Lash-L - #130100)
Update frontend to 20241106.2 (@bramkragten - #130128)
Fix issue when timestamp is None (@shaiu - #130133)
Add go2rtc workaround for HA managed one until upstream fixes it (@edenhaus - #130139)
Bump spotifyaio to 0.8.7 (@joostlek - #130140)
Bump ha-ffmpeg to 3.2.2 (@MartinHjelmare - #130142)
Fix volume_up not working in some cases in bluesound integration (@LouisChrist - #130146)
Fix bugs in nest stream expiration handling (@allenporter - #130150)
Refrase imap fetch service description string (@jbouwh - #130152)

2024.11.2 - November 15

Bump aiohttp to 3.10.11 (@bdraco - #130483)
Fix RecursionError in Husqvarna Automower coordinator (@Thomas55555 - #123085)
Bump python-linkplay to v0.0.18 (@silamon - #130159)
Allow dynamic max preset in linkplay play preset (@silamon - #130160)
No longer thrown an error when device is offline in linkplay (@silamon - #130161)
Fix translations in ollama (@sheldonip - #130164)
Bump nice-go to 0.3.10 (@IceBotYT - #130173)
Fix wording in Google Calendar create_event strings for consistency (@maxshcherbina - #130183)
Fix uptime sensor for Vodafone Station (@chemelli74 - #130215)
Bump pyTibber (@Danielhiversen - #130216)
Bump SoCo to 0.30.6 (@jjlawren - #130223)
Bump google-nest-sdm to 6.1.5 (@allenporter - #130229)
Rename “CO2 Signal” display name to Electricity Maps for consistency (@corradio - #130242)
Update generic thermostat strings for clarity and accuracy (@maxshcherbina - #130243)
Fix translation key for done response in conversation (@mib1185 - #130247)
Improve nest camera stream expiration to be defensive against errors (@allenporter - #130265)
Add more f-series models to myuplink (@astrandb - #130283)
Make Hydrawise poll non-critical data less frequently (@dknowles2 - #130289)
Ignore WebRTC candidates for nest cameras (@allenporter - #130294)
Avoid Shelly data update during shutdown (@chemelli74 - #130301)
Fix Homekit error handling alarm state unknown or unavailable (@gjohansson-ST - #130311)
Fix fan’s warning TURN_ON, TURN_OFF (@LG-ThinQ-Integration - #130327)
Bump python-linkplay to 0.0.20 (@silamon - #130348)
Add seek support to LinkPlay (@silamon - #130349)
Add Spotify and Tidal to playingmode mapping (@silamon - #130351)
Disable brightness from devices with no display in Cambridge Audio (@noahhusby - #130369)
Use f-strings in go2rtc code and test and do not use abbreviation (@jbouwh - #130158)
Fix typo in go2rtc (@jbouwh - #130165)
Go2rtc bump and set ffmpeg logs to debug (@edenhaus - #130371)
Bump spotifyaio to 0.8.8 (@joostlek - #130372)
Bump Tibber 0.30.8 (@Danielhiversen - #130388)
Fix missing title placeholders in powerwall reauth (@bdraco - #130389)
Bump ring library ring-doorbell to 0.9.9 (@sdb9696 - #129966)
Bump ring-doorbell to 0.9.12 (@sdb9696 - #130419)
Do not trigger events for updated ring events (@sdb9696 - #130430)
Add title to water heater component (@joostlek - #130446)
Fix translation in statistics (@gjohansson-ST - #130455)
Fix typo in file strings (@KelvinDekker - #130465)
Bump aiowithings to 3.1.2 (@joostlek - #130469)
Ensure ZHA setup works with container installs (@puddly - #130470)
Fix legacy _attr_state handling in AlarmControlPanel (@gjohansson-ST - #130479)
Bump reolink_aio to 0.11.0 (@starkillerOG - #130481)
Fix translations in subaru (@sheldonip - #130486)
Bump aioruckus to 0.42 (@ms264556 - #130487)
Bump go2rtc-client to 0.1.1 (@edenhaus - #130498)
Bump aiowithings to 3.1.3 (@joostlek - #130504)
Add go2rtc recommended version (@edenhaus - #130508)
fix translation in srp_energy (@briglx - #130540)
Fix non-thread-safe operation in powerview number (@bdraco - #130557)
Bump ZHA dependencies (@puddly - #130563)
Update uptime deviation for Vodafone Station (@chemelli74 - #130571)
Fixes webhook schema for different temp and volume units (@JohNan - #130578)
Bump reolink-aio to 0.11.1 (@starkillerOG - #130600)
Fix hassfest by adding go2rtc reqs (@edenhaus - #130602)
Add missing translation string to smarty (@epenet - #130624)
Bump sense-energy to 0.13.4 (@kbickar - #130625)
Fix scene loading issue (@alistairg - #130627)
Add missing translation string to hvv_departures (@epenet - #130634)
Add missing translation string to lg_netcast (@epenet - #130635)
Add missing translation string to philips_js (@epenet - #130637)
Bump pyplaato to 0.0.19 (@JohNan - #130641)
Remove dumping config entry to log in setup of roborock (@jpbede - #130648)
Fix missing translations in vilfo (@epenet - #130650)
Fix missing translations in utility_meter (@epenet - #130652)
Fix missing translations in tradfri (@epenet - #130654)
Fix missing translations in toon (@epenet - #130655)
Fix missing translations in madvr (@epenet - #130656)
Fix missing translations in generic (@epenet - #130672)
Fix missing translations in onewire (@epenet - #130673)
Bump python-smarttub to 0.0.38 (@mdz - #130679)

2024.11.3 - November 22

Prevent endless loop in recorder when using a filter and there are no more states to purge (@davinkevin - #126149)
Fix and bump apsystems-ez1 to 2.4.0 (@patman15 - #130740)
Fix file uploads in MQTT config flow not processed in executor (@jbouwh - #130746)
Update twentemilieu to 2.1.0 (@frenck - #130752)
Fix unexpected stop of media playback via ffmpeg proxy for ESPhome devices (@mib1185 - #130788)
Bump homematicip to 1.1.3 (@hahn-th - #130824)
UPB integration: Change unique ID from int to string. (@gwww - #130832)
Reolink fix dev/entity id migration (@starkillerOG - #130836)
Use default device sensors also for AirQ devices in Sensibo (@gjohansson-ST - #130841)
Pass config_entry explicitly in rachio (@epenet - #130865)
Bump bluetooth-adapters to 0.20.2 (@bdraco - #130877)
Fixed Small Inaccuracy in Description String for myUplink (@CharlesYuan02 - #130900)
Unscape HTML Entities from RSS feeds (@skgsergio - #130915)
Update elmax_api to v0.0.6.1 (@ElmaxSrl - #130917)
Bump aioairq to 0.4.3 (@Sibgatulin - #130963)
Strip whitespaces from host in ping config flow (@jpbede - #130970)
Add more UI user-friendly description to six Supervisor actions (@NoRi2909 - #130971)
Add missing catholic category in workday (@gjohansson-ST - #130983)
Bump holidays to 0.61 (@gjohansson-ST - #130984)
Bump aioairzone to 0.9.6 (@Noltari - #130559)
Update aioairzone to v0.9.7 (@Noltari - #131033)
Replace “service” with “action” in zha:reconfigure_device (@NoRi2909 - #131111)
Fix typo in name of “Alarm arm home instant” action (@NoRi2909 - #131151)
Fix cast translation string (@NoRi2909 - #131156)
Fix typo in ESPHome repair text (@jesserockz - #131200)
Reolink log fast poll errors once (@starkillerOG - #131203)
Fix fibaro cover state is not always correct (@rappenze - #131206)
Bump reolink_aio to 0.11.2 (@starkillerOG - #131237)

Need help? Join the community!

Home Assistant has a great community of users who are all more than willing to help each other out. So, join us!

Our very active Discord chat server is an excellent place to be at, and don’t forget to join our amazing forums.

Found a bug or issue? Please report it in our issue tracker, to get it fixed! Or, check our help page for guidance for more places you can go.

Backward-incompatible changes

We do our best to avoid making changes to existing functionality that might unexpectedly impact your Home Assistant installation. Unfortunately, sometimes, it is inevitable.

We always make sure to document these changes to make the transition as easy as possible for you. This release has the following backward-incompatible changes:

A. O. Smith

Help us make voice better in under a minute

2024-10-24T00:00:01+00:00

Give us a minute of your time and lend your voice to improve our community-driven, privacy-focused voice assistant, and together we’ll break big tech’s stranglehold on home voice control.

When you use Home Assistant Assist we’ll never take your data unwillingly to improve its functionality; that’s why we’re asking for your help today (more on that below).

Specifically, we’re trying to improve our wake word engine, which “wakes” the device to listen for more commands. Our open source microWakeWord engine is an incredible, lightweight bit of code but requires training with real voices to improve. Everyone’s voice is unique, and we need recordings of people of all genders, ages, and accents from around the world saying this wake word. So get the whole home involved, along with friends and family.

Help us today

Your voice, your choice

Privacy is at the core of everything we do, and that’s what’s driving us to build an open, local, and private voice assistant. Years ago a voice assistant arms race began between a couple of big tech companies, where they sold very cheap voice hardware, all because they wanted your data. They used that voice data to rapidly improve their voice capabilities (and who knows what else) at the expense of your privacy.

We will never use those tactics to improve Home Assistant. We do something novel and bewildering to the smart home industry - we explicitly ask for your help. For instance, Home Assistant has opt-in statistics; these really help us focus on what people are using and put resources into making the biggest impact. When you opt-in it really helps, but we totally understand if you don’t - it’s your home and your data. We’re doing the same with voice, explicitly asking for help, and would love your help to improve its wake word capability.

What big tech might consider a weakness is actually our greatest strength - privacy empowers our users, allowing them to not worry about being tracked or classified by an algorithm.

microWakeWord goes global

microWakeWord is a very lightweight wake word engine that can run on ESP32-class devices. This allows the voice assistant to listen for a specific phrase, for instance “Okay Nabu”, and ignore all other noise and speech until it hears that. Running it on-device speeds everything up significantly, cutting out the lag from streaming audio continuously to a more powerful device running wake word software. The downside to running it on-device is the amount of training required to get good results.

A few months ago, we promoted an early version of this Wake Word Collective tool in the Open Home Foundation newsletter (subscribe if you haven’t already). From that one email alone, we received over 5,800 samples covering 30 different languages. While microWakeWord used to only excel at picking up the English pronunciation of “Okay Nabu”, it’s now many times more effective at picking up different accents. Our testing shows our model trained on this data falsely rejects 5% of samples, while previous models rejected 18%, which shows your samples are making a difference!

We still need more different types of voices from different parts of the world. If you or your family use Assist and find it still struggling to wake up to hear your commands, this is the perfect opportunity to lend your voice to the project.

How it works

Before you start recording you will fill in what language you’re most comfortable speaking, allowing us to train language-specific wake word models that are better at detecting subtle differences in pronunciation. You must also read and agree to the Wake Word Collective terms. This explains, among other things, that these recordings will be made available publicly under a Creative Commons CC0 public domain dedication. We operate our research openly for the benefit of all, and that is why these will be available to the public.

Next, it explains that you only need you to say two words, “Okay, Nabu”, a couple of times. You’ll need to set down your phone, tablet, or laptop, and walk around the room, saying the wake word whenever the circle on the screen turns green. Taking samples from all around the room better reflects the real-world use of a voice assistant. Don’t worry about background noise; it’s useful for training.

I said this would only take a minute, but you’ve probably been reading this for longer, so go on and get recording.

Home Assistant Connect ZBT-1 issue and replacement

2024-10-02T00:01:01+00:00

Note

The replacement program is now operational, please contact the retailer where you purchased your device to request a replacement. The replacement program only covers ZBT-1 branded devices purchased prior to October 2024, and not SkyConnect-branded devices (identify which device you have with this graphic).

We’ve found an issue in Home Assistant Connect ZBT-1 that has affected a small number of customers, which appears to be the result of a faulty part incorporated in the first production run of ZBT-1 devices, causing the device to fail and become completely unresponsive. We want to make sure everyone can get a replacement ZBT-1 and ensure they are covered far into the future.

Though Home Assistant SkyConnect is identical to the ZBT-1 under the hood, it is not affected. The design is not what’s at fault, but instead, a defective voltage regulator that was used in this specific production run that is causing the issue. When a ZBT-1 is inserted into certain USB-A ports, the voltage regulator can fail, fully bricking the device. We used high-quality manufacturing and quality control in this and previous production runs. We are undertaking an investigation to find out how this could happen and most importantly, to avoid a repeat of anything remotely similar in the future.

We’re sorry for any inconvenience this may cause you. Below are details on our investigation, how devices are affected, and the replacement program.

Background
Do I have a ZBT-1?
Pausing sales
Replacement Program
Conclusion

Background

Around a month ago, we were contacted about one of our latest (and recently rebranded) Home Assistant Connect ZBT-1s not being detected and showing a deformation on the housing. A couple more similar issues were reported, and we began a dialogue with the small number of people who were affected, having them send us the devices to test.

Circled in red the deformation on the case and the board showing the failed chip

Indeed, the device no longer worked at all, not being detected by any device it was connected to. When we opened them, we found a dead voltage regulator. Though SkyConnect devices can also develop a small discoloration on the outside casing after long-term use, and this is not a sign of failure, the deeper deformation in the outer casing pictured above is a sign that the ZBT-1 has overheated and failed. All of our devices are certified by CE and ROHS, and the plastic shell has been designed not to combust. This is a real-life demonstration of just how important this certification is and why we take that step.

We replaced the voltage regulator on the devices we tested, and the devices sprang back to life. We found our culprit, but why was it failing? As mentioned, the SkyConnect internal design and the manufacturing were effectively identical to the ZBT-1, and we received no reports of any such failures in the literally tens of thousands of them in the wild. In manufacturing runs there is always a little variance, and in this run, something went wrong with the voltage regulator that was sourced - again, we’re looking into this.

It took us a couple of weeks to replicate the problem with our own units. We went down some wrong paths, but eventually found it was triggered only by certain devices, specifically certain desktop PCs (internally, we have only found one desktop that causes this failure). We have not observed the failure occur when the device has only been connected to a Home Assistant Green, Raspberry Pi, or even a Mac. If you have plugged your ZBT-1 into a different device, specifically a desktop PC, and it is not recognized by that system, inspect it for this deformation pictured above. Obviously, we want you to be able to use the device with any hardware, and even if only a small number of devices from this production run have reported issues, it is still unacceptable to us.

Do I have a ZBT-1?

SkyConnect (left) and ZBT-1 (right) branded devices, SkyConnect are unaffected by this issue.

Pausing sales

We have asked our distributors to pause sales and return all stock. For the next month, you will see “Out of Stock” banners, and if you are attempting to get a replacement device for a failed unit, this will not be possible until production is resumed.

We are working to have replacement ZBT-1s shipped by early November.

Replacement Program

If you have purchased Home Assistant Connect ZBT-1, we are working on a replacement program. This program will see Nabu Casa provide a replacement device free of charge for a period of 60 months (5 years) for verified purchases. Regardless of whether the device has failed, we will provide a replacement upon request.

It is a core value of ours to do things as sustainably as possible, and that’s why we’ve provided such a long coverage period. We want to give owners with working ZBT-1s, who do not expect to use the device in a different system for the foreseeable future, the ability to keep it operating with peace of mind.

Note

All ZBT-1 branded devices produced, as of October 2024, are believed to have this fault. You can tell if your device is a ZBT-1 by checking the white label on the back for “ZBT-1” (identify which device you have with this graphic). There is no need to test if your device is affected by this fault.

If it’s working, keep it plugged into the device it’s working with, and don’t worry about a replacement until you need it. If you need or want a replacement, please contact the seller where you purchased your device, and they will arrange the return process and replacement. Replacement devices are expected by early November, and we will be prioritizing people with non-functioning devices.

Conclusion

We’re sorry for the inconvenience and any disruption to your smart home. As someone who uses Zigbee in their home, which many smart devices rely on, I would hate to have it out of commission.

Worse things can happen, but this has been a gut punch. All our work at Nabu Casa is to fund the development of Home Assistant and support the Open Home. Issues like this eat into our time, and rob our users of new and great things. Ultimately, we’re going to take this setback as a chance to prove we stand by our values and do the right thing.

2024.10: Heading in the right direction

2024-10-02T00:00:00+00:00

Boo! 👻

Please don’t be scared; it is October, Halloween is coming, and so is the next Home Assistant release: 2024.10! 🎃

The release we bring you today is a perfect mix of new UI features, advanced features, improvements, and lots of bug fixes while not being too overwhelming. There is something for everyone in this release.

Most notably, we have a brand new heading card. It allows you to add titles or subtitles to your dashboards, make them clickable, and even add cute little entities to them. The new section dashboard gets better and better with every release, which is super exciting!

We also introduce some small YAML automation syntax changes. If you are still a sucker for writing your automations in YAMLYAML is a human-readable data serialization language. It is used to store and transmit data in a structured format. In Home Assistant, YAML is used for configuration, for example in the configuration.yaml or automations.yaml files. [Learn more] (like me), I’m sure you’ll love these little tweaks that make it all feel more natural.

Enjoy the release!

../Frenck

Heading in the right direction
- Another headline feature
Repairs for long-term statistics
Improved YAML syntax for automations
Faster upgrades when using custom integrations
Integrations
Matter
Other noteworthy changes
- The source of a repair
- YAML-editor improvements
Patch releases
Need help? Join the community!
Backward-incompatible changes
All changes

Heading in the right direction

Update after update, Sections continues to become a customization powerhouse, and this month is no exception. Section titles are replaced with their own card, called the heading card. Making them a card rather than an inline title gives you a lot more flexibility, allowing you to put them nearly anywhere.

The heading card can be used to make titles, but also subtitles, which are half the height and have smaller, lighter text. So, if you have ever had a section that needs to be subdivided, slap a subtitle in there.

Titles and subtitles can be made clickable, displaying a chevron when you can interact with them. This can perform an action or navigate to a subpage, like having an energy section title navigate to the full energy dashboard.

Best of all, if you’ve already added titles to your sections, they will be migrated automatically to the new card. 😎

Another headline feature

We had such a fantastic reaction when we released our renewed badges, and this new heading card has something very similar and equally as visually appealing. It can show multiple entity states to the right of the title or subtitle.

Either in a subtle “no color” default or add a splash of color when the entity is in an active state. Other customization options for these entities include changing the icon, visibility, and what happens when you select it.

Repairs for long-term statistics

Long-term statistics are great; they downsample and store the data produced by your sensorsSensors return information about a thing, for instance the level of water in a tank. [Learn more], allowing Home Assistant to store data indefinitely in a fraction of the space the original readings took up. Take a look back at your energy usage from two years ago, or see if your living room really is colder this year compared to last.

In the past, if a statistic encountered an issue, it might be quietly broken until you dig into the statistics page. Now, Home Assistant will raise a repair notification when it detects issues with a long-term statistic and give you options for fixing the issue.

Improved YAML syntax for automations

Recently, we renamed service to action in the Home Assistant UI and YAML. This was done with the goal of making the syntax more natural, allowing it to be easier to grasp and read. We want to continue this work to improve the YAMLYAML is a human-readable data serialization language. It is used to store and transmit data in a structured format. In Home Assistant, YAML is used for configuration, for example in the configuration.yaml or automations.yaml files. [Learn more] syntax, this time focusing on automationsAutomations in Home Assistant allow you to automatically respond to things that happen in and around your home. [Learn more], and we’ve made the following changes,

The top-level trigger key is now triggers (plural)
The top-level condition key is now conditions (plural)
The top-level action key is now actions (plural)
The platform key of a trigger definition is now trigger

The result of all this is that YAML automation syntax now has triggers with multiple trigger definitions, conditions with multiple condition definitions, and actions with multiple action definitions.

Here is a small example of an automation highlighting these changes.

The 2024.9 release on the left and this 2024.10 release on the right.

As with the other syntax changes we’ve done recently, this is not a breaking change, and there will be no deprecation. The previous syntax will continue to work, and there are no plans to remove the old syntax. The new syntax is recommended, and all documentation and examples have been updated. Automations managed by the automation editor will automatically be migrated to the new syntax when saving an automation.

This is not the only change to our syntax, thanks to @karwosts we now support merging a list of triggers, which is mostly useful for blueprintA blueprint is a script, automation or template entity configuration with certain parts marked as configurable. This allows users to create multiple scripts, automations or template entities based on the same blueprint, with each having its own configuration-specific settings. [Learn more] authors.

Faster upgrades when using custom integrations

We want Home Assistant to continue to work on a wide range of hardware. If you look at our opt-in analytics you’ll see a sizable amount of homes running it on single-board computers from the mid-2010s. A lot of effort has been put into keeping Home Assistant lean, and this release has some good improvements. This is specially for users of custom integrations, and this follows HACS getting a great speed boost for downloads.

On each upgrade, all dependencies needed for custom integrationsA custom integration is an integration that has been created by someone from the Home Assistant community and has been published for others to use at their own risk. Custom integrations are not supported by the Home Assistant project. They are not reviewed or tested by the Home Assistant development team and thus may negatively impact the stability of your Home Assistant instance. An example of a custom integration is the Spook integration. are now downloaded and installed. We are now using uv internally to download and install dependencies, which is a faster and more efficient way to download and install dependencies. If you’re not aware, uv is what makes our release process so fast nowadays, and @edenhaus has done an interesting developer backstory on our move from pip to uv (saving us 200+ hours of execution time a month). @edenhaus has also implemented uv at runtime as well.

This speeds up the upgrade process, especially for custom integrations with many dependencies, or installations with many custom integrations. This change is fully transparent to the user, and no action is required. Just sit down, relax, and enjoy the faster upgrade process!

Integrations

New integrations

We welcome the following new integrations in this release:

Cambridge Audio, added by @noahhusby
Control all receivers and streamers that support the StreamMagic app.
Deako Smart Lighting, added by @Balake
Control and automate your Deako devices.
Duke Energy, added by @hunterjm
Import your energy usage data from Duke Energy into the Home Assistant energy dashboard.
Google Photos, added by @allenporter
Upload photos to your Google Photos library and use as a media source. Note that only images uploaded by the integration can be viewed and used.
Iskra, added by @iskrakranj
Monitor your energy and power usage from an Iskra energy meter.
Lektrico Charging Station, added by @Lektrico
Get in control of your Lektrico EV charger from Home Assistant and optimize your energy usage.
Monarch Money, added by @jeeftor
Monitor your account balance using the Monarch Money personal finance service.
NYT Games, added by @joostlek
Keep track of your New York Times games progress, like Spelling Bee and Wordle.
Sensoterra, added by @markruys
Monitor your soil moisture and temperature using Sensoterra sensors.
TRIGGERcmd, added by @rvmey
Execute commands on your computer(s) using the TRIGGERcmd cloud service.
Weheat, added by @jesperraemaekers
Manage and monitor your Weheat heatpump, keeping your home warm and cozy.
WMS WebControl pro, added by @mback2k
Control your WAREMA sun shading covers entirely locally.

This release also has a new virtual integration. Virtual integrations are stubs that are handled by other (existing) integrations to help with findability. This one is new:

Arizona Public Service (APS), provided by Opower, added by @seferino-fernandez

Noteworthy improvements to existing integrations

@Bre77 has been busy with the Tesla Fleet integration, adding a bunch of new features and entities to control your Tesla vehicle. It now supports climate, media player, cover, number, select, button, and lock entities.
You can now control the volume, ringtone, and status light of your Reolink Hub! Cool, @starkillerOG!
@daniel-k added support for controlling the volume and @sdb9696 added a switch for controlling motion detection on Ring devices; Nice work team!
The Switchbot Cloud integration now supports the K10+ Mini Robot Vacuum. Thanks, @Gigatrappeur!
@sorgfresser extended the ElevenLabs integration with integration options to control the voice settings. Nice!
The Squeezebox (Lyrion Music Server) integration now has new service sensors, and support for your favorites straight from the media browser. Thanks, @pssc and @rajlaud!
@tronikos added Google Cloud speech-to-text (STT) to Home Assistant. This allows you to use Google’s Cloud speech-to-text with Assist! Awesome!
If you are using the Husqvarna Automower, you can now view the calendar it provides, thanks to @Thomas55555!
@klaasnicolaas added support for home batteries to the Autarco integration so you can use them in your energy dashboard. Great!

Now available to set up from the UI

The following integrations are now available via the Home Assistant UI:

Emoncms, done by @alexandrecuer
Google Cloud Platform, done by @tronikos
HTML5 Push Notifications, done by @alexyao2015
Mold Indicator, done by @gjohansson-ST

Matter

At this point, our Matter integration is almost becoming a monthly recurring topic in our release notes. For a good reason! The development is moving forward at a strong pace; running toward the certification finish line!

In terms of stability, we have improved the robustness of the integration to ensure it sets up correctly every time, even if an issue with one of your devices occurs. Besides the usual bugfixes and improvements, this release has some cool new features and additions:

Button entities
New button entities that allow you to perform an action on a device. For example, to identify a device or reset the filter state.
Valve entities
Support for water valves, allowing you to control the flow of fluids or gases.
Support for operation states
Control and monitor the operation state of, for example, dishwashers and other household equipment.
Support for smoke and CO sensors
Monitor the air quality in your home with smoke and CO sensors.
Add support for Matter 1.3 power/energy sensors
Especially the energy sensors are great to use with the energy dashboard.

Other noteworthy changes

There are many more improvements in this release; here are some of the other noteworthy changes this release:

In June, we added support for adding Model IDs to devices. This release has lots of integrations that add them, including Matter, Plugwise, Wallbox, and Govee. We are calling for contributions to add model IDs to more integrations! Maybe a cool suggestion for an Hacktoberfest contribution!
@bmesuere improved the accessibility of all graphs by adjusting all the default colors used in those graphs! You are a hero!
When you unignore an integration or device on the integrations page, Home Assistant will instantly try to rediscover it again! Nice! Thanks, @emontnemery!
We now have a new unit of measurement for energy entities: calories. Useful, for devices like a treadmill or an exercise bike. Thanks, @dudanov!
@TrevorSchirmer did something similar, and added a new unit of speed: mm/s and in/s. Thank you!
When you rename a device, you will now see more details about the rename operation. Including a preview of the new entity IDs. Nice, @karwosts!
@gjohansson-ST added a new template function merge_response that allows you to merge multiple responses of a single action or multiple actions into a single response. Nice!
Trigger-based templates now have support for adding conditions! Just like automations, you can now add conditions to these entities to control when they are rendered. Thanks, @chammp!
More template fun! You can now set up your templated alarm control panel straight from the UI. Thanks, @gjohansson-ST!
The statistics developer tools have been improved. They now have the new-style data tables and the ability to bulk select items to action. Awesome @karwosts!
There is a new entity in town, the assist satellite entity. It is a building block for remote satellites devices that use Assist. This is in preparation for our upcoming satellite hardware. Stay tuned!

The source of a repair

IntegrationsIntegrations connect and integrate Home Assistant with your devices, services, and more. [Learn more] can raise issues in your repairs dashboard, they can raise issues for themselves, but also for other integrations. An example of such an issue is an integration that connects to your device that raises an issue on an automationAutomations in Home Assistant allow you to automatically respond to things that happen in and around your home. [Learn more] that controls it.

The result is an automation issue in your repair center. This is cool, but you might want to know which integration raised the issue in the first place.

Thanks to @wendevlin, we now show the source integration of the repair issue in the issue dialog.

YAML-editor improvements

@naps62 has been busy improving the YAML editor found in the Home Assistant user interface.

We now have a vertical line based on indentation, which makes it easier to see the indentation of your YAML configuration and allows you to spot and prevent indentation errors.

But he didn’t stop there. You can now collapse and expand sections of your YAML configuration based on the indentation level; which is also demonstrated in the screenshot above.

Nice work @naps62!

Patch releases

We will also release patch releases for Home Assistant 2024.10 in October. These patch releases only contain bug fixes. Our goal is to release a patch release every Friday.

2024.10.1 - October 4

Fix device id support for alarm control panel template (@piitaya - #127340)
Bump pysmlight 0.1.2 (@tl-sl - #127376)
Remove assumption in ConfigEntryItems about unique unique_id (@emontnemery - #127399)
Add missing number platform to init of Tesla Fleet (@Bre77 - #127406)
Bump aiomealie to 0.9.3 (@andrew-codechimp - #127454)
Fix int value in unique_id for Tellduslive (@robinostlund - #127526)
Bump matrix-nio to 0.25.2 (@PaarthShah - #127535)
Adjust polling rate of Rituals Perfume Genie (@frenck - #127544)
Create new clientsession for NYT Games (@joostlek - #127547)
Strip the NYT Games token (@joostlek - #127548)
Revert “Bump pychromecast to 14.0.2 (#127333)” (@joostlek - #127555)

2024.10.2 - October 11

Fix Island status in Teslemetry (@Bre77 - #127504)
Bump pyblu to 1.0.3 (@LouisChrist - #127571)
Bump aiostreammagic to 2.5.0 (@noahhusby - #127595)
Bump opower to 0.8.2 (@tronikos - #127598)
Fix wake up in Tesla Fleet (@Bre77 - #127615)
Update Radarr config flow to standardize ports (@Khabi - #127620)
Bump fyta_cli to 0.6.7 (@dontinelli - #127650)
Revert “Fix enum lookup (#125220)” (@cdce8p - #127680)
Fix problems with automatic management of Schlage locks (@dknowles2 - #127689)
Fix typo in HDMI CEC (@joostlek - #127714)
Fix Withings log message (@joostlek - #127716)
Bump NYT Games to 0.4.3 (@joostlek - #127717)
Bump airgradient to 0.9.1 (@joostlek - #127718)
Add translation string for Withings wrong account (@joostlek - #127719)
Increase connection timeout in CalDAV (@mib1185 - #127727)
Migrate SMA unique id to str (@rklomp - #127732)
Remove stale references in squeezebox services.yaml (@rajlaud - #127739)
Fix Aurora integration casts longitude and latitude to integer (@johangus65 - #127740)
Bump python-linkplay to 0.0.15 (@silamon - #127748)
Fix custom account config flow setup (@rjmarques - #127750)
Bump solarlog_cli to 0.3.1 (@dontinelli - #127753)
Update DoorBirdPy to 3.0.3 (@frenck - #126949)
Bump DoorBirdPy to 3.0.4 (@bdraco - #127760)
Bump pychromecast to 14.0.3 (@emontnemery - #127778)
Fix aurora alert sensor always Off (@johangus65 - #127780)
Update aioairzone-cloud to v0.6.6 (@Noltari - #127789)
Bump pysmlight to v0.1.3 (@tl-sl - #127804)
Fix incorrect string in amberlectric (@epenet - #127807)
Add missing and fix incorrect translation string in alarmdecoder (@epenet - #127814)
Fix incorrect translation string in analytics_insights (@epenet - #127815)
Add missing and fix incorrect translation string in aurora (@epenet - #127818)
Fix incorrect translation string in azure event hub (@epenet - #127820)
Correct cleanup of sensor statistics repairs (@emontnemery - #127826)
Add missing translation string in blebox (@epenet - #127827)
Fix incorrect translation string in bryant_evolution (@epenet - #127830)
Add missing and fix incorrect translation string in duotecno (@epenet - #127834)
Reverse unintended change of unique_id for solarlog (@dontinelli - #127845)
Bump pytouchlinesl to 0.1.8 (@jnsgruk - #127859)
Fix wrong DPTypes returned by Tuya’s cloud (@azerty9971 - #127860)
Add missing translation string in AVM Fritz!Smarthome (@mib1185 - #127864)
Fix merge_response template not mutate original object (@gjohansson-ST - #127865)
Don’t error with missing information in systemmonitor diagnostics (@gjohansson-ST - #127868)
Bump holidays library to 0.58 (@gjohansson-ST - #127876)
Bump pyeconet to 0.1.23 (@dcmeglio - #127896)
Add missing translation string in otbr (@epenet - #127909)
Add missing translation string in yamaha_musiccast (@epenet - #127912)
Add support of due date calculation for grey dailies in Habitica integration (@tr4nt0r - #127923)
Bump imgw_pib library to version 1.0.6 (@bieniu - #127925)
Bump python-kasa to 0.7.5 (@sdb9696 - #127934)
Fix discovery of WMS WebControl pro by using IP address (@mback2k - #127939)
Update pywmspro to 0.2.1 to fix handling of unknown products (@mback2k - #127942)
Fix europe authentication in Fujitsu FGLair (@crevetor - #127947)
Bump motionblindsble to 0.1.2 (@LennP - #127954)
Fix zwave_js config validation for values (@raman325 - #127972)
Fix firmware version parsing in venstar (@epenet - #127974)
Bump pyduotecno to 2024.10.0 (@Cereal2nd - #127979)
Increase tplink climate precision (@rytilahti - #127996)
Add missing translation string in solarlog (@dontinelli - #128015)
Fix missing reauth name translation placeholder in ring integration (@sdb9696 - #128048)
Add missing translation string for re-auth flows (@mib1185 - #128055)
Update xknxproject to 3.8.1 (@farmio - #128057)
Fix casing on Powerview Gen3 zeroconf discovery (@kingy444 - #128076)
Fix ring realtime events (@sdb9696 - #128083)
Increase Hydrawise polling interval to 60 seconds (@dknowles2 - #128090)
Update frontend to 20241002.3 (@bramkragten - #128106)
Bump aioautomower to 2024.10.0 (@Thomas55555 - #128137)
Fix license script for ftfy (@cdce8p - #128138)
Fix regression in Opower that was introduced in 2024.10.0 (@tronikos - #128141)
Bump opower to 0.8.3 (@tronikos - #128144)
Remove some redundant code in Opower’s coordinator from the fix in #128141 (@tronikos - #128150)
Fix preset handling issue in ViCare (@CFenner - #128167)
Fix model in Husqvarna Automower (@Thomas55555 - #128168)

2024.10.3 - October 18

Update home-assistant-bluetooth to 1.13.0 (@cdce8p - #127691)
Fix printer uptime fluctuations in IPP (@mib1185 - #127725)
Improve discovery of WMS WebControl pro by updating IP address (@mback2k - #128007)
Use the same ZHA database path during startup and when loading device triggers (@puddly - #128130)
Fix playing media via roku (@ctalkington - #128133)
Bump yt-dlp to 2024.10.07 (@joostlek - #128182)
Fix daikin entities not refreshing quickly (@adampetrovic - #128230)
Keep the provided name when creating a tag (@silamon - #128240)
Update aioairzone to v0.9.4 (@Noltari - #127792)
Update aioairzone to v0.9.5 (@Noltari - #128265)
Bump gcal_sync to 6.1.6 (@allenporter - #128270)
Bump solarlog_cli to 0.3.2 (@dontinelli - #128293)
Bump pyblu to 1.0.4 (@LouisChrist - #128482)
Increase Z-Wave fallback thermostat range to 0-50 C (@MindFreeze - #128543)
Bump pyotgw to 2.2.2 (@mvn23 - #128594)

2024.10.4 - October 25

Fix evohome regression preventing helpful messages when setup fails (@zxdavb - #126441)
Handle temprorary hold in Honeywell (@mkmer - #128460)
Bump ring-doorbell to 0.9.7 (@sdb9696 - #127554)
Bump ring-doorbell library to 0.9.8 (@sdb9696 - #128662)
Add diagnostics to Comelit SimpleHome (@chemelli74 - #128794)
Bump pyTibber to 0.30.3 (@Danielhiversen - #128860)
Add diagnostics to Vodafone Station (@chemelli74 - #128923)
Bump pyduotecno to 2024.10.1 (@cereal2nd - #128968)
Fix uptime floating values for Vodafone Station (@chemelli74 - #128974)
Fix cancellation leaking upward from the timeout util (@bdraco - #129003)
Fix devolo_home_network devices not reporting a MAC address (@Shutgun - #129021)
Bump yt-dlp to 2024.10.22 (@joostlek - #129034)
Remove DHCP match from awair (@AlD - #129047)
Update frontend to 20241002.4 (@bramkragten - #129049)
Partially revert “LLM Tool parameters check (#123621)” (@tronikos - #129064)
Fix adding multiple devices simultaneously to devolo Home Network’s device tracker (@Shutgun - #129082)
Fix NYT Games connection max streak (@joostlek - #129149)
Bump nyt_games to 0.4.4 (@joostlek - #129152)

Need help? Join the community!

Home Assistant has a great community of users who are all more than willing to help each other out. So, join us!

Our very active Discord chat server is an excellent place to be at, and don’t forget to join our amazing forums.

Found a bug or issue? Please report it in our issue tracker, to get it fixed! Or, check our help page for guidance for more places you can go.

Backward-incompatible changes

We do our best to avoid making changes to existing functionality that might unexpectedly impact your Home Assistant installation. Unfortunately, sometimes, it is inevitable.

We always make sure to document these changes to make the transition as easy as possible for you. This release has the following backward-incompatible changes:

Climate

We are joining the Z-Wave Alliance Board

2024-09-24T00:00:01+00:00

Today there has been an important announcement, I (Paulus, founder of Home Assistant) will be taking a seat on the Z-Wave Alliance Board of Directors, representing Nabu Casa. This is a significant piece of recognition for the work we have put into our support of open standards, and the importance of open source projects in keeping standards successful and thriving.

Being part of this board allows us to play a bigger role in shaping Z-Wave’s future. As a Standards Development Organization (SDO) the Alliance is shaped by its members, and they brought us in for our connection to our community and expertise in open source. We will be giving a voice to Home Assistant users, open source development, and Open Home Foundation values.

A tenth of households with Home Assistant are using Z-Wave today, accounting for an estimated 1.7 million Z-Wave devices. We’ve seen a growing interest in Z-Wave in the Home Assistant community. This is why we have been driving forward the development of the open source Z-Wave JS stack, while also developing our own Z-Wave connectivity hardware.

As you might be well aware, we’re very keen on open standards and are continuing to put a lot of work into supporting Zigbee, Matter, Thread, and Z-Wave. These standards are important for a number of reasons that align with our Open Home mission.

These standards enable greater choice, giving our users access to decades of smart home devices to add to their homes. These standards are locally controlled and don’t rely on the cloud, meaning when devices are connected through Home Assistant they provide privacy out-of-the-box. Finally, there are a lot of these devices already in use in our homes, along with second-hand devices ready for a new home. Keeping a standard alive, keeps these devices alive and using what already exists is always the most sustainable option.

This is not the only example of our work being recognized by these standards organizations. Recently, the Thread Group selected Nabu Casa for an Innovation Enabler Award, which is only awarded to two companies a year, and recognizes the “creative potential of [our] ideas and the use of Thread technology”.

We believe in Z-Wave and we will continually push it to align with the Open Home, so it can bring better choice, privacy, and sustainability to the home. If you want to learn more about the Z-Wave Alliance Board, read the appointment announcement here.

Home Assistant is 11 years old!

2024-09-18T00:00:01+00:00

I’ve said it before, but Home Assistant would be nothing without its community. That’s why we decided this year to focus our anniversary celebration on acknowledging and thanking our amazing community. It’s fitting as 2024 was the year we added a dedicated community manager, Missy Quarry, who hosted this celebration of you in our 11th Anniversary live stream.

Missy co-hosted the stream with creator and Home Assistant community member Andrej Broz, better known as Bearded Tinker. Together they threw a barrage of questions at Frenck and myself - we didn’t see any of them ahead of time so our responses don’t get any more real than that. It was a lot of fun, and there was even a little announcement slipped in there, so please check it out.

We can’t thank our community enough for the past 11 years. You are the engine driving forward Home Assistant. You put in your spare time to test, fix, build, and share your ideas. You fund our work by subscribing to Home Assistant Cloud, which allows us to devote our full attention to you, and never have to answer to a bunch of investors. We couldn’t do it without you.

Live stream

We went over a lot in this live stream, so here are some highlights to help you,

(0:00) Compilation of thanks from our code owners
(0:02) Intro from Missy and Bearded Tinker
(0:05) What does community mean to you?
(0:13) Beta testing and how stable is a dot zero release?
(0:18) Keeping the community on course
(0:22) The Evolution of the Community
(0:31) Moving to date versioning
(0:37) Customizability of Home Assistant and HACS
(0:47) Changing names of things in Home Assistant
(0:55) How we began to focus more on UX and UI
(1:03) Moving the focus away from YAML, while keeping it in
(1:09) Smart home vs automated home
(1:16) The beginnings of beta
(1:21) Bringing in a community manager
(1:27) Discord changes
(1:30) What’s next for the community - Home Assistant Day announcement
(1:34) What do you want to see evolve in the community?
(1:41) How the community can support Home Assistant

There was a live Q&A after the live stream on our Discord using their new Stage function, but you had to be there to have enjoyed it, no catching up on that one.

Companion App for iOS 2024.9: Getting ready for iOS 18

2024-09-16T00:00:02+00:00

Bruno here once again to bring you a bunch of news on your favorite iOS App 😉. In this release, we are introducing some new features to complement the release of iOS 18, along with a new way to configure your Home Assistant Apple Watch app.

Dark and tinted app icons

Within the iOS update rolling out today, Apple has introduced home screen customization for app icons. This includes a new dark mode variant and a tinted option where the user can choose an accent color for the icon. Of course Home Assistant joined the party.

Dark and tinted variants are available for the main App Icon and some custom icons

Control Center

The new iOS also brings a new level of customization to Control Center, for which we are introducing five new controls: Assist, Toggle light, Run script, Activate scene, and Open page.

With these options, you can use Home Assistant capabilities even faster, from asking Assist a question to running a complete script flow.

These controls are also available to be used with the Action button on iPhone 15 Pro and 16 series. In the previous release blog, we discussed that this was a great way to access Assist, in a very similar way to how you trigger Siri with the power button. Well, this release speeds this up significantly by no longer using shortcuts. Just check out the difference.

Assist opening on iOS 18 control (right) compared to from shortcuts (left)

New Apple Watch configuration

For a long time, our Watch app was only able to display Home Assistant’s built-in iOS Actions. With this release, you will be able to display scripts, scenes, iOS Actions, and more to come in the future. After updating, open the iOS App and go to companion app settings to find a new Apple Watch configuration screen where you can choose which items to display, their order, and customize the look.

A really useful customization is the Require confirmation option, which will prompt you with a confirmation popup before running the item. This will be very helpful if you, like me, have bad aim and accidentally open your garage door instead of turning on your TV.

Other noteworthy changes

We’re introducing new sensors, including Apple Watch battery level and state, app version, and location permission category.
A new Scripts home screen widget.
We’re working on adding Assist to the Apple Watch, try it out today, but be aware it’s still in beta.
Several bug fixes are included in this version,
- Preventing widgets not working on iOS 15/16.
- Allowing Watch LTE to run actions while far away from your iPhone (requires location permissions being enabled).
- Fixing the black status bar when running older versions of Core.
- Addressing gauge and details lock screen widgets crashing.

Need help? Join the community!

Home Assistant has a great community of users who are all more than willing to help each other out. So, join us!

Our very active Discord chat server is an excellent place to be at, and don’t forget to join our amazing forums.

Found a bug or issue? Please report it in our issue tracker, to get it fixed! Or, check our help page for guidance for more places you can go.

2024.9: Sections go BIG

2024-09-04T00:00:00+00:00

Home Assistant 2024.9! 🎉

Many community members based in the northern hemisphere have taken advantage of the nicer weather to take a little time off. Home Assistant releases have continued to grow for some time, and this one might not be as gargantuan in size as previous releases, but it still packs some really cool features and announcements.

This release includes bigger sections, smarter energy monitoring, and a new LLM option. We’ve added five new integrations, along with one existing integration being added to the UI. On top of all that, we’ve announced a new Works with Home Assistant partner, and the culmination of a project to ensure our project is truly open source.

We hope you’ve been able to enjoy some time in, and away, from your smart home this month as well.

Enjoy the release!

Sections go BIG
Tracking your untracked energy
LLM agent options grow
Aqara joins Works with Home Assistant
Open source compliance
Integrations
Patch releases
Need help? Join the community!
Backward-incompatible changes
All changes

Sections go BIG

In the drive to give our users more customization and organization options for their dashboards, we’ve added some new options to our Sections view that really lets us take big advantage of resizable cards. These powerful customization features can affect the predictability of where cards or sections will go, especially when switching between desktop and mobile views, and we have found it works best with large cards. As always, the choice of how to use it is up to you.

Wider sections

Sections can be expanded to span multiple sections. Now you can, for example, have your security camera feed span two sections or have a massive three-section wide map.

Cards and sections will continue to follow the Z-Grid rules, which can lead to blank spaces if the new wider sections don’t fit on a specific part of the screen. If you don’t like those blank spaces between sections, you can choose a dense layout. A dense section layout option will attempt to follow the Z-Grid rules, but will fill blank spaces whenever possible. This can affect the order and predictability of your sections, but will maximize screen real estate.

When switching to smaller screens, these larger sections will revert to one section wide (if this causes issues for certain big cards, we would recommend using our device visibility settings).

Full span cards

Larger sections mean larger cards. Instead of just stretching out the layout of a card, there is also a new option on cards to have them always use the full width of the section.

Badges

Talking about dashboards, the newly styled badges we introduced in last release, are now more configurable.

Instead of using display mode, you can decide for yourself what element you want to show. This allows you, for example, to hide the icon of an badge and only show the state of the device you want to show in your badge.

Tracking your untracked energy

In April, we introduced a new energy graph for individual devices in our energy dashboard. This allows you to aggregate all your energy monitoring into one graph, giving you a quick way to see your house’s biggest energy-using devices. Big thanks to @karwosts, the original creator of this graph, who has now updated it.

We can’t all have energy tracking for every device, and if you have whole-home energy tracking (like a smart meter or something more DIY) the updated graph will calculate the difference and show your home’s untracked usage. So hop onto your energy dashboard and start to tackle your phantom energy load.

LLM agent options grow

When we added the ability to use Large Language Models (LLMs) in our Voice Assistant, it began with a limited number of conversation agents. These included the cloud-based OpenAI and Google AI integrations, along with the locally-run Ollama integration. All three can now control the devices in your home.

@Shulyaka has now added another cloud option with Anthropic - thanks again for giving us another option for experimenting with AI in Home Assistant. Setting it up can be a little different than other conversation agents, so take a look at the documentation.

We have updated our LLM leaderboard to include Anthropic. Both Claude 3 Haiku and Claude 3 Sonnet score very high on our benchmarks and now rank among the top. Based on the results of the benchmark, we have set the cheaper Claude 3 Haiku as the default model for the Anthropic integration.

@allenporter added the ability to configure the context window size of the Ollama integration. The default size was increased, making it perform 20% better!

Aqara joins Works with Home Assistant

We recently announced that four Aqara devices are joining our Works with Home Assistant program. What’s really exciting is that these are all Matter devices, and Aqara will be the first partner to use our “Works via Matter with Home Assistant” badge, giving some great options to use with Home Assistant’s amazing Matter integration.

What’s more, this will be the first partner to join since our recent update to the program, meaning device-by-device certification that we tested ourselves. This makes it really easy to see what will give you the best experience in Home Assistant.

Open source compliance

We have put a lot of work into making sure that Home Assistant is truly open source, from top to bottom. This means ensuring that every library our integrations rely on uses the compliant license. We’re now at more than 2,800 integrations, so as you can imagine, this was not a small task. Working with code owners and library developers, we have painstakingly checked that every library is now using an OSI-approved license.

This might seem like a small procedural thing, but it is critical to keep integrations and Home Assistant functional far into the future. If you’re not aware, libraries are what many device and service integrations rely on to function, by calling in additional protocol specific code that purposely sits outside of the Home Assistant project. If an individual or corporation can no longer maintain libraries, a proper open source license allows it to be picked up and continued by others.

Integrations

New integrations

We welcome the following new integrations in this release:

Anthropic Conversation, added by @Shulyaka
Use AI by Anthropic, like the Claude 3.5 Sonnet as a conversation agent in Home Assistant.
Nice G.O., added by @IceBotYT
Integrate with compatible garage door and gate openers from the Nice.
Fujitsu FGLair, added by @crevetor
Fujitsu HVAC devices that use the Ayla IoT platform (controlled with the FGLair app).
SMLIGHT, added by @tl-sl
Manage SMLIGHT SLZB-06 adaptors from Home Assistant.
Roth Touchline SL, added by @jnsgruk
A new integration for the Roth Touchline SL underfloor heating system.
Yale, added by @bdraco
The Yale Home brand now has its own integration and will no longer be using the August integration. If you use a Yale Home device with the August integration, you should migrate to the new Yale integration.

This release also has a new virtual integration. Virtual integrations are stubs that are handled by other (existing) integrations to help with discoverability. These ones are new:

ArtSound, provided by LinkPlay, added by @dukeofphilberg

Noteworthy improvements to existing integrations

The Mosquitto MQTT broker add-on can now be installed and started automatically when you setup MQTT. Great work @jbouwh!
@allenporter added event entities to the Nest integration.
@bdraco made it easier to add battery operated Shelly devices, you no longer have to manually set an outbound WebSocket configuration.
MotionBlinds now has a button for your favorite position. Thanks @starkillerOG.
@joostlek added the abilitiy to update your AirGradient devices from Home Assistant.
@CM000n added diagnostic binary sensors to the APsystems integration.
The Mastodon integration now shows information about your account, like how many followers you have. Thanks @andrew-codechimp!

Now available to set up from the UI

You can now add a number template helper from the UI Thanks @dougiteixeira!

Farewell to the following

The following integrationsIntegrations connect and integrate Home Assistant with your devices, services, and more. [Learn more] are also no longer available as of this release:

Asterisk Call Detail Records and Asterisk Voicemail. Previously deprecated and now removed. They have been using a deprecated mailbox feature that is no longer available.

Patch releases

We will also release patch releases for Home Assistant 2024.9 in September. These patch releases only contain bug fixes. Our goal is to release a patch every week (around Friday).

2024.9.1 - September 6

Fix BTHome validate triggers for device with multiple buttons (@thecode - #125183)
Improve play media support in LinkPlay (@silamon - #125205)
Revert #122676 Yamaha discovery (@joostlek - #125216)
Fix blocking call in yale_smart_alarm (@gjohansson-ST - #125255)
Don’t show input panel if default code provided in envisalink (@gjohansson-ST - #125256)
Increase AquaCell timeout and handle timeout exception properly (@Jordi1990 - #125263)
Bump aiorussound to 3.0.4 (@noahhusby - #125285)
Add follower to the PlayingMode enum (@silamon - #125294)
Don’t allow templating min, max, step in config entry template number (@emontnemery - #125342)
Fix for Hue sending effect None at turn_on command while no effect is active (@marcelveldt - #125377)
Lyric: fixed missed snake case conversions (@dalinicus - #125382)
Bump pysmlight to 0.0.14 (@tl-sl - #125387)
Bump pypck to 0.7.22 (@alengwenus - #125389)
Increase coordinator update_interval for fyta (@dontinelli - #125393)
Fix controlling AC temperature in airtouch5 (@danzel - #125394)
Bump sfrbox-api to 0.0.10 (@AlexT59 - #125405)
Improve handling of old firmware versions (@tl-sl - #125406)
Set min_power similar to max_power to support all inverters from apsystems (@mawoka-myblock - #124247)
Update frontend to 20240906.0 (@piitaya - #125409)
Bump pyatv to 0.15.1 (@postlund - #125412)

2024.9.2 - September 16

Fix Lyric climate Auto mode (@kristof-mattei - #123490)
Use default voice id as fallback in get_tts_audio (@sorgfresser - #123624)
Fix Schlage removed locks (@dknowles2 - #123627)
Fix mired range in blebox color temp mode lights (@swistakm - #124258)
Update diagnostics for BSBLan (@liudger - #124508)
Fix renault plug state (@tmenguy - #125421)
Bump yalexs to 8.6.4 (@bdraco - #125442)
Bump aiolifx and aiolifx-themes to support more than 82 zones (@Djelibeybi - #125487)
Fix yale_smart_alarm on missing key (@gjohansson-ST - #125508)
FIx Sonos announce regression issue (@PeteRager - #125515)
Update frontend to 20240909.1 (@piitaya - #125610)
Update tplink config to include aes keys (@sdb9696 - #125685)
Bump tplink python-kasa lib to 0.7.3 (@sdb9696 - #125686)
Fix incomfort invalid setpoint if override is reported as 0.0 (@jbouwh - #125694)
Bump to python-nest-sdm to 5.0.1 (@jonnynch - #125706)
Remove unused keys from the ZHA config schema (@puddly - #125710)
Bump sfrbox-api to 0.0.11 (@epenet - #125732)
Update knx-frontend to 2024.9.10.221729 (@farmio - #125734)
Bump russound to 0.2.0 (@akrabi - #125743)
Fix favorite position missing for Motion Blinds TDBU devices (@starkillerOG - #125750)
Add missing Zigbee/Thread firmware config flow translations (@puddly - #125782)
Bump lmcloud to 1.2.3 (@zweckj - #125801)
Bump ZHA to 0.0.33 (@puddly - #125914)
Bump motionblinds to 0.6.25 (@starkillerOG - #125957)
Bump govee light local to 1.5.2 (@Galorhallen - #125968)
Bump aiorussound to 3.0.5 (@noahhusby - #125975)
Abort zeroconf flow on connect error during discovery (@tl-sl - #125980)
Pin pyasn1 until fixed (@hunterjm - #125712)

2024.9.3 - September 24

Fix wall connector state in Teslemetry (@Bre77 - #124149)
Fix set brightness for Netatmo lights (@cgtobi - #126075)
Update Aseko to support new API (@milanmeu - #126133)
Fix qbittorrent error when torrent count is 0 (@DAcodedBEAT - #126146)
Prevent blocking event loop in ps4 (@jpbede - #126151)
Broaden scope of ConfigEntryNotReady in Mealie (@andrew-codechimp - #126208)
Fix tibber fails if power production is enabled but no power is produced (@nohn - #126209)
Bump pydaikin to 2.13.7 (@fredrike - #126219)
Fix Matter climate platform attributes when dedicated OnOff attribute is off (@marcelveldt - #126286)
Fix loading KNX UI entities with entity category set (@farmio - #126290)
Bump airgradient to 0.9.0 (@joostlek - #126319)
Fix next change (scheduler) sensors in AVM FRITZ!SmartHome (@mib1185 - #126363)
Bump python-holidays to 0.57 (@gjohansson-ST - #126367)
Fix surepetcare token update (@frei-style - #126385)
Fix due date calculation for future dailies in Habitica integration (@tr4nt0r - #126403)
Bump pydrawise to 2024.9.0 (@dknowles2 - #126431)
Add support for new JVC Projector auth method (@SteveEasley - #126453)
Fix blocking call in Bang & Olufsen API client initialization (@mj23000 - #126456)
Bump mozart_api to 3.4.1.8.8 (@mj23000 - #126334)

Need help? Join the community!

Home Assistant has a great community of users who are all more than willing to help each other out. So, join us!

Our very active Discord chat server is an excellent place to be at, and don’t forget to join our amazing forums.

Found a bug or issue? Please report it in our issue tracker, to get it fixed! Or, check our help page for guidance for more places you can go.

Backward-incompatible changes

We do our best to avoid making changes to existing functionality that might unexpectedly impact your Home Assistant installation. Unfortunately, sometimes, it is inevitable.

We always make sure to document these changes to make the transition as easy as possible for you. This release has the following backward-incompatible changes:

Recorder database upgrade notice

Aqara joins Works with Home Assistant

2024-09-03T00:00:01+00:00

We’re excited to announce that Aqara is bringing several of their devices to our Works with Home Assistant program. We know that Aqara is a brand that many in the community like to recommend for its solid options for Zigbee and Matter.

This will be the first partner to join since our recent update to the program, meaning it is the first to join certifying specific devices, making it much easier to see what will give you the best experience in Home Assistant. It will also be the first partner to use our “Works via Matter with Home Assistant” badge, giving some great options to use with Home Assistant’s industry-leading Matter support.

Matter materializes

Aqara has been an early adopter of Matter, and many of its new products support the standard, which is great for connecting to Home Assistant. Matter allows for local control by directly connecting devices to Home Assistant, keeping your smart home data in your home. Matter is a completely local IP-based protocol that leverages your existing Ethernet and Wi-Fi networks, but it can also use Thread, which many Aqara devices take advantage of. Thread devices can be directly connected to Home Assistant using a Connect ZBT-1, or can be connected to Home Assistant via an existing hub (Thread Border Router) you may already have from another smart home ecosystem, including the Aqara Hub M3.

One superpower of Matter compared to other standards is being able to control these devices with multiple different ecosystems simultaneously. For instance, an Aqara lock could be unlocked with a Home Assistant automation and then locked with a voice command directed to an Apple Homepod.

Devices joining the program

Aqara has had the following three devices Works with Home Assistant certified. All of which can be directly connected to Home Assistant without an account.

Motion and Light Sensor P2 - Matter over Thread battery-powered motion and lux sensor.
Door and Window Sensor P2 - Matter over Thread battery-powered cover sensor.
Smart Lock U200 - Matter over Thread battery-powered lock.

We’re also testing the yet-to-be-launched Smart Lock U300, which we hope to see added soon.

We have also certified a hub that makes it easy to connect an existing Aqara-based smart home to Home Assistant using Matter.

Hub M3 - It has many functions, but we have certified it as a Matter Bridge. This means you can use it to bridge your existing Aqara Zigbee devices to Matter. It can also act as a Thread Border Router for Home Assistant.

If you have some Aqara products that are not listed above, rest assured that they will continue to work as they always have. The program is a way to clearly indicate which devices provide the best experience with Home Assistant. We’ve ensured this by testing these devices’ compatibility ourselves. We also get assurances from the brand that they will provide responsive support and maintenance, while being a positive brand in the Home Assistant community.

Works with Home Assistant is now run by the non-profit Open Home Foundation, which means it is not a profit-making endeavor. It is about encouraging brands to go above and beyond in the Home Assistant community, and we’re excited to have Aqara join.

When shopping for devices to connect to your home, we recommend first looking at our Works with Home Assistant partner’s products. These products always prioritize long-term support and local control.

HACS 2.0 - The best way to share community-made projects just got better

2024-08-21T00:00:01+00:00

Art by Clelia Rella

TL;DR: HACS 2.0 is a big step forward, adding an easier install method, faster updates, a new UI, and proper Home Assistant update/repair notifications.

Home Assistant’s Community Store, HACS, has now hit v2.0, gaining some big improvements that continue to make it the best way to find, install, and update awesome community-made integrations and UI elements. This follows HACS being added as an Open Home Foundation collaboration partner, recognizing its important role in Home Assistant’s open ecosystem.

Just note, HACS is an advanced tool that can add custom code to your Home Assistant install, which can cause issues on your Home Assistant system. If you are a beginner or prioritize stability above all else, HACS might not be for you.

Want to skip the blog and just start playing with HACS 2.0? Just remember to proceed with caution and do not skip the backup step before you install.

HACS reaches v2.0

This is one of the biggest updates yet for HACS, but if you’re not sure what HACS is or why you might consider using it, check out our explainer below.

New frontend

HACS 2.0 main dashboard has taken cues from Home Assistant, and now closely matches the native look and functionality of the data tables you find on the entities or automation pages. This includes the options to filter, group, sort, and search.

Faster downloads

Previously, HACS 100% relied on GitHub to retrieve information, from file locations to the number of stars, so we needed to limit the API (as there are a lot of HACS users). To speed things up, we’ve created a remote dataset stored in Cloudflare R2 buckets, which are updated at regular intervals. Files are still downloaded from GitHub and their API is still contacted, but it will see drastically fewer calls, and the speed improvement is massive. Behind the scenes, this was a big piece of work, which has ongoing costs, and shows the kind of support the Open Home Foundation can provide to a community-driven project like HACS.

Update and repair

No more visiting the HACS page every day to check for updates. They’ll now appear in the same places system and add-on updates appear in the native Home Assistant format. Also, once they’re finished updating, they will give you suggested repairs (for instance, reloading the dashboards or rebooting Home Assistant).

Other improvements

We have also renamed things to help them make more sense, including changing “category” to “type”, and “Lovelace” to “dashboard” (Lovelace needs to make room for Grace). We’re also including Template management, which utilizes the new template type to enhance your Jinja templates.

Note

Breaking changes - There have been some breaking changes, such as removing the YAML configuration, no longer including the NetDaemon type, and moving beta selection to a switch entity. Many of the changes are more likely to affect those sharing their code via HACS, check the release notes for the full list.

What is HACS?

Home Assistant is built around choice, and HACS is the epitome of this, giving you access to hundreds of community-made integrations, cards, themes, and more. HACS isn’t actually a hack, as Home Assistant has always allowed you to add custom integrations and UI elements - HACS just adds a streamlined interface to find, install, and update these.

HACS stands for Home Assistant Community Store, and despite the name it doesn’t sell anything - it’s all free and open-source. HACS is there for people in the community who write custom code to address something they think is missing from Home Assistant. It allows them to easily share this code with the community unrestricted via submitting their GitHub repository to HACS. This means these are maintained by the community members that upload them, not HACS or Home Assistant. If you want to learn more about what you’re installing, or report issues, there is always a link to the original code.

Just to clear up the biggest misconception about HACS, it does not install add-ons. Home Assistant OS natively has its own built-in store for Home Assistant Add-ons. Add-ons run alongside Home Assistant, while HACS installs custom code that can run in Home Assistant (which has implications for system stability, more on that below).

Why use HACS?

More integrations - Not every device and service is supported by Home Assistant out-of-the-box, and HACS helps fill the gaps. There are hundreds of integrations on HACS, some are there because the authors didn’t have the time to meet Home Assistant’s requirements, while others are doing something not allowed by Home Assistant, like web scraping (which is sometimes the only way, but not a good idea). Just be aware that these decisions can come at the expense of stability.

Advanced integrations - Some HACS integrations are more complex and advanced versions of their Core counterparts, while other integrations combine multiple sensors to provide new data points. Some of these “integrations” even give Home Assistant advanced new features and settings. It also allows for rapid development as it allows updates outside the Home Assistant refresh cycle.

Cards and Themes - There are some amazing cards, UIs, and themes being built by community developers and designers - BTW if you’re one, our frontend team needs your help. HACS has made the installation and updating of these designs very simple and quick.

Scripts and Templates - This is the easiest way to share scripts and templates, while also adding the ability to push new improvements to users via updates.

A Brief History of HACS

HACS started in 2019 as my (Joakim Sørensen ) third attempt to build a community store. It started small and quickly became the de facto standard, with so many talented community creators submitting their projects. The Home Assistant team was supportive from day one, and even as HACS gained hundreds of thousands of downloads, we all agreed it should remain an optional addition to Home Assistant. Giving users the choice to add new features to Home Assistant at the cost of stability.

I joined Nabu Casa in 2020, partly due to the work I did on HACS, but I was hired to work on Home Assistant more generally, not to work on HACS. Incidentally, I’m not the only developer working at Nabu Casa who got their start on HACS: Paul Bottein on the frontend team built Mushroom Cards, and Marcel van der Veldt who currently supports Matter development built Music Assistant.

Over the years, I continued to work on HACS in my spare time, but there were always aspects of the original version that limited its ability to grow. Recently, the Open Home Foundation reached out to make HACS a collaboration partner, and provided development support. Numerous people were brought in to support, from across Nabu Casa and the community, leading to the large list of improvements you see today.

Just before we released this big update, it passed 5,000 stars on GitHub! It’s the projects on HACS that make it what it is today, and I’d like to sincerely thank everyone who continues to contribute their code onto the store.

How to install

Note

Proceed with caution - HACS is not for everyone. If you’re a Home Assistant beginner or are looking for the most stable experience in your smart home, HACS is probably not for you. These are community-made projects that do not receive the same rigorous reviews required of projects submitted to Home Assistant. There may be projects that don’t work or, even worse, break your system. Unlike add-ons that run separately and alongside Home Assistant, HACS projects run their code directly in Home Assistant, which increases the chances of crashing or harming your system. Before using HACS, always make a backup of your system and download that backup to another device.

HACS should work on any up-to-date version of Home Assistant, it even runs on core installations. It also requires a GitHub account. If you already have HACS 1.X installed, perform a backup, go into HACS and then click the update button for HACS (note: if you update, there is no downgrading).

If you’re a Home Assistant OS user here is the installation method (If you’re not using our OS, visit this page),

Make a backup of your system and download it to another device for safekeeping.
Install the addon: Using this link, add the HACS add-on repository, and install the add-on it links to,
Start the add-on (no need to “start on boot”, you should only need to run this once).
Navigate to the add-on’s “Log” and follow the instructions given there.
Once finished, reboot Home Assistant and navigate to the devices page. Add the integration HACS, and follow the instructions to link it with your GitHub account.

It’s installed, now what? Start downloading some custom integrations and UI elements. There are a lot of great community resources listing the best custom integrations, cards, themes, and more.

Conclusion

There are too many people to thank in this blog who have helped the development of HACS over the years. Thanks for submitting your projects, reporting issues, fixing code, and just using this funny little side project. Most important to this all, thanks to Home Assistant Cloud subscribers. They made this update possible, not only do they pay my salary, but they also fund the Open Home Foundation, whose support was critical.

Works with Home Assistant becomes part of the Open Home Foundation

2024-08-08T00:00:01+00:00

Art by Clelia Rella

After two successful years of Works with Home Assistant, we’re continuing our work to improve this program. With this in mind, the program will move to the non-profit organization that owns Home Assistant, the Open Home Foundation, which will ensure it is always aligned with the values of the Open Home.

Read on to see how we’re making several small but important changes to add more clarity to the program, and ultimately working to build a better, larger hardware ecosystem of smart home devices.

What is Works with Home Assistant

When you want to add something to your smart home the choices can be daunting; we want stable, supported devices that are built on standards that last. We understood how hard it could be to navigate all this and set up Works with Home Assistant in 2022, clearly indicating to users which brands provided the best smart home experiences and will continue to do so into the future. While also encouraging brands to step up their openness, compatibility, and long-term support.

This program has been quite successful and now includes seven companies, including Leviton, Third Reality, Ultraloq, Jasco, Heltun, HomeSeer, and HomeWizard. Our community regularly recommends the brands in this program, not only because they carry the “Works with” logo but because they just work. This seamless operation is because Nabu Casa tests devices and works with the brand to ensure their software meets our requirements to provide what we consider to be the best Home Assistant experience. They also guarantee when joining that they will address issues and maintain support with Home Assistant over time.

We have had lots of positive feedback from the brands in the program. First off, if you’re already doing things right, i.e. focusing on local control, supporting users, and keeping software compatible, it’s relatively easy to join. It is also significantly more affordable compared to other partner programs. We want to connect our users to good hardware and help reward the brands that make the right decisions: win-win.

Open Home Foundation steps in

This year we announced the Open Home Foundation, a non-profit organization that now owns and governs the Home Assistant project. It makes logical sense that Works with Home Assistant now sits alongside its parent organization, but there are other key benefits. Specifically, it is now clear that this program is not a commercial endeavor; it is solely here to encourage a better-supported hardware ecosystem for Home Assistant.

Nabu Casa, the commercial partner of the Open Home Foundation, previously successfully administered the program. By placing the program under the foundation, it provides another layer to ensure the program remains focused on its mission.

The update

While we’re making this shift from Nabu Casa to the Open Home Foundation, we’re also taking the opportunity to do some housekeeping, improving the program on several fronts.

From now on the program will be certifying individual devices instead of whole brands. Previously, an integration was approved for Works with Home Assistant, and all devices that could work with the integration could fall under the program. By making testing and certification device-specific, it becomes much clearer to users which devices they can purchase with confidence. We will soon start listing devices that have been certified specifically.

No brands have used the Cloud badge before, so no one is affected by its removal.

The cloud badge has been discontinued and this is due to our belief, and observation, that all cloud-based products are always doomed to stop working, some sooner than others. Considering the cases over the past year of cloud-based devices becoming useless after the cloud service they depended on was shut down, and the lengths needed to keep them somewhat functional, we no longer believe the Works with Home Assistant promise can be upheld by cloud-based devices.

Conclusion

We want to see Works with Home Assistant continue to grow, ultimately covering every smart home device category, allowing for a home completely made of products that will give the best experience. We’d recommend users to always consider these products first, and also encourage more brands to get in touch to join. Let’s build a more open hardware ecosystem together.

2024.8: Beautiful badges!

2024-08-07T00:00:00+00:00

Home Assistant 2024.8! 🎉

Warning! An awesome and huge release is coming your way this month!

11! new integrations and 7! integrations are now available via the UI; We have many noteworthy improvements to integrations and even more noteworthy improvements to Home Assistant itself. And that… is just the tip of the iceberg! 🗻

I’m most excited about the new badges for your dashboard. I mean, the old ones weren’t the prettiest, but these new ones are definitely gorgeous! Oh! And if you missed the last dashboard stream, I would highly recommend watching the recording of it, as it is very insightful!

This release also marks a significant milestone in the history of Home Assistant, as we are saying goodbye to service calls. Services have been around since day one, but we are now moving to actions, making things much easier to explain to people new to Home Assistant.

Enjoy the release! 🎉

../Frenck

Dashboards - Chapter 2
- New badges for your dashboard
- Optimized information density for the Sections view
Goodbye service calls, hello actions 👋
Sort data tables by created or last modified
Control Home Assistant using AI with Ollama
Integrations
Zigbee Home Automation (ZHA) updates
Matter updates
KNX can now be managed via the UI
Other noteworthy changes
Integrations and helpers set up via YAML, now visible in the UI!
Patch releases
Need help? Join the community!
Backward-incompatible changes
All changes

Dashboards - Chapter 2

As part of our roadmap, work has continued on making dashboard customization and organization easier and more intuitive.

Last week, we had the “Dashboards Chapter 2” live stream, talking about the current state of the dashboards, the progress we have made, the upcoming features, and improvements we are working on, but more importantly: The great insights in all our research and the design philosophy behind the dashboards. In case you missed it, you can watch the 1-hour recording on our YouTube channel or read the recap blog post.

As part of our continuous improvement, this month we have fully redesigned and revamped the badges for your dashboards!

New badges for your dashboard

We already wrote about it extensively in our Dashboard Chapter 2 blog post and this release introduces our redesigned badges!

This is a big revamp of the original badges that have been in Home Assistant since, well, forever. The new badges are designed to match the design of the Mushroom chip cards, and are meant to sit at the top of a dashboard view, providing a summary of the most important information that you need to know at a glance.

These new badges match the functionality of the previous design but are now even more feature-rich. Of course, they are fully configurable from the UI, allowing you to tweak them to your needs. You can specify whether the icon, name, and/or state will be visible, and you can configure the contents within each of them.

Everything can, of course, be dragged and dropped in the order you like 😎

Not just that, the new badges also come with visibility options, the same as we have introduced for cards in Home Assistant 2024.6. This means you can show or hide them based on who is viewing the dashboard, what screen size it is displayed within, whether an entity is in a certain state, and more.

The best news of all? The new badges work across both the new sections view and the old masonry view! 🎉 Heck!, we even have support for custom badges, like the custom template one released by the Mushroom project 🍄.

If you have existing old-style badges today, don’t worry! They will be automatically converted to the new badges when you upgrade to this release.

Optimized information density for the Sections view

For this release, we have also fine-tuned the design grid for our experimental Sections view.

The height of each row has been reduced, allowing more information to be displayed on the screen. Hours of pixel pushing have also reduced the gap between the Tile card contents and its features, resulting in a cleaner and more uniform appearance.

The 2024.7 release on the left and this 2024.8 release on the right.

If you have been experimenting with sections and have resized some of your cards, you may need to readjust the sizes to accommodate these changes.

Goodbye service calls, hello actions 👋

This release marks an important milestone in the evolution of Home Assistant: we are saying goodbye to service calls and hello to actions!

If you are a long-time user of Home Assistant reading this now: don’t be alarmed by this change, nothing breaks with this, and everything will continue to work just as it did before.

In the 2024.1 release, we unified the actions in the Home Assistant automationAutomations in Home Assistant allow you to automatically respond to things that happen in and around your home. [Learn more] & script editors. The goal of that change was to make our automation editor easier for newer users to understand by removing the “Service call” layer and terminology.

The above screenshot shows the UI that has been in use since the January release, and was very well received in general. However, the underlying terminology in our documentation and all other places in Home Assistant still used the “service call” terminology.

Additionally, the term “services” in Home Assistant is overloaded and ambiguous. It is used for both the services you can call in Home Assistant and services you might integrate with, like weather or music services. In the latter case, we are talking about integrating with a service provided by a program or website, which is referenced in our Settings page as Devices & services. 😵‍💫

To make things clearer, we are now changing the terminology around service calls in Home Assistant from “services” to “actions” everywhere.

Every occurrence in the documentation, the UI, the code, and everywhere else in Home Assistant, has been replaced with “action”. Unlike the previous services which were “called”, actions are “performed”.

Important

If you write automations in YAML, you will notice that the service key in your actions is now called action. For example:

- action: light.turn_on
  target:
    area: living_room

Existing UI-managed automations will be automatically converted the next time they are edited and saved. If you write automation in YAML, you can use either action or service, as this change is fully backward compatible, but we recommend using action from now on.

Sort data tables by created or last modified

You’ve added a new integration, a new device, or maybe just updated Home Assistant and wondering what new entities or devices you have available?

This release will help you with that. Home Assistant now tracks when entities and devices, and many other things were created or last modified. If these are shown in a table, it means you can now sort them by the date they were created or last modified; helping you find those recently added or modified items.

The created and modified columns are hidden by default, but you can make them visible by clicking the icon at the top right of the table. Sorting is always available, regardless of the columns’ visibility.

You might notice that most entities and devices do not have this created or modified data populated yet. Well this data has only started being recorded in this release, and cannot be applied retroactively, but going forward it should only get more useful.

Control Home Assistant using AI with Ollama

In the 2024.6 release, we introduced the ability to use the OpenAI and GoogleAI integrationsIntegrations connect and integrate Home Assistant with your devices, services, and more. [Learn more] to control your home using Large Language Models (LLMs). Many of you requested this to work with a local hosted LLM as well.

Today we are happy to announce that Home Assistant now supports control via local LLMs too!

This is achieved thanks to @Shulyaka adding support for the brand new tools API in Ollama. The performance of the local models has been fine tuned by @AllenPorter.

Allen created a new LLM benchmark suite that is more balanced, less focused on edge cases, and uses fewer exposed entities. We scored the different models with this new benchmark, and the cloud-based models scored 98%, but local LLMs did not do nearly as well.

Through prompt tuning and fixes included in this release, we have gotten local LLMs to score a reasonable 84%. We will continue to test new models while improving our prompts and tools to achieve a higher score.

Overview of performance of Ollama running different local models ran against the LLM benchmark suite.

If you want to experiment with local LLMs using Home Assistant, we currently recommend using the Llama 3.1 8B model and exposing fewer than 25 entities. Note that smaller models are more likely to make mistakes.

Integrations

New integrations

We welcome the following new integrations in this release:

Autarco, added by @klaasnicolaas
Monitor the performance of your Autarco connected solar panels, inverters, and batteries.
Bryant Evolution, added by @danielsmyers
Control your Bryant Evolution HVAC system.
Dio Chacon, added by @cnico
Connect your Dio Chacon devices via RF 433 Mhz or Wi-Fi.
ElevenLabs, added by @sorgfresser
ElevenLabs text-to-speech service, provides natural sounding voices.
iotty, added by @pburgio
Control your iotty Smart Home light switch, gate, smart cover, and outlet devices.
IronOS, added by @tr4nt0r
Integrate your IronOS-powered soldering iron with Home Assistant over Bluetooth.
Israel Rail, added by @shaiu
Get real-time departure information from the Israel railways.
LinkPlay, added by @dukeofphilberg
Control various media players based on the LinkPlay protocol.
madVR Envy, added by @iloveicedgreentea
Control your madVR Envy video processor for your home theater.
Simplefin, added by @jeeftor
SimpleFIN is a financial data provider that offers a simple and easy-to-use API for retrieving financial data.
Tesla Fleet, added by @Bre77
Through the Tesla Fleet API, you can connect and monitor various sensors from Tesla vehicles, PowerWall, Solar panels, or Wall connectors.

This release also has new virtual integrations. Virtual integrations are stubs that are handled by other (existing) integrations to help with findability. These ones are new:

Mercury NZ Limited, provided by Opower, added by @SplicedNZ
MINI Connected, provided by BMW Connected Drive, added by @rikroe
Pinecil, provided by ironOS, added by @tr4nt0r

Noteworthy improvements to existing integrations

The HomeKit Bridge integration now supports the event entities representing doorbells and motion sensors. Big thanks @bdraco!
To use the above HomeKit feature, @bdraco added support for event entities to the UniFi Protect, Doorbird, and August integrations. Awesome!
Talking about event entities, @mib1185 added event entities to the Feedreader integration. So you can now easily automate when a new article shows up in one of the news feeds you follow. Great!
The OpenAI conversation integration now defaults to the, much cheaper, gpt-4o-mini model. Thanks @allenporter!
The WLED integration now supports CCT LED strips, thanks to @Suxsem!
Tessie received lots of attention from @Bre77 this release, adding tons of new entities and features to the integration. Great job!
@joostlek and @andrew-codechimp have been extending the Mealie integration with a lot of new actions and features. Most notably, the ability to import recipes, set meal plans, and view shopping lists. Thanks!
You can now control your Reolink chime with the Reolink integration, thanks to @starkillerOG!
The Roborock integration now supports the Roborock Zeo washer/dryer. Cool @Lash-L!
@tr4nt0r migrated the Habitica Dailies and to-do’s to support our to-do entities. Nice!
Thanks to @tanchu, the Xiaomi Miio integration now supports Xiaomi air purifiers and humidifiers. Great!
@bieniu extended the Shelly integration to support Shelly virtual components. These virtual components can be used to add Home Assistant entities to your Shelly device, such as the Shelly WallDisplay dashboard, or pass Home Assistant sensor data to Shelly scripts. Nice!

Integrations reaching platinum quality level

The following integrationsIntegrations connect and integrate Home Assistant with your devices, services, and more. [Learn more] have reached the platinum 🏆 level on our integration quality scale. These integrations are the best of the best and give you an excellent out-of-the-box experience.

BMW Connected Drive, done by @rikroe
TechnoVE, done by @Moustachauve
Tessie, done by @Bre77

Congratulations to all the developers who worked on these integrations!

Now available to set up from the UI

The following integrations are now available via the Home Assistant UI:

Bluesound, done by @LouisChrist
Genius Hub, done by @GeoffAtHome
History stats, done by @gjohansson-ST
Mastodon, done by @andrew-codechimp
Russound RIO, done by @noahhusby
Wake on LAN, done by @gjohansson-ST
Worldclock, done by @gjohansson-ST

Farewell to the following

The following integrationsIntegrations connect and integrate Home Assistant with your devices, services, and more. [Learn more] are also no longer available as of this release:

UE Smart Radio has been removed; the service has been discontinued.

Zigbee Home Automation (ZHA) updates

The Zigbee Home Automation (ZHA) got a massive overhaul this release!

What this means for you? Well… basically: nothing! And this sounds odd, but that is a good thing!

The whole integration has been split into a separate codebase, making it easier to maintain and improve. This is a huge step forward for the integration, and took months of work to get done.

You will not notice anything different right now, but this change will make the integration easier to maintain and improve in the future, including allowing code contributors to contribute more easily.

Thanks for the dedication and the huge amounts of hard work on this integration @dmulcahey, @puddly, and @TheJulianJES! 🥰

Matter updates

There are a couple of updates for the Matter integration this release, while we are working hard to get the integration ready for official Matter certification.

The Matter integration can now provide update entities. If your Matter device has a firmware update available, Home Assistant will now be able to inform you about it and update the device for you. 🎉

This update feature is available for all Matter devices, where manufacturers provide firmware updates via the official Matter update channels. Not many manufacturers are involved in delivering these updates yet, but this is a great step forward, and we hope many manufacturers using Matter will follow this example.

Event entities provided by the Matter integration have been improved. They will now provide more event types, allowing you to react to things like single press or double press events with ease.

Additionally, @jvmahon contributed support for select entities to the Matter integration. This is used to select modes if your Matter device supports them, such as laundry, oven, or dishwasher modes.

These last two features, are amazing improvements to the Matter integration, but they are mainly a highlight. Many Matter device types have seen improvements, including more (configuration) entities and other improvements.

KNX can now be managed via the UI

The KNX integration introduces the ability to manage entities directly from the UI. 🎉

If you have an ETS project file, configuring your devices is now more intuitive; you can easily select an actuator from the side panel and drag and drop its assigned group addresses into the configuration. Alternatively, addresses can be found by name or number using dropdown menus.

Create, update, and delete KNX switch and light entities directly from the KNX panel without touching any YAML. 😎

More improvements have been made under the hood. One of the most notable changes is the support for a broader range of Data Point Type (DPT) definitions. These can be used directly within actions and triggers and inspected in the KNX GroupMonitor.

Thank you for working so hard on this one @farmio; this is awesome! 🥰

Other noteworthy changes

There are many more improvements in this release; here are some of the other noteworthy changes this release:

We are proud of our Open Home Foundation, so we will now show its pretty logo on the Home Assistant loading and information screens. Thanks @balloob!
Timer support using Assist for mobile devices. This means you can now control timers from your mobile device or tablet. Thanks @balloob!
You can now ask Assist for the current time and date, thanks @synesthesiam!
@synesthesiam also switched our voice activity detection to microVAD! Using this we are able to detect the end of a speech command much better in noisy environments, even with music in the background. Cool!
The picture elements card can now be fully managed in the UI using a brand-new visual editor. Fantastic work there @karwosts!
Home Assistant will now raise a repair issue if a script can’t be set up (for example, because of YAML syntax errors). Thanks @emontnemery!
If Home Assistant finds an integration set up that has been removed (like when you remove a custom integration), it will now raise a repair issue to help you clean up anything left behind. Thanks @joostlek!
Group now has support for grouping two new entity types. @joostlek added support for grouping notify entities, and @frenck added support for grouping button entities. Nice!
The Generic Thermostat and Hygrostat helpers will now be linked to the device that provided the actuator entity, thanks @dougiteixeira!
@gjohansson-ST did the same, he added a link to the History stats helper to the device that provided the sensor entity.
You can now set up button, image, select, and switch templates entities, straight from the UI. Awesome job @dougiteixeira!
@karwosts added a button to the actions developer tools to copy the action response as JSON for use in templates. Nice!
The picture, picture elements, picture entity, and picture glance cards can now get their image from the person entity! You don’t need to set a static image to represent a person, it will now automatically fetch the person’s picture for you. Thanks @Quentame!

Integrations and helpers set up via YAML, now visible in the UI!

Most popular integrationsIntegrations connect and integrate Home Assistant with your devices, services, and more. [Learn more] and helpers can be set up directly from the Home Assistant user interface. However, we still have a lot of older or less used integrations that can only be set up using manual YAML configuration. We are working hard to move more and more of these integrations to the UI, however, this takes time and effort.

The problem with these integrations is that they are not visible in the UI when they are set up using YAML. What we often see is that someone sets up an integration using YAML and then cannot see it on the integrations page, often resulting in questions in our community about where to find it.

As of this release, we have drastically improved this situation. All integrations, regardless of how they are set up, are now visible on the integrations page in the UI. This means that even if you set up an integration using YAML, you can now find it in the UI and view its provided entities.

Integrations originating from manual YAML configuration can be recognized by the icon showing on their cards.

Similarly, we also have many helpers that can be set up using YAML configuration. These sometimes showed up in the UI, but often did not. We have adjusted this as well, and made sure that all helpers are now visible in the UI, regardless of how they are set up.

Note

Things set up manually using YAML are still managed using YAML. This means that if you want to change the configuration of these integrations or helpers, you will need to do so in the YAML configuration files.

Patch releases

We will also release patch releases for Home Assistant 2024.8 in August. These patch releases only contain bug fixes. Our goal is to release a patch every week (around Friday).

2024.8.1 - August 10

Add support for v3 Coinbase API (@TomBrien - #116345)
Bump OpenWeatherMap to 0.1.1 (@freekode - #120178)
Fix limit and order property for transmission integration (@fustom - #123305)
Fix doorbird with externally added events (@bdraco - #123313)
Bump aiorussound to 2.2.2 (@noahhusby - #123319)
Revert “Fix blocking I/O while validating config schema” (@emontnemery - #123377)
Ensure legacy event foreign key is removed from the states table when a previous rebuild failed (@bdraco - #123388)
Bump aiohttp to 3.10.2 (@bdraco - #123394)
Also migrate dsmr entries for devices with correct serial (@dupondje - #123407)
Add missing logger to Tessie (@Bre77 - #123413)
Bump YoLink API to 0.4.7 (@matrixd2 - #123441)
Support action YAML syntax in old-style notify groups (@frenck - #123457)
Bump ZHA library to 0.0.29 (@puddly - #123464)
Bump pyjvcprojector to 1.0.12 to fix blocking call (@SteveEasley - #123473)
Bump monzopy to 1.3.2 (@JakeMartin-ICL - #123480)
Fix startup blocked by bluesound integration (@LouisChrist - #123483)
Update frontend to 20240809.0 (@frenck - #123485)
Bump zha lib to 0.0.30 (@dmulcahey - #123499)
Bumb python-homewizard-energy to 6.2.0 (@DCSBL - #123514)
Fix cleanup of old orphan device entries in AVM Fritz!Tools (@mib1185 - #123516)
Bump pydaikin to 2.13.2 (@mattyway - #123519)
Bump AirGradient to 0.8.0 (@joostlek - #123527)
Upgrade chacon_dio_api to version 1.2.0 (@cnico - #123528)

2024.8.2 - August 16

Avoid Exception on Glances missing key (@wittypluck - #114628)
Fix Madvr sensor values on startup (@iloveicedgreentea - #122479)
Drop violating rows before adding foreign constraints in DB schema 44 migration (@emontnemery - #123454)
Handle Yamaha ValueError (@pssc - #123547)
Bump aiohttp to 3.10.3 (@bdraco - #123549)
Update knx-frontend to 2024.8.9.225351 (@farmio - #123557)
Fix secondary russound controller discovery failure (@noahhusby - #123590)
Change WoL to be secondary on device info (@gjohansson-ST - #123591)
Ensure HomeKit connection is kept alive for devices that timeout too quickly (@bdraco - #123601)
Bump aioshelly to version 11.2.0 (@bieniu - #123602)
Bump pydaikin to 2.13.4 (@kingy444 - #123623)
System Bridge package updates (@timmo001 - #123657)
Bump aiohomekit to 3.2.2 (@bdraco - #123669)
Fix startup block from Swiss public transport (@miaucl - #123704)
Bump pyschlage to 2024.8.0 (@dknowles2 - #123714)
Update AEMET-OpenData to v0.5.4 (@Noltari - #123716)
Update aioairzone-cloud to v0.6.2 (@Noltari - #123719)
Update aioqsw to v0.4.1 (@Noltari - #123721)
Bump ZHA lib to 0.0.31 (@dmulcahey - #123743)
Update wled to 0.20.2 (@frenck - #123746)
Fix error message in html5 (@mib1185 - #123749)
Bump py-nextbusnext to 2.0.4 (@ViViDboarder - #123750)
Bump python-nest-sdm to 4.0.6 (@allenporter - #123762)
Update xknx to 3.1.0 and fix climate read only mode (@farmio - #123776)
Fix KNX UI Light color temperature DPT (@farmio - #123778)
Fix status update loop in bluesound integration (@LouisChrist - #123790)
Bump py-synologydsm-api to 2.4.5 (@mib1185 - #123815)
Fix blocking I/O of SSLContext.load_default_certs in Ecovacs (@edenhaus - #123856)
Fix translation for integration not found repair issue (@mib1185 - #123868)
Handle timeouts on Airzone DHCP config flow (@Noltari - #123869)
Bump pylutron_caseta to 0.21.1 (@bdraco - #123924)
Fix PI-Hole update entity when no update available (@mib1185 - #123930)
Bump LaCrosse View to 1.0.2, fixes blocking call (@IceBotYT - #123935)
Bump pypck to 0.7.20 (@alengwenus - #123948)
Environment Canada weather format fix (@gwww - #123960)
Bump pyhomeworks to 1.1.1 (@emontnemery - #123981)
Ensure event entities are allowed for linked homekit config via YAML (@bdraco - #123994)
Bump openwebifpy to 4.2.7 (@autinerd - #123995)
Re-enable concord232 (@joostlek - #124000)
Bump aiounifi to v80 (@Kane610 - #124004)
Fix rear trunk logic in Tessie (@Bre77 - #124011)
Bump bluetooth-adapters to 0.19.4 (@bdraco - #124018)
Fix loading KNX integration actions when not using YAML (@farmio - #124027)
Bump aiomealie to 0.8.1 (@joostlek - #124047)
Exclude aiohappyeyeballs from license check (@joostlek - #124041)

2024.8.3 - August 25

Skip NextBus update if integration is still loading (@drozycki - #123564)
Bump yalexs to 6.5.0 (@bdraco - #123739)
Bump yalexs to 8.0.2 (@bdraco - #123817)
Bump aioshelly to 11.2.4 (@bdraco - #124080)
Add Alt Core300s model to vesync integration (@cdnninja - #124091)
Bump pybravia to 0.3.4 (@Drafteed - #124113)
Bump aiohomekit to 3.2.3 (@bdraco - #124115)
Bump nest to 4.0.7 to increase subscriber deadline (@allenporter - #124131)
Bump tplink-omada-api to 1.4.2 (@MarkGodwin - #124136)
Bump aiohttp to 3.10.4 (@bdraco - #124137)
Update Matter light transition blocklist to include GE Cync Undercabinet Lights (@cjmaio - #124138)
Shelly RPC - do not stop BLE scanner if a sleeping device (@thecode - #124147)
Fix shelly available check when device is not initialized (@bdraco - #124182)
Bump pyhomeworks to 1.1.2 (@emontnemery - #124199)
Bump aiohttp to 3.10.5 (@bdraco - #124254)
Update xknx to 3.1.1 (@farmio - #124257)
Bump python-roborock to 2.6.0 (@allenporter - #124268)
Prevent KeyError when Matter device sends invalid value for StartUpOnOff (@marcelveldt - #124280)
Don’t abort airgradient user flow if flow in progress (@joostlek - #124300)
Bump yalexs to 8.1.2 (@bdraco - #124303)
Bump python-holidays to 0.54 (@gjohansson-ST - #124170)
Bump python-holidays to 0.55 (@gjohansson-ST - #124314)
Add missing strings for riemann options flow (@karwosts - #124317)
Fix Spotify Media Browsing fails for new config entries (@PeteRager - #124368)
update ttn_client - fix crash with SenseCAP devices (@angelnu - #124370)
Add supported features for iZone (@Swamp-Ig - #124416)
Bump yalexs to 8.1.4 (@bdraco - #124425)
Bump aiohue to version 4.7.3 (@idekker - #124436)
Don’t raise WLED user flow unique_id check (@joostlek - #124481)
Bump yalexs to 8.3.3 (@bdraco - #124492)
Bump yalexs to 8.4.0 (@bdraco - #124520)
Bump yalexs to 8.4.1 (@bdraco - #124553)
Fix missing id in Habitica completed todos API response (@tr4nt0r - #124565)
Only support remote activity on Alexa if feature is set and at least one feature is in the activity_list (@jbouwh - #124567)
Revert “Exclude aiohappyeyeballs from license check” (@bdraco - #124116)

Need help? Join the community!

Home Assistant has a great community of users who are all more than willing to help each other out. So, join us!

Our very active Discord chat server is an excellent place to be at, and don’t forget to join our amazing forums.

Found a bug or issue? Please report it in our issue tracker, to get it fixed! Or, check our help page for guidance for more places you can go.

Backward-incompatible changes

We do our best to avoid making changes to existing functionality that might unexpectedly impact your Home Assistant installation. Unfortunately, sometimes, it is inevitable.

We always make sure to document these changes to make the transition as easy as possible for you. This release has the following backward-incompatible changes:

Recorder database upgrade notice

Home Assistant

The era of open voice assistants has arrived

Table of contents

Introducing Home Assistant Voice Preview Edition

Why Preview Edition

Built for Home Assistant

Advanced audio processing

Bringing choice to voice

Fully open and customizable

Community-driven

Conclusion

See what voice can do today

Voice Chapter 8 - Assist in the home today

Table of Contents

Assist in the home today

Origins of Assist

Commands

Timers

Exposing devices and Aliases

Room context

Wake words

Speech Processing

Language support

Text-to-speech

Speech-to-text

AI and Assist

Conclusion

Home Assistant Voice Preview is available at retailers today,

Understanding Our Community: The 2024 Home Assistant Survey

What we’re hoping to learn

Your data

How you can help

Fill out the Survey here

2024.12: Scene you in 2025! 🎄

Improved scene editor experience

Voice

Let your voice assistant fall back to an LLM-based agent

Language leaders are accelerating the pace

A faster voice experience

Revised Integration Quality Scale

Integrations

New integrations

Noteworthy improvements to existing integrations

Other noteworthy changes

Translations for units of measurement

We’ve upgraded to Python 3.13

Patch releases

2024.12.1 - December 6

2024.12.2 - December 10

2024.12.3 - December 13

2024.12.4 - December 17

Need help? Join the community!

Backward-incompatible changes

The month of 'What the Heck?!' 2024

Welcome to the month of “What the heck?!”: Third edition

Lowering the barrier for sharing WTH?! moments

What are we looking for?

Roadmap

Why December?

Start sharing your WTH!

FAQ

Home Assistant Yellow gets CM5 support in HAOS 14

Using Compute Modules

What CM5 could bring

Installing on CM5

CM4 is still great

Other additions to HAOS 14

Conclusion

Event wrap-up - GitHub Universe '24

Table of contents

Community comes together

We are number 1!

Open Source - ⭐️ of the show

Connecting with the community

Roadmap 2024 Year-end Update: Full steam ahead!

Home Assistant: “A Home-Approved Smart Home”

Automations

In good shape: Make automations easier to organize

Newly in progress: Make automations easier to create

Later priority: Make blueprints easier to use