Release Highlights: Although GeForce Game Ready Drivers and NVIDIA Studio Drivers can be installed on supported notebook GPUs, the original equipment manufacturer (OEM) provides certified drivers for your specific notebook on their website. NVIDIA recommends that you check with your notebook OEM for recommended software updates for your notebook.
Game Ready for DLSS 4.5
This new Game Ready Driver provides the best gaming experience for the latest new games and updates and resolves key issues which were found in the previous release.
Fixed Gaming Bugs
Arena Breakout: Infinite: Game stability issues [5748974]
Fixed General Bugs
Brightness adjustment issues on various displays [5739739]
Colors are not applied correctly when using Digital Vibrance [5718365]
Slight banding may be observed on gradients in SDR color mode [5720512]
Unable to deselect "Show Notification Tray Icon" from NVIDIA Control Panel [5622213]
Using RTX HDR in Vulkan games causes black screen on LG OLED TVs [5763163]
I hope you had a wonderful holiday, spending time with your loved ones. We’re kicking off 2026 with a smaller release, as our contributors and maintainers have been enjoying some well-deserved time off as well. But don’t worry, there’s still plenty of good stuff in this release!
Home Assistant 2026.1 brings a refreshed Home dashboard experience on mobile, with summary cards right at your fingertips without extra taps. We’ve also made it easier than ever to navigate to the protocol connecting your devices, such as Zigbee, Z-Wave, Thread and more.
For automation enthusiasts, we’re continuing our work on our even more “human-friendly” triggers, which can be enabled via Home Assistant Labs, so you can build automations using easy-to-understand language instead of technical state changes, like initiating automations if a button is pressed or someone arrives home.
On the integrations front, we welcome eight new integrations to the family, including pet tracking with Fressnapf, energy monitoring with eGauge, and smart heating control with Watts Vision +. Plus, improvements to existing integrations from our amazing community contributors.
I wish you a happy and healthy 2026! Enjoy the release!
A huge thank you to all the contributors who made this release possible! And a special shout-out to @bramkragten, @piitaya, and @abmantis who helped write the release notes for this release. ❤️
Home dashboard improvements
The Home dashboard continues to evolve! In the previous release, we introduced a brand-new sidebar layout, weather tiles, and energy distribution summaries. This release takes it even further with a streamlined mobile experience and better device management.
Streamlined mobile navigation
On mobile devices, the Home dashboard now displays summary cards (like lights, climate, security, media players, weather, and energy) directly at the top of the view, followed by your favorites and areas. This replaces the previous tab-based navigation, giving you instant access to everything that matters without any extra taps.
The desktop experience remains unchanged, with summaries displayed in the sidebar under the For you heading.
New devices page
Ever wondered where your devices went after you removed them from an area? A new Devices page now appears on the Home dashboard, showing all devices that aren’t currently assigned to a specific area. This makes it easy to find and control those “orphaned” devices without hunting through the settings.
The new Devices page shows devices not assigned to any area.
Purpose-specific triggers and conditions progress
In the previous release, we introduced purpose-specific triggers and conditions. Instead of thinking in technical state changes, you can now simply pick things like “When a light turns on” or “If the climate is heating” when building your automations.
This feature is still being refined in Home Assistant Labs, but this release adds a lot more trigger types, making this new approach even more useful. Here is an overview of all the new triggers added in this release:
Button triggers fire when a button entity has been pressed.
Climate triggers now cover all common scenarios. You can trigger on HVAC mode changes, target temperature changes, or when the target temperature crosses a threshold. There are also triggers for current temperature and humidity changes, and even target humidity changes.
Device tracker triggers let you automate based on when a device entered or left home, with support for the first device arriving, last device leaving, or any change. Don’t worry, person-specific triggers are coming soon, the device tracker ones were simply available sooner.
Humidifier triggers will fire when a humidifier turns on or off, starts humidifying, or starts drying. You can also trigger on humidity changes or when humidity crosses a threshold.
Light triggers let you automate based on brightness changes or when brightness crosses a specific threshold.
Lock triggers can now fire when a lock is locked, unlocked, opened, or jammed.
Scene triggers fire when a scene is activated.
Siren triggers fire when sirens are turned on or off.
Update trigger fires when an update becomes available.
As the new purpose-specific triggers and conditions all support targeting something bigger than a simple entity (an area, a floor, or even a label), we also redesigned how the target gets displayed on the automation flow.
The goal of this change is to allow you to quickly glance at your automation, and understand its purpose.
Head over to Settings > System > Labs to enable purpose-specific triggers and conditions and give them a try!
Easier navigation to protocol dashboards
For an organization that loves the open standards that seamlessly connect our devices, we sure didn’t promote them enough! Most people didn’t even know that Home Assistant has dedicated dashboards for protocols like Zigbee, Z-Wave, and more.
This release reorganizes the Settings page to give these open protocols a more prominent spot. The protocols section now appears right after the core settings, making it much easier to find all the different ways you’re connecting your devices and quickly access some very useful protocol-specific configurations.
The menu items only appear when you have the corresponding integration set up, so you’ll only see what’s relevant to your setup.
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:
AirPatrol, added by @antondalgren
Control your air conditioning units through AirPatrol Wi-Fi devices directly from Home Assistant.
eGauge, added by @neggert
Integrate eGauge energy monitors for residential and commercial applications, commonly used with solar energy installations.
Fluss+, added by @Marcello17
Connect your Fluss+ Button to Home Assistant for quick and easy control of your smart home.
Fish Audio, added by @noambav
Use Fish Audio’s text-to-speech service to generate natural-sounding speech in Home Assistant.
Fressnapf Tracker, added by @eifinger
Track the location of your pets and monitor their activity using Fressnapf GPS Trackers.
HomeLink, added by @ryanjones-gentex
Integrate your HomeLink devices to trigger smart home routines from the comfort of your vehicle.
Watts Vision +, added by @theobld-ww
Control your Watts Vision + smart heating system, allowing remote control of individual home heating zones.
WebRTC, added by @balloob
An internal integration providing WebRTC functionality for camera streaming in Home Assistant.
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:
It is not just new integrationsIntegrations connect and integrate Home Assistant with your devices, services, and more. [Learn more] that have been added; existing ones are also being constantly improved. Here are some of the noteworthy changes to existing integrations:
The Matter integration gained three new diagnostic binary sensors for thermostat remote sensing status from @lboue, helping you keep an eye on your climate system.
@joostlek added lots of new sensors to the SmartThings integration, including air quality sensors for PM1, PM2.5, and PM10, hood filter usage tracking, fridge temperature sensors for One Door refrigerators, and fan speed control for range hoods.
Roborock owners with Q7 devices can now integrate them thanks to @Lash-L, who added basic read-only support with sensors for battery, status, and cleaning data.
@mib1185 improved the FRITZ!SmartHome integration by adding switch entities that let you enable or disable FRITZ! Smart Home routines (triggers) directly from Home Assistant.
The Ping integration now tracks packet loss, thanks to @mib1185. The new sensor shows packet loss as a percentage and is disabled by default.
@Shulyaka added support for GPT-5.2 and GPT-5.2-pro models to the OpenAI integration, including a new “xhigh” reasoning effort level.
The HomeWizard integration gained two new battery charge modes from @DCSBL: zero charge only and zero discharge only, giving you more control over your energy storage.
@Abestanis expanded the KNX UI configuration to support time, date, and datetime entities, while @farmio added sensor, scene, text, and fan entities, making it easier than ever to set up your KNX installation.
The Squeezebox integration now offers alarm monitoring, thanks to @wollew: you get binary sensors to track if an alarm is upcoming, active, or snoozed, plus a timestamp sensor showing when the next alarm is scheduled.
@andrew-codechimp added support for new meal plan types in Mealie 3.7, including dessert, drink, and snack plans, giving you more flexibility in your meal planning.
The Hikvision integration gained NVR support from @ptarjan, including extended event detection and automatic discovery of video channels.
@FredericMa added a set_time action to the Risco integration, allowing you to sync your local alarm panel’s clock and fix those pesky clock drift issues.
The Nederlandse Spoorwegen integration got a major overhaul from @heindrichpaul, splitting the monolithic sensor into over 15 individual sensors, one for each train route, making it much easier to track specific journeys.
@zweckj added a beautiful entity picture of your coffee machine to the La Marzocco integration’s main switch entity.
The Actron Air integration gained a new switch platform from @kclif9, exposing Away Mode, Continuous Fan, Quiet Mode, and Turbo Mode controls.
@Djelibeybi gave the Pooldose integration a massive upgrade: you now get water meter sensors for monitoring levels, number entities for configuring dosing targets, and select entities for controlling your pool’s operating mode.
The AirPatrol integration now lets you monitor temperature and humidity, thanks to new sensor entities added by @antondalgren.
@mettolen added sensor and number platforms to the Airobot integration, letting you monitor air quality data and control hysteresis band settings.
A huge thank you to all the contributors who improved these integrations, and to everyone else who contributed improvements that aren’t listed here. Your work makes Home Assistant better for everyone! ❤️
Integration quality scale achievements
One thing we are incredibly proud of in Home Assistant is our integration quality scale. This scale helps us and our contributors to ensure integrations are of high quality, maintainable, and provide the best possible user experience.
This release, we celebrate several integrationsIntegrations connect and integrate Home Assistant with your devices, services, and more. [Learn more] that have improved their quality scale:
This is a huge achievement for these integrations and their maintainers. The effort and dedication required to reach these quality levels is significant, as it involves extensive testing, documentation, error handling, and often complete rewrites of parts of the integration.
A big thank you to all the contributors involved! 👏
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:
There are many more improvements in this release; here are some of the other noteworthy changes:
If you monitor your home’s oil tank or other slow flow rates, you might appreciate the new gallons per day unit of volume flow rate added by @StaleLoafOfBread. This unit is particularly useful for tracking daily consumption rates of heating oil or similar resources.
Got a Matter speaker? @lboue added volume control support to the Matter integration, exposing a volume slider entity for Matter speakers using the LevelControl cluster.
The statistics graph card now includes a link to the history panel in its header, just like the history graph card already had. Selecting the link takes you directly to the history with the same entities and time range pre-selected, thanks to @joepio.
When using the state badge element in your picture elements card, you can now set a custom name option, giving you more flexibility in your dashboard designs, thanks to @ildar170975.
In 2025.11 we improved the logging efficiency by disabling the duplicated log file. This release adds a new configuration option to re-enable it if needed. If you are using the official Terminal & SSH add-on, make sure it is updated to 9.22.0 or higher to be able to use that option. The Advanced SSH & Web Terminal add-on has not been updated yet, but will be soon.
For integration developers: @bramkragten added a new choose selector, allowing users to select between different input types in the UI. You’ll start seeing this pop up in various places where flexible input is needed.
Energy dashboard date picker
In the previous release, the Energy dashboard received a big update with real-time power monitoring and downstream water tracking. However, some of you noticed that navigating between periods required scrolling back up, making it harder to compare data while looking at graphs further down the page.
This release fixes that! The date picker is now sticky at the bottom of the screen, so you can easily switch between days, weeks, or months without losing sight of the graph you’re viewing. This also makes it much easier to access on mobile devices.
ESPHome action responses
ESPHome 2025.12 introduced a powerful new feature called API action responses, enabling true bidirectional communication between your ESPHome devices and Home Assistant. With this release, Home Assistant now fully supports receiving these responses!
Previously, when calling an action on an ESPHome device, communication was one-way: you could send a command, but the device couldn’t send structured data back. Now, your ESPHome devices can return JSON data in response to actions, unlocking new possibilities like querying device configuration, reading sensor values on demand, or retrieving diagnostic information.
This is particularly useful for actions that answer questions rather than perform tasks. For example, you could create an action that returns your device’s current Wi-Fi signal strength, firmware version, or any custom sensor readings, all as structured data you can use in your automations.
We will also release patch releases for Home Assistant 2026.1 in January.
These patch releases only contain bug fixes. Our goal is to release a patch
release once a week, aiming for Friday.
2026.1.1 - January 12
Fix Hikvision NVR binary sensors not being detected (@ptarjan - #160254)
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, 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 on more places you can go.
Are you more into email? Sign up for the Open Home Foundation Newsletter to get the latest news about features, things happening in our community, and other projects that support the 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:
Coolmaster
The climate entities provided by the Coolmaster integration now use medium for the medium fan mode; before this change, it was med. If your automations are using med when setting or querying the fan speed, you’ll have to change it to medium.
The “Supports hairpinning” binary sensor has been removed from the Tailscale integration. According to the official Tailscale API documentation, this information is no longer tracked and will always return null.
Select entity state values have been changed from their original mixed-case format to snake_case format with proper translations. This improves consistency and enables proper localization support.
Chime type: Mechanical → mechanical, Digital → digital
Recording mode: Always → always, Detections → detections, Never → never
Infrared mode: Auto → auto, On → on, AutoNoLEDsOn → auto_no_leds_on
Status light mode: On → on, Off → off, OnWhenDark → on_when_dark
HDR mode: Auto → auto, On → on, Off → off
If you have automations, scripts, or templates that check or set the state of UniFi Protect select entities, you need to update them to use the new snake_case values. The UI will continue to display properly translated, human-readable text.
Allowing extra/unused parameters has been removed from the action for Telegram bot. Only users who have used undefined parameters for Telegram bot actions are affected. If you are affected, remove such parameters from your automations and scripts. Supported parameters can be found in the Telegram bot notification actions documentation.
If you are a custom integration developer and want to learn about changes and new features available for your integration, be sure to follow our developer blog.
Release Highlights: Although GeForce Game Ready Drivers and NVIDIA Studio Drivers can be installed on supported notebook GPUs, the original equipment manufacturer (OEM) provides certified drivers for your specific notebook on their website. NVIDIA recommends that you check with your notebook OEM for recommended software updates for your notebook.
Game Ready
This new Game Ready Driver provides the best gaming experience for the latest new games and updates and resolves key issues which were found in the previous release.
Fixed Gaming Bugs
Enshrouded: Game stability issues on GeForce RTX 50 Series GPUs [5664067]
Assassin's Creed Valhalla: HDR toggle not functional when Smooth Motion is enabled [5469746]
Dying Light: The Beast: Game stability issues after updating to 591.44 driver [5720536]
Fixed General Bugs
Display color seems faded after switching to non-native resolution [5548662]
Using RTX HDR on select televisions causes games to blackscreen [5720286]
It’s been a busy few months composing behind the scenes, building up to a massive crescendo. Today, the beat finally drops on Music Assistant’s biggest update yet. With version 2.7, Music Assistant is getting all jazzed up with a visual overhaul, a chart-topping lineup of new features and providers, along with a brand-new streaming protocol we’re spinning up ourselves.
Of course, you can always update and experience all the great new stuff without reading the rest of this, but you might miss a deep cut. In fact, we can’t even cover everything in this blog (there really is that much), so go sing your praises for anything we missed in the comments!
Music Assistant has gained its first full-time employee at the Open Home Foundation. No, not me! My day job is leading the Ecosystems department at the foundation (which comprises all the software projects the Foundation has that are not Home Assistant itself). Marvin will be joining the foundation in the new year to work full-time on Music Assistant, leading the project’s day-to-day operations. Marvin has been contributing to the project for three years now, working on all sorts of parts of the project, and specifically with the Apple Music and YouTube providers.
Not to worry, I’m pretty obsessed with my audio setup and will still be tinkering on my little pet project 😁.
“Everything in Its Right Place”
A visual overhaul
A well deserved visual refresh
Music Assistant joining the foundation has given us a lot more than a nice open home; it’s given the project clearer direction and some expert help. One area some people felt Music Assistant fell short was its UI and UX, and in version 2.7, we’re starting the process of giving it a major overhaul, making it look as good as your music sounds!
This is just the beginning of a big process, so expect every update to bring more polish. The first thing you’ll probably notice is the collapsible navbar on the left of the screen, which looks pretty familiar to another Assistant 😉. Now it’s much more intuitive, especially for new users. The settings page has also been made much easier to navigate with breadcrumbs.
The biggest star of the show is the new Built-in Player, which lets you listen to music on the browser you’re using to hunt for your next track. Great for double-checking if the next song is family-friendly before sending it to every speaker in the home.
“Bulletproof”
Users and logins
User profiles for the whole family!
A lot of new features we’ve implemented wouldn’t be possible without some form of login and authentication. It was a much-requested feature, as security even within your home shouldn’t be ignored. We know logging in every once in a while can be a minor inconvenience, but we’ve tried to make it as unobtrusive as possible, even implementing a way to use your Home Assistant login as a “Single Sign-On”.
You can now have different user profiles with their own music providers. No more having four Tidal accounts all sitting next to each other, cluttering up the Playlists tab. You can even assign who has access to each speaker; say goodbye to the kids playing Demon Hunters on your office speaker during your performance review 😅. In Settings, just head to the User Management section, where you can add and edit your new users.
“Around the world”
Remote music streaming
No matter where, no matter when
One feature made possible with our new login interface is remote music streaming – yes, that’s correct, Music Assistant anywhere you can connect to the internet. We’ve created a new web app that allows for remote connections while you’re out and about.
It uses Home Assistant Cloud’s built-in multimedia streaming capabilities (WebRTC) to help route the audio from your Music Assistant server to wherever you are. A Home Assistant Cloud subscription is not required to use this feature; a big shoutout to Nabu Casa for providing their infrastructure for free to our users. Home Assistant Cloud subscribers get access to even more powerful routing, which improves streaming in more places. This subscription also supports the full-time development of Music Assistant 🙏.
This connection is peer-to-peer and end-to-end encrypted, meaning no one will know if you’re listening to ABBA 😊. I wouldn’t say it’s ready to replace your current music streaming service, but it’s a great way to get your FLACs playing at a friend’s house. You could even open two instances of the web app and stream it to two devices, and they’ll be synchronized… but how is that even possible?
“Spin me right round”
Introducing Sendspin
For some time, the Music Assistant team has been looking for the best way to stream audio, album art, and other music visualizations to the devices we have around our homes. There are a couple of projects out there doing cool stuff with streaming audio, but not any that fit our needs. So, when it doesn’t exist, it’s time to start building.
Introducing Sendspin, a new multimedia streaming and synchronizing protocol. It’s fully open source and free to use. Sendspin can stream high-fidelity audio, album art, and visualizer data, automatically adapting to each device’s capabilities. Imagine an e-paper display showcasing the album cover, while multiple speakers play in sync, and smart lights pulse to the rhythm.
The best way to use it right now is either via your browser or a Home Assistant Voice Preview Edition running beta firmware. We’ve built the experimental ability to use Sendspin on Google Cast-capable speakers (we’re also looking to do the same with AirPlay-capable speakers), which will allow Sendspin to work with a lot of different hardware.
A big thanks to Maxim and Kevin at the Open Home Foundation, who have been instrumental in making Sendspin a reality. Even though it can do some impressive stuff today, it’s very much a tech preview, and this announcement is our call to all developers and DIY audio hobbyists – we need your help building and testing this. This is the spec, start building with it!
All the best things in life are meant to be shared, and your music should be as free and open as the software we love. So spin that record 💿, drop the needle, and send that music across your entire home.
“Aeroplane”
AirPlay additions
We recently added support for external audio sources, the first being Spotify Connect. This allows you to stream audio from the Spotify app to your Music Assistant server, which could send it across all your speakers, even if they don’t support Spotify Connect. We’ve now added the ability to send AirPlay audio to Music Assistant, which you can then send anywhere in your home.
We also now support AirPlay 2 speakers as a player provider, which means perfectly synced audio across all your AirPlay 2-capable speakers, like HomePods. We recommend reading the limitations in the documentation, as not all AirPlay 2 devices are made equal 🤦♂️.
“Sing”
Lyrics support
It's time for karaoke!
Never again be left guessing what Kurt is saying in Smells Like Teen Spirit. As of Music Assistant 2.6, you can now see the lyrics of the song you’re playing. If the lyrics provider supports it, there is the ability to have these words time-synced, making it more like karaoke. Lyrics can be found when you open the queue menu and it will be in the “lyrics” tab (this tab will only appear if the track name, artist and album are matched to the lyrics providers). We started with support of LRCLIB, but have since added Tidal lyric syncing, Genius lyrics, and local LRC files.
“Smooth operator”
Smart fading
Making your playlists seamless
Music Assistant is now your personal in-house DJ, perfectly blending one song into the next, and unlike a DJ it always takes your requests 😎. This latest update adds Smart fading, which takes into account the BPM of each song, to make crossfading between songs sound more natural. To turn it on, go to your player of choice, scroll down to the Audio section, and choose “Enable Smart Fades”.
“All the small things”
And much more
None of these updates are small things, but I’m running out of space, so here is the rest of the hot 100:
There are now DSP presets that allow you to quickly save and apply custom configurations.
Track and share your listening history, with the addition of scrobbling, with support for LastFM, ListenBrainz, and Subsonic.
Several new player providers have been added, including Yamaha MusicCast, and Roku devices running Media Assistant.
Added VBAN as a new input provider.
New radio and podcast providers include Radio Paradise, Podcast Index, BBC Sounds, gPodder, iTunes Podcasts, Dl.fm, and ARD Audiothek.
Can’t follow Phish on tour? Luckily, the new Phish.in provider has you covered. There’s also Nugs.net if you’re looking for more live music.
Another cool hodgepodge of audio is the Internet Archive, which can now be added as a provider.
One of Japan’s biggest streaming platforms Niconico has been added as an audio provider ㊗️.
“Rebel yell”
Join the audio revolution
Music Assistant is also cast compatible!
Your music, your players – it’s time to take back control of your music and the devices you want to play it on. If you’re new to Music Assistant, check how to get started here. While we’re excited about these new features, we’re not hitting pause anytime soon. We’d love to hear your feedback in the comments or on Discord.
If you’re ever in need of a device that works great with Home Assistant, well, I have just the program for you. Works with Home Assistant is our certification program that ensures devices work seamlessly and locally, all with brands that back them up.
Did you know that this year the Works with Home Assistant program has certified 12 partners across 12 months? That’s more than were certified in the two years since the program launched in 2022! The full list of devices is insanely long now (luckily, we made it searchable). To make all this happen over just one year, a lot of important things have been happening behind the scenes.
When we moved it over to the foundation, we also took that chance to beef-up our processes, with robust legal contracts that ensure every partner who joins the program formally commits to things like offering users long-term support and easy updates.
It’s all about the devices
When we started the program we certified brands, but now we certify devices. This means you know exactly which sensors, switches, or other gadgets have been rigorously tested by us to ensure the best experience with Home Assistant. Each certified device has to work locally, without the need for cloud subscriptions or control.
We can now certify in phases, rather than overwhelming our testers with a truckload of devices in order to launch one partner. Also, if a manufacturer has one device that is cloud-controlled, it doesn’t blacklist any remaining items they have that could operate perfectly well locally. It sometimes means that sometimes your favorite devices aren’t part of the first wave of certification but, trust us, the partners check the comments 😉.
Making it easy to find certified devices
Here’s a conundrum: the more products that are certified, the harder it is for you to see and find them. The good news is I think we’ve cracked it!
Last week, we published the first version of our new searchable certified device list. Previously, you’d have to hunt around for info by checking the integration page or digging through launch blogs to see if a device was certified. Now, certified devices are kept up to date in one central, easy-to-use location, with extra information on the region they’re available in, the protocol we’ve certified them under, and notes about any secondary functionality we’re still working on.
So many (useful) columns!
The badge had a makeover
Every certified device earns the right to display our badge on its packaging, proudly announcing it Works with Home Assistant. If you’re not part of the program, you’re not allowed to use the Home Assistant logo. We used to have different versions of the badges depending on whether the device used Matter, Zigbee, or Z-Wave, and so on, but – let’s be honest – they were overcomplicated and impossible to actually read on a box!
Since the badge is such an important signal when you’re browsing products, we decided to simplify it and focus purely on that mark of quality. Now we have just two versions: a color badge and a monochrome design that are easier to read on any packaging.
We love to see the new badge being used IRL!
Companies of all sizes
For 2025, our goal was simple: we wanted both the big names and passionate community projects to be able to join. Yes, we’re thrilled to have major smart home players such as Shelly and Reolink committing to the program, but it’s equally important for us to connect with smaller, community-built projects – the start-ups or developers who keep open source at the heart of everything they do, like AirGradient and Apollo Automation.
This commitment to inclusivity is a big reason why we keep the annual fee for joining the program deliberately low, at only 500 CHF (per partner, not device) per year. We want to ensure being part of Works with Home Assistant is achievable for everyone who shares our vision.
Some of our team visiting the Apollo booth at IFA Berlin in September.
Improving testing
Testing hasn’t always been perfect – we knew we needed to make improvements, and the community has been amazing in helping us find things we need to look at. Like everything we do, we learn as we go, we iterate, and we improve. Previously, everyone was testing in their own way, but now we’ve standardized the way we test and give feedback to partners. This means testing is more consistent, exacting, and able to handle higher volumes – one of the reasons why we’ve been able to increase the number of devices we’ve certified so radically!
A lot of devices that come across our desks don’t pass certification, and it’s often due to organizations not fully understanding the requirements of joining. While this can vary greatly depending on the device and protocol, it was clear we needed to be more transparent. So as well as publishing our Works with Home Assistant Working Group Resolution, we’re also publishing further testing information: this sample testing report for a simple smart plug shows you the process we follow.
Keeping Home Assistant on the bleeding edge
Because we get to see and test new devices in advance, and receive feedback from our certified partners as part of the process, we have a sneak peek into what vendors have in mind for 2026 and beyond. This allows us to look at our product roadmap and see where we need to realign with innovations in the market. By testing today’s devices, we’re guiding tomorrow’s Home Assistant features!
Spot one of the certified cameras in our State of the Open Home segment
What can be controlled in Home Assistant
A core aim of the program is to ensure all certified devices have their “key functionality” available within Home Assistant. So how do we decide what aspects are controllable in Home Assistant and what doesn’t make the cut?
Key: First, we look at the functionality as a whole. Let’s use a door lock for example. The door should lock and unlock from within Home Assistant. That’s key functionality, get it? 😉
Secondary: If the lock also chimes when it locks or unlocks, we think of that as “secondary” functionality. We recommend that the manufacturer has it as an “exposed feature” in Home Assistant, so you can turn it off during quiet hours for example, but it wouldn’t block certification.
We have to look at what’s actually supported by the open standard that we’re testing against too. If a feature is not currently supported by the specification, there’s no way for the manufacturer to actually implement it. This is one of the major challenges in certifying against ‘younger’ specifications such as Matter.
We use our best judgment on this, but we also want your feedback, because everyone has a slightly different point of view, even within our team and testers – so look out for our user research requests, or please share your thoughts in our comments below!
Connecting with our community
For all this talk of testing, Works with Home Assistant is primarily about people and partnerships! As a foundation, we’re focused on making sure the program stays deeply connected with the community it serves, both online and in person.
We’ve been stepping up our presence at meetups and events around the world, so we can share the latest developments and gather your valuable feedback. From gigantic trade shows like CES in Las Vegas to small, local get-togethers, you can expect to see us there! We also want to do this online, so you can ask partners questions on streams, or in comments – keep an eye out for more of this in future.
San Diego Meetup
On to 2026
So that was 2025 in a (big) nutshell. As for 2026, we want to kick it off with some wonderful Zigbee partners we’ve been working really hard on – particularly after the awesome launch of Connect ZBT-2. Even though Zigbee is one of the longest-established protocols, it’s actually one of the hardest for us to test and certify because so many devices operate outside the official specification. This means our team and partners do a lot of prep to get them to a testable state – but in doing so we’re driving big improvements in functionality for everyone!
We also want to improve coverage globally, so, regardless of region, everyone who uses Home Assistant has a good range of certified options to choose from. This means we’re actively seeking partners who will cover regions outside of Europe and North America for everyday essentials like smart plugs and lighting.
As ever, everything coming up will be covered right here – so stay tuned for updates… and here’s to certifying many more devices in 2026! 🎉🥳🎊
Release Highlights: Although GeForce Game Ready Drivers and NVIDIA Studio Drivers can be installed on supported notebook GPUs, the original equipment manufacturer (OEM) provides certified drivers for your specific notebook on their website. NVIDIA recommends that you check with your notebook OEM for recommended software updates for your notebook.
Game Ready for Battlefield 6: Winter Offensive
This new Game Ready Driver provides the best gaming experience for the latest new games supporting DLSS 4 technology including Battlefield 6: Winter Offensive and Call of Duty: Black Ops 7. In addition, support for 32-bit GPU-accelerated PhysX effects has been added for select classic titles on GeForce RTX 50 Series GPUs.
Fixed Gaming Bugs
Battlefield 6: Gaming stability issues [5582125]
Counter-Strike 2: Text may appear slightly distorted when in-game resolution is lower than the native resolution of the display [5278913]
Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth: Light flickering after driver update on some system configurations [5432356]
Like a Dragon Gaiden: The Man Who Erased His Name: Corruption after driver update on some system configurations [5432356]
Black Myth: Wukong: Lower performance in driver branches newer than R570 [5562283]
Monster Hunter World: Iceborne: Some particle effects may be missing on GeForce RTX 50 Series GPUs [5546598]
Call of Duty: Black Ops 3: Gameplay becomes dim over time [5488108]
Madden 26: Stability issues [5535693]
Users running R580 branch drivers (58x.xx) or newer may observe lower performance in some games after updating to Windows 11 October 2025 KB5066835 [5561605]
The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt: Random corruption on main character's sword corruption [5363151]
Fixed General Bugs
Adobe Premiere Pro: Freeze During Export Using Hardware Encoding [5431822]
Sophos Home Antivirus: System stability issues [5581371]
Green line observed while viewing videos in Chromium browser on GeForce RTX 50 Series GPUs [5535388]
As the year winds down and the holidays approach, we’re closing out 2025 with a release that’s all about giving you more control and a little bit of magic. ✨
This month, we’re unveiling Home Assistant Labs, a brand-new space where you can preview features before they go mainstream. And what better way to kick it off than with Winter mode? ❄️ Enable it and watch snowflakes drift across your dashboard. It’s completely unnecessary, utterly delightful, and exactly the kind of thing we love to build. ❄️
But that’s just the beginning. We’ve been working on making automationsAutomations in Home Assistant allow you to automatically respond to things that happen in and around your home. [Learn more] more intuitive over the past releases, and this release finally delivers purpose-specific triggers and conditions. Instead of thinking in (numeric) states, you can now simply say “When a light turns on” or “If the climate is heating”. It’s automation building the way our mind works, as it should be. 🧠
Oh, and if you’re looking to level up your Zigbee or Thread network, check out the Home Assistant Connect ZBT-2 we released last month. It’s four times faster and has a gorgeous new antenna design that you’ll actually want to display on your desk. 📡
From all of us working on Home Assistant:
Thank you for an amazing 2025! ❤️
Happy holidays, and enjoy the release!
../Frenck
A little holiday cheer 🎄🎶
Jingle Labs by Frenck and Darren
Dashing through the code,
With a brand-new Labs to show,
Snowflakes start to fall,
Watch the dashboard glow!
Triggers now make sense,
Conditions feel just right,
What fun it is to automate,
Your smart home every night!
Chorus
Jingle Labs, jingle Labs,
Features on the way!
Oh what fun it is to run,
Home Assistant every day, hey!
Jingle Labs, jingle Labs,
Winter mode is here!
Turn your lights on with a thought,
And spread some holiday cheer!
Power graphs are live,
Water meters too,
Dashboards you can set,
For every user’s view!
Xbox got some love,
Shelly’s platinum now,
Contributors came through this year,
Take a final bow!
Chorus
Jingle Labs, jingle Labs,
Triggers for the win!
Climate, lights, and fans galore,
Let the automations spin!
Jingle Labs, jingle Labs,
Thank you all so much!
Happy holidays from us,
Now go and automate stuff!
When we develop new features for Home Assistant, we often find ourselves in a tricky spot. A feature might be fully built and tested, but we’re not entirely sure if it’s the right fit for everyone just yet. Maybe we want to gather some real-world feedback first, or perhaps we want to see how the community uses it before committing to keeping it around forever.
That’s where Home Assistant Labs comes in! 🧪
Labs is a brand-new place in Home Assistant that gives you a sneak peek at features we’re working on. These are not unfinished experiments or unstable beta features. They are fully functional and tested, but they might change or even disappear based on feedback. We are committed to building in the open, and we want to give more people the choice to hop into the lab with us. By joining us, your feedback will directly help refine these features for the entire community.
The very first preview feature available in Labs is Winter mode ❄️, inspired by a community post on Reddit originally created by u/Possible-Week-5815. Enable it, and watch your Home Assistant interface transform into a winter wonderland with falling snow. A fun way to get into the holiday spirit!
When you enable a preview feature, you can also choose to create a backup first, just to be safe. And if you change your mind? Simply disable it again. No restart required!
Preview features are off by default, and enabling them won’t affect your existing setup. It’s completely optional, so if you prefer to stick with the battle-proven experience, that’s totally fine. But if you’re curious and want to explore what’s coming next, Labs is the place to be.
But what was the first Labs preview feature we put in there? Well, it’s a big one…
Purpose-specific triggers and conditions
Almost two years ago, we released a new automationAutomations in Home Assistant allow you to automatically respond to things that happen in and around your home. [Learn more] editor that unwrapped all our actionsActions are used in several places in Home Assistant. As part of a script or automation, actions define what is going to happen once a trigger is activated. In scripts, an action is called sequence. [Learn more] and made them easier to understand. Instead of a single, obscure “Call service” action, you now see clear options like “Light: Turn on” or “Media Player: Set Volume”.
Ever since, we’ve been wondering: could we do the same for triggersA trigger is a set of values or conditions of a platform that are defined to cause an automation to run. [Learn more] and conditionsConditions are an optional part of an automation that will prevent an action from firing if they are not met. [Learn more]? Instead of relying on technical, state-based options, what if we could offer intuitive alternatives that just make sense? Options like “When a light turns on” or “If a light is on”.
That idea set a two-year plan in motion, and today it’s finally becoming a reality.
Along the way, we discovered something interesting: many of you take a “target-first” approach when building automationsAutomations in Home Assistant allow you to automatically respond to things that happen in and around your home. [Learn more]. You think about what you want to automate (a deviceA device is a model representing a physical or logical unit that contains entities., an entityAn entity represents a sensor, actor, or function in Home Assistant. Entities are used to monitor physical properties or to control other entities. An entity is usually part of a device or a service. [Learn more], or an areaAn area in Home Assistant is a logical grouping of devices and entities that are meant to match areas (or rooms) in the physical world: your home. For example, the living room area groups devices and entities in your living room. [Learn more]) before thinking about how to automate it (which action to perform or which trigger to use). This release embraces that mindset with a completely new way to build automations.
Purpose-specific triggers and conditions are now provided directly by domainsEach integration in Home Assistant has a unique identifier: The domain. It is often shown as the first part (before the dot) of entity IDs. like Light, Climate, Fan, and others, covering the most common automation use cases.
These new triggers and conditions fully support targeting. This means you can trigger an automation when any light in your living room turns on, without having to list them one by one or create a group beforehand. Targeting an area keeps things simple: it’s always aligned with how your home is organized, and you don’t have to update anything when you add or remove devices.
LabelsLabels in Home Assistant allow grouping elements irrespective of their physical location or type. Labels can be assigned to areas, devices, entities, automations, scenes, scripts, and helpers. Labels can be used in automations and scripts as a target for actions. Labels can also be used to filter data. [Learn more] are supported too! You can now check if any of your Christmas lights are on. Perfect timing for the holidays! 🎄
We’ve also introduced a new way to pick triggers, conditions, and actions that fits this target-first approach. You can navigate your home by floorA floor in Home Assistant is a logical grouping of areas that are meant to match the physical floors in your home. Devices & entities are not assigned to floors but to areas. Floors can be used in automations and scripts as a target for actions. For example, to turn off all the lights on the downstairs floor when you go to bed. [Learn more], then area, then device, and see exactly which options are available for each target. It’s a much more intuitive way to build automationsAutomations in Home Assistant allow you to automatically respond to things that happen in and around your home. [Learn more].
This feature is still being refined, so we’ve made it available as a preview feature in Labs. Head over to Settings > System > Labs to enable it and help us shape the future of automation building!
More dashboard improvements!
We have a lot of dashboard improvements to share in this release! From better default dashboard management to an improved Home dashboard, we have been busy making your Home Assistant experience even better.
Set a system-wide default dashboard
Picking a default dashboard is now a system-level setting that takes effect instantly for all users on your Home Assistant installation. The dashboard you choose will appear at the top of the sidebar, replacing the current default.
But don’t worry, personal preferences still matter! We added a new setting in your User profile where you can override the system default and set your own preferred dashboard.
If you set your phone to one dashboard and your wall tablet to another, they’ll now both revert to the default dashboard. If you want your wall tablet to use a different dashboard than your other devices, we recommend giving it a separate user profile that you can customize however you want.
Reorder areas and floors
When using the built-in dashboard experiences (Home, Lights, Security, and others), one of the main pain points was the strict ordering of areasAn area in Home Assistant is a logical grouping of devices and entities that are meant to match areas (or rooms) in the physical world: your home. For example, the living room area groups devices and entities in your living room. [Learn more] (alphabetically) and floorsA floor in Home Assistant is a logical grouping of areas that are meant to match the physical floors in your home. Devices & entities are not assigned to floors but to areas. Floors can be used in automations and scripts as a target for actions. For example, to turn off all the lights on the downstairs floor when you go to bed. [Learn more] (numerically by level). This often didn’t make sense in a real home, where your guest bathroom shouldn’t appear before your living room, and the attic is rarely more relevant than the main floor.
Now you can go to Settings > Areas, labels & zones and use the new Reorder floors and areas menu to manually drag and drop any area or floor to reorder them. Your changes will instantly apply to all built-in dashboards that show areas and floors.
Experimental dashboards have graduated
With the launch of Labs, we retired the experimental flag from the dashboard creation list. The Home dashboard can now be found in the dashboard list (still not visible by default), and the Areas dashboard has evolved into Home, so we’ve removed it for now. If you’re using the Areas dashboard, it will continue to work; you just won’t be able to create another.
Note
We want to keep hearing your voice! Share your experience with us in the Home dashboard survey and help us improve every step of the way. And of course join us on Discord to work together on the future of dashboards.
Home dashboard improvements
We added a new sidebar to the Home dashboard that gathers quick access links we think are useful for you. There’s also a nicer area and floor layout that uses space more efficiently. On a more technical level, the Home dashboard is now a proper built-in dashboard and shows up in the dashboard list.
Important
There is a chance your current favorites might disappear in this release and need to be re-added. This is due to the migration of this dashboard from a strategy to a built-in dashboard.
Undo and redo in the dashboard editor
The dashboard editor now includes the undo and redo feature that we added in 2025.10 to the automationAutomations in Home Assistant allow you to automatically respond to things that happen in and around your home. [Learn more] and scriptScripts are components that allow you to specify a sequence of actions to be executed by Home Assistant when turned on. [Learn more] editor. This allows you to experiment safely while editing your dashboards. You can undo up to 75 changes or restore them with a single click, making editing dashboards faster and less stressful.
Thanks to @jpbede for implementing this handy feature!
Power and water in the Energy dashboard
The Energy dashboard has been helping you track your energy and gas usage for years now, and this release brings two great additions: real-time power monitoring and downstream water tracking.
Real-time power monitoring
Until now, the Energy dashboard was all about energy: the cumulative kWh you’ve consumed or produced over time. But sometimes you want to know what’s happening right now. How much power is that appliance actually drawing? Is your solar system producing at this very moment?
With this release, you can now configure power sensors alongside your energy sensors. Track your real-time grid consumption, see how much you’re exporting back to the grid, and watch those watts flow in real-time. The power configuration options now appear alongside energy settings for each source or device, and new power graphs let you see your power consumption throughout the day.
Downstream water meters
The Energy dashboard has been tracking your water consumption for a while now, but it was missing something: the ability to see where all that water is actually going. Just like you can track individual devices for energy consumption, you can now add downstream water meters to break down your water usage.
Got a smart irrigation controller? A water softener with a flow meter? A separate meter for your pool? Now you can track them all and see exactly how your water consumption is distributed across different uses.
There’s also a brand-new water sankey card that visualizes your water flow, just like the energy sankey diagram you already know. It’s a great way to see where your water is going at a glance.
The new water sankey card shows where your water is going at a glance.
New energy layout
To make room for this new functionality, the Energy dashboard has been reorganized. Don’t worry: if you only have energy configured, you’ll still see the same dashboard. But if you add water, gas, or power, the dashboard will be split into several tabs.
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:
Airobot, added by @mettolen
Control and monitor your Airobot smart thermostats for intelligent floor heating control via the local REST API.
Anglian Water, added by @pantherale0
Integrate your Anglian Water smart water meter to track water usage and consumption costs.
Backblaze B2, added by @ElCruncharino
Use a Backblaze B2 cloud storage bucket as a backup location for your Home Assistant backups.
EnergyID, added by @Molier
Sync anything from your home directly to EnergyID for advanced analytics, performance tracking and benchmarking.
Essent, added by @jaapp
Monitor dynamic electricity and gas prices for Essent customers in the Netherlands with variable pricing contracts.
Google Air Quality, added by @Thomas55555
Get real-time air quality data for your location using Google’s Air Quality API.
Google Weather, added by @tronikos
Use Google Weather as a source for weather data, providing current conditions, hourly forecasts for the next 24 hours, and daily forecasts for the next 10 days.
Hanna, added by @bestycame
Fetch pool water quality data from your Hanna Pool Controller device, including pH, chlorine levels, ORP values, and water temperature.
Home Assistant Labs, added by @frenck
A dedicated panel where you can preview and test new features before they become standard in Home Assistant.
Philips Hue BLE, added by @flip-dots
Control your Philips Hue Bluetooth lights directly with Home Assistant, without the need for a Hue Bridge.
Saunum, added by @mettolen
Integrate your Saunum Leil sauna control unit to precisely control temperature and monitor your sauna’s operation.
Victron BLE, added by @rajlaud
Integrate Victron Energy devices that support the Bluetooth Low Energy protocol for real-time monitoring.
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:
It is not just new integrationsIntegrations connect and integrate Home Assistant with your devices, services, and more. [Learn more] that have been added; existing ones are also being constantly improved. Here are some of the noteworthy changes to existing integrations:
@piitaya updated the ESPHome integration to let Home Assistant generate entity IDs using its standard rules, aligning it with how other integrations work.
Thanks to @bdraco, you can configure Wi-Fi on Shelly generation 2+ devices directly from Home Assistant via Bluetooth.
Shelly now supports control modes for upcoming Shelly Cury devices. Nice work, @bieniu!
The Tuya integration received a lot of love! Cat litter boxes now expose switches, buttons, lights, and sensors for controlling your pet’s automated litter box. On top of that, doorbell events are now supported too. Thanks, @heindrichpaul!
@starkillerOG expanded the Reolink integration with an exposure mode select and audio noise reduction controls for supported cameras.
Air conditioner and microwave support has landed in the Home Connect integration, expanding the range of supported BSH appliances. Thanks, @Diegorro98!
@zerzhang added support for the SwitchBot smart thermostat radiator to the SwitchBot integration. Nice!
The Xbox integration got some love from @tr4nt0r! You can now link multiple Xbox accounts, track how many friends you (and your friends) have, see if they’re in a party, and control more remote functions. The media browser also gained a new category showcasing official game art and screenshots.
Got an Ecovacs robot? The Ecovacs integration now has a border spin switch (to reach those tricky edges while mopping) and an auto-empty select entity. Thanks, @aronnebrivio!
The VeSync integration gained a child lock switch, giving you control over this safety feature for your devices. Thanks, @cdnninja!
The SQL integration now supports using templates in your queries, giving you more flexibility when querying your databases. Great addition, @gjohansson-ST!
@tomwilkie expanded the Prometheus integration to export metrics for the water_heater domain.
The Anthropic integration now supports AI task entities. Thanks, @Shulyaka!
Portainer can now show you resource usage of your containers. Nice work, @erwindouna!
@thomasddn added a button to enable reduced guard mode for compatible vehicles to the Volvo integration.
The Plugwise integration now supports the new Anna P1 device and gained a select entity for zone profiles on Adam devices. Thanks, @bouwew!
Bang & Olufsen users can now use their Beoremote One with Home Assistant. The remote’s buttons are exposed as event entities. Awesome, @mj23000!
One thing we are incredibly proud of in Home Assistant is our integration quality scale. This scale helps us and our contributors to ensure integrations are of high quality, maintainable, and provide the best possible user experience.
This release, we celebrate several integrationsIntegrations connect and integrate Home Assistant with your devices, services, and more. [Learn more] that have improved their quality scale:
This is a huge achievement for these integrations and their maintainers. The effort and dedication required to reach these quality levels is significant, as it involves extensive testing, documentation, error handling, and often complete rewrites of parts of the integration.
A big thank you to all the contributors involved! 👏
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 integration is now available via the Home Assistant UI:
The following integrationsIntegrations connect and integrate Home Assistant with your devices, services, and more. [Learn more] are no longer available as of this release:
Dominos Pizza: The Dominos Pizza integration has been removed. The integration no longer functions and its underlying source has been unmaintained since 2019.
Flick Electric: The Flick Electric integration has been removed. All customers of the Flick Electric company have already been moved to Meridian Energy. The service this integration used is already non-functional.
The following integrations have been removed as they are incompatible with the currently supported installation methods:
Bluetooth Tracker
CUPS
Decora
dlib Face Detect
dlib Face Identify
Eddystone Temperature
GStreamer
Keyboard
LIRC
Pandora
Raspberry Pi Camera
SMS
Snips
TensorFlow
Other noteworthy changes
There are many more improvements in this release; here are some of the other noteworthy changes:
New template math functions! @akx added clamp, wrap, and remap to manipulate numbers in your templates. Awesome!
The activity card now supports filtering by state, making it easier to see specific events. Nice one, @karwosts!
@MindFreeze added min and max options to the bar gauge feature for tile cards, giving you more control over the gauge range.
You can now delete helpers directly from the helpers panel, without having to open them first. Thanks, @frenck!
The blueprints panel now shows how many automations and scripts use each blueprint. Great for keeping track, @EarMaster!
@timmo001 added a handy trick: double-click the automation editor sidebar to reset its width.
Labels now show up on the device information card, making it easier to see how your devices are organized. Thanks again, @timmo001!
Get insight into your AI conversations
Ever played around with AI in Home Assistant and wondered what data is actually being sent?
@balloob upgraded the voice assistant debug interface, and you can now inspect the system prompt that tells the AI how to behave, along with any tool calls it made to generate your answer.
This makes it much easier to figure out why the AI decided to skip over that one entityAn entity represents a sensor, actor, or function in Home Assistant. Entities are used to monitor physical properties or to control other entities. An entity is usually part of a device or a service. [Learn more], or why it called a specific tool. You can find the debug interface in the voice assistant configuration panel.
Add entities to Android widgets and favorites
If you’re using the Home Assistant Companion app for Android, there’s a handy new feature waiting for you! Starting with app version 2025.11, you can now add entitiesAn entity represents a sensor, actor, or function in Home Assistant. Entities are used to monitor physical properties or to control other entities. An entity is usually part of a device or a service. [Learn more] to widgets and Android Auto favorites directly from the entity’s more info dialog.
With just a few taps, you can:
Add widgets for quick control of entities right from your home screen
Set entities as Android Auto favorites, making them quickly accessible in your car
No more deep-diving into app settings! The Add to option appears in the more info dialog with options tailored to the entity you’re viewing. For example, adding a media player widget is only available for media players.
This is a first step in integrating native mobile features directly into the Home Assistant interface. Future releases will expand this with support for creating shortcuts, tiles, and watch favorites.
We will also release patch releases for Home Assistant 2025.12 in December. 🎄
These patch releases only contain bug fixes. Our goal is to release a patch
release once a week, aiming for Friday.
Bump aiomealie to 1.1.1 and statically define mealplan entry types (@andrew-codechimp - #158907)
Update systembridgeconnector to 5.2.4, fix media source (@timmo001 - #158917)
Assume cover or valve is always “running” in google assistant when the state is assumed or the position is reported to allow it to be be stopped (@jbouwh - #158919)
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, 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 on more places you can go.
Are you more into email? Sign up for the Open Home Foundation Newsletter to get the latest news about features, things happening in our community, and other projects that support the 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:
Core and Supervised installation methods, and 32-bit systems
After a 6-month deprecation period, support for the Home Assistant Core and Home Assistant Supervised installation methods, as well as all 32-bit system architectures (i386, armhf, and armv7), has now been fully removed.
These installation methods and architectures will no longer receive updates, including security updates. If you are still using one of these installation methods or architectures, please migrate to a supported installation method and architecture as soon as possible to continue receiving updates and support.
Hive has removed support for their security products. We have removed the alarm control panel from the integration, as the Hive APIs no longer support these products.
The legacy license plate event sensor has been removed from the UniFi Protect integration, as it no longer functions with Protect 6 and newer. The UniFi Protect integration has not been compatible with Protect versions older than 6 for quite some time.
This sensor has been replaced with a new Vehicle Detection Event entity that provides significantly more functionality, including license plate recognition, vehicle type detection, color detection, and confidence scores. The new event entity fires with a 3-second delay to ensure optimal thumbnail and LPR data quality.
The Xbox media browser has been completely overhauled to support multiple accounts and introduce a range of other improvements. As part of this update, the format of the media-source identifiers has been changed as well.
The following and followers sensors introduced in the last release previously included friends in their counts. After a recent API update, friends are no longer included.
If you are a custom integration developer and want to learn about changes and new features available for your integration: Be sure to follow our developer blog. The following changes are the most notable for this release:
The easiest way to start with Zigbee or Thread just got even better, with Home Assistant Connect ZBT-2. This USB adapter plugs into your Home Assistant system and opens up a world of smart device options. Between its precisely tuned antenna and next-generation chip, it’s a big step up for anyone looking to connect Zigbee, Thread, or Matter devices directly to Home Assistant.
For all our Zigbee fans, this might be the best upgrade you’ll make all year. We’ve squeezed every inch out of this technology, giving it the best range, speed, and stability possible. The same can be said for our Thread-heads out there (yeah, I just came up with that cool nickname 😎), making Matter or ESPHome Thread connections rock-solid. Pick whether to dedicate your Connect ZBT-2 to run a Zigbee or Thread network, and it’ll provide the best experience for that protocol (and if all these names just sound like new streaming services to you, check out our explainer below).
If you’re one of those people still rocking three different hubs, what are you waiting for… another giant server outage to take down your smart home? Ditch those cloud hubs and take back your privacy today. As an added bonus, your devices will likely get more controls, range, and resilience.
Available today starting at $49 and €45 (that’s the MSRP, and pricing will vary by retailer). Designed and built by Nabu Casa and the Open Home Foundation, every purchase helps fund the development of Home Assistant. For quick specs, details, and where to buy, visit our beautifulHome Assistant Connect ZBT-2 page.
What are Zigbee, Thread, and Matter?
The short answer is they’re all open standards that let smart devices talk directly to your smart hub of choice, like Home Assistant. We love open standards because they don’t rely on the cloud, which means your devices are fully under your control at home, with no risk of turning into a paperweight if the manufacturer gets bored of paying the server fees. Also, when used with Home Assistant, your smart home data never needs to leave your home, which is always better for privacy.
Zigbee is a wireless standard that’s been a cornerstone of smart home technology for nearly two decades, with thousands of devices from brands like Philips Hue, IKEA, Aqara, Sonoff, frient, and ThirdReality. There’s a good chance you already have some of these devices in your home, and they’ll have their own hubs, which frankly are just taking up extra space, as everything is better connected right to Home Assistant 😉.
Matter is the big new standard – its tech is cutting-edge, and growing really fast. It can use Wi-Fi to talk to devices, but if that device is battery-powered, it’ll probably use Thread instead. Matter devices that use Thread are getting really good, and many are Works with Home Assistant certified, including devices from Nuki, Eve, MotionBlinds, and Aqara.
Whether you set up your Connect ZBT-2 to use Zigbee or Thread, you can’t really go wrong, as both standards have devices for nearly every smart home need. Both give devices great battery life, take some strain off your Wi-Fi, and counterintuitively, the more devices you have, the better the range and stability can be.
Standing on the shoulders of giants
In 2022, we released Home Assistant Connect ZBT-1 (originally called SkyConnect), our first product in the Connect line and first USB adapter. Connect ZBT-1 was designed to be the easiest, most stable way to connect Zigbee devices to Home Assistant. It also came with Thread connectivity support, which was very new at the time. All these years later, it continues to receive software support and is a community favorite.
Sales of Connect ZBT-1 helped fund Home Assistant’s development, and we learned so much that has influenced its next iteration. Alas, as much as we love our little Connect ZBT-1, today we’re saying goodbye. We have now ended production of Connect ZBT-1, but software support will continue. If you’re still using Connect ZBT-1, expect it to keep working far into the future.
If you are looking to upgrade your Zigbee network with a Connect ZBT-2, don’t forget you can continue to use your Connect ZBT-1 as a way to dip your toes into the world of Thread – it’s very easy to switch operating modes.
Upgrading everything
Compared to its predecessor, this version has upgraded everything. First off, we’ve doubled the product number from ZBT-1 to ZBT-2… that’s 2x better already! But there’s definitely more.
Stick with an antenna
First off, to achieve peak performance, we moved away from the small “stick” form factor. Small USB sticks are convenient, but USB ports and nearby electronics can create interference that weakens the signal. With Connect ZBT-1, we recommended using a USB extension cable to keep the adapter away from noise.
The antenna has gone from safety pin-sized 🧷, to tablespoon-sized 🥄
With Connect ZBT-2, we’ve designed away this issue. It’s much easier to properly position as it’s now a free-standing antenna and base, which is perfectly tuned for Zigbee and Thread. The larger antenna is not only good at broadcasting to further away devices, but is also good at listening out for faint signals from far away devices. We even optimized the base, which acts as a “ground plane”, boosting the antenna’s performance. It includes a 1.5 m (4.9 ft) USB cable that lets you place it in a good spot to avoid any interference.
Four times the speed
Inside Connect ZBT-2 is the Silicon Labs MG24, an advanced Zigbee/Thread system-on-chip. Compared to the MG21 used in Connect ZBT-1, it brings higher processing power and better sensitivity to weak signals.
More baud, the better 😜
We also took the opportunity to quadruple the internal communications speed of the chip – taking the baud rate from 115,200 bps to 460,800 bps. In our testing, we saw consistent improvements in device responsiveness. Don’t expect your devices to turn on four times faster, but you’ll feel the difference when turning on several devices simultaneously.
Built for Home Assistant
It is really easy to take advantage of all this performance, as we always work to make Home Assistant hardware super easy to start with. Just plug in the device via the included cable into a spare USB port on your Home Assistant system, and the setup wizard will guide you through everything. This all works so well because the same people who built Zigbee and Thread into Home Assistant also helped build Connect ZBT-2.
You can start a new Zigbee or Thread network in minutes, or use our improved migration tools to move an existing network over. It’s a very easy upgrade, and most adapters migrate with just a few clicks. Best of all, every Home Assistant user upgrading to new adapters will benefit from these new migration tools. Just another example of how hardware sales help level up our software development.
Compatibility and flexibility
Home Assistant Connect ZBT-2 supports Zigbee 3.0 (and yes, we’re looking at Zigbee 4.0 support as well) and is keeping pace with Thread’s rapid development. We’ve tested it working great with ZHA, zigpy-cli, Zigbee2MQTT, matter.js, and OpenThread Border Router, giving you the flexibility to choose how you manage your network.
If it’s a Zigbee-certified device or Matter-certified device that uses Thread, it should work out of the box. Home Assistant already has one of the widest compatibility lists in the world, and our community continuously expands it with every new release. For brands that support the functionality, there are also Over-the-Air (OTA) firmware updates for devices.
Just note: Connect ZBT-2 can only use one protocol at a time, meaning you must choose either Zigbee or Thread. We’ve done extensive testing in the past on running both at the same time, and found it just doesn’t work well for a whole list of reasons.
Second-generation power
Our second-generation Connect line products are all about being open and performant, and one addition that fulfills this promise is our inclusion of the ESP32 chip. Connect ZBT-2 includes an ESP32-S3 as its USB controller, which is a little overkill for this job, but opens up a world of possibilities.
ESP32 devices are well understood by our team, but also the community. It means that anyone can change the firmware on this chip and possibly unlock cool new abilities. For instance, our recently released Connect ZWA-2 uses this same chip to support experimental firmware that adds new functionality. This isn’t to say we’ll do the exact same thing with Connect ZBT-2; it’s more to say the sky’s the limit with our second-gen products. The firmware it ships with is just the start, and we have some cool ideas cooking on what we can do next.
Open design
Look at all those exposed pins and pads 🤤
When we say open, we mean it. In the physical sense, it’s easy to open Connect ZBT-2 as there are no clips or glue, just some lovely standard Phillips head screws. The board has a gorgeous silkscreen, which explains all the chips, exposed pins, and pads.
The bootloader is unlocked, and all the firmware we build is open source and available to modify. We’ve also built a new website that makes it easy to flash the stock firmware, and in the future, experiment with new firmware. We’ll also be providing the PCB and outer casing files if you want to tinker with those. Openness makes our products better… literally, since our community helps us find and fix bugs.
Why USB?
Before you get in the comments asking about Power-over-Ethernet (PoE)… we totally agree it’s cool, but on this occasion, it’s not the direction we took. Yes, PoE has become easier to use and its performance, if implemented correctly, can be quite good (our testing with Connect ZWA-2 shows a pretty minor speed hit). Connect ZBT-2 is focused solely on ease-of-use and pure performance. That said, there are a lot of PoE fans at the foundation, and product sales help fund development, so who knows, maybe we’ll find a way to please everyone.
Don’t hide it
Most other USB adapters are designed to be hidden away, dangling behind a server cabinet. For one thing, antenna orientation is pretty important, but also cool tech should be on show! We’ve designed Connect ZBT-2 to be proudly displayed, and the top even lights up like a candle – perfect timing for the holidays 🕯️.
It all adds up
Not science, but an interesting before-and-after of just one network, about a 60% increase in direct connections 🤩
Nabu Casa, the commercial partner building all official Home Assistant hardware, has knocked the build of this device out of the park. When you combine every small improvement made to Connect ZBT-2, it adds up to a nice performance improvement, while maintaining its predecessor’s reputation for rock-solid stability. What’s more, every purchase helps support the Open Home Foundation and funds the development of Home Assistant. Upgrading your smart home has never felt so good!
What are you waiting for?
Get the most out of your smart home with an adapter that’s open source at its core, delivers maximum performance, and looks good doing it. Home Assistant Connect ZBT-2 is available today for purchase, and as always, thanks for supporting Home Assistant!
Release Highlights: Although GeForce Game Ready Drivers and NVIDIA Studio Drivers can be installed on supported notebook GPUs, the original equipment manufacturer (OEM) provides certified drivers for your specific notebook on their website. NVIDIA recommends that you check with your notebook OEM for recommended software updates for your notebook.
Game Ready for Call of Duty: Black Ops 7
This new Game Ready Driver provides the best gaming experience for the latest new games supporting DLSS 4 technology including Call of Duty: Black Ops 7. In addition, there is Game Ready support for Anno 117: Pax Romana and Europa Universalis V which feature DLSS Super Resolution.
Fixed Gaming Bugs
F1 25: Performance optimizations when using DLSS Frame Generation [5422722]
Fixed General Bugs
Vulkan apps crash when launched on Core 2 Duo / Core 2 Quad CPUs [5509161]
November is here, and we’ve been hard at work refining some of the main experiences that you interact with every day, and I think you’re going to love what we’ve built.
My personal favorite this release? The brand new target picker. 🎯
It’s one of those changes that seems simple on the surface, but makes such a huge difference in how you build automations. You can finally see exactly what you’re targeting, with full context about which device an entity belongs to and which area it’s in. No more guessing whether you’re controlling the right ceiling light when you have three of them!
But that’s just the beginning. We’re continuing with the automation editor improvements, this time with a completely redesigned dialog for adding triggers, conditions, and actions. It’s cleaner, easier to read, and sets the foundation for some really exciting stuff coming in future releases. 🤫
And speaking of making things clearer, you can now control exactly how entity names appear on your dashboard cards. Want to show just the entity name? The device name? The area? Or combine them? Even if you rename things, your dashboards will stay perfectly in sync. No more manual updates needed!
Oh, and energy dashboard fans will appreciate the new pie chart view for device energy, complete with totals displayed in the corner of every energy card. 🥧
A huge thank you to all the contributors who made this release possible! And a special shout-out to @bramkragten, @JLo, @MindFreeze, @agners, and @piitaya who helped write the release notes this release. Also, @silamon and @GemPolisher for putting effort into tweaking its contents. Thanks to them, these release notes are in great shape. ❤️
A brand new target picker
Have you ever been building an automation and wondered, “Wait, which ceiling light is this?” when you see three entities all named “Ceiling light”? Or tried to figure out how many lights you’re actually controlling when you target an entire floor or area?
We’ve all been there. Until now, the target picker didn’t show you the full picture. You couldn’t see which device an entity belonged to or which area it was assigned to. And when you selected a floor or area as your target, you had no idea how many entities you were actually affecting. This uncertainty meant many of you stuck with targeting individual entities, even though larger targets (like areas and floors) can make your automations much more flexible.
The new target picker changes all that. Now you get full context for everything you’re targeting, and you can see exactly how many entities will be affected by your action.
Want to dig deeper? You can expand any floor, area, or device to see exactly which entities are included and where they’re coming from.
This makes it so much easier to build automations that scale with your home. When you target an area or floor, your automation automatically adapts as you add or remove devices. No more updating your automations every time you add a new light or sensor. Your automations just work, which is exactly how it should be.
A brand new way to add triggers, conditions, and actions in your automations
It’s no secret that we’re currently working hard on making automations easier to create. After the release of the automation sidebar two releases ago, we are now introducing a new dialog to add triggers, conditions, and actions.
The changes are purely cosmetic: the dialog is bigger, so the description of each block is simpler to read, with a two-pane layout to ease both navigation and block selection.
The building blocks (which are used to perform more complex conditions or sequences of actions, such as repeating actions or branching out your sequence into multiple paths) have been moved into the main dialog on a second tab. There is now a single entry point to add something to an automation instead of two, greatly reducing the number of buttons in complex automations.
As mentioned above, these changes are purely cosmetic, for now! But this new dialog is the foundation of what’s coming next, and we cannot wait to present that to you once it finally lands.
Naming entities on your dashboard
A few releases ago, we gave the entity picker a big upgrade by adding more context so you could easily see where each entity belongs (May 2025 release). In this release, we’re bringing that same flexibility to your dashboards.
You can now choose how names appear on your cards: show the entity, device, area, floor, or even combine them. This gives you full control over how your dashboards look and feel. For example, in a dedicated section for a specific device, you might choose to display only the entity name to avoid repeating the device name on every card.
Of course, you can still set a custom name if you want complete control over the text shown.
And the best part? If you rename an entity or device, your dashboards will automatically stay in sync. No more manual edits needed; everything just updates itself.
Energy pie
We’ve added a new layout to the devices energy graph: “pie” 🥧. You can toggle between the regular bar chart and the new pie chart by clicking the icon in the top-right corner.
Doing this made the top-right corner of the other energy cards feel empty, so we used that space to display the total energy for the selected period. For example, if the date picker is set to today, the total solar energy for today will be displayed in the corner of the solar production graph card.
Progress for Home Assistant and Add-on updates
With this release, you can now track the progress of updates to Home Assistant and Add-ons (managed by the Supervisor)! The progress includes the stages of downloading and unpacking, so the time required will vary based on your internet speed, CPU performance, and system load. As a result, the progress is not reflected as perfectly linear, but it does still provide a good estimate of how far along the update is.
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:
Actron Air, added by @kclif9
The Actron Air integration allows you to control Actron Air air conditioning controllers in Home Assistant.
Fing, added by @Lorenzo-Gasparini
The Fing integration provides network scanning, device detection, and presence monitoring capabilities using the Fing platform.
Firefly III, added by @erwindouna
Integrate with the Firefly III project, a free open source personal finance manager with full transaction management, budgets, categories, and reports.
iNELS, added by @epdevlab
Integrate with the iNELS smart home system to manage lighting, heating, and automation components for enhanced home control.
Lunatone Gateway, added by @MoonDevLT
Integrate with Lunatone Gateway, enabling control and monitoring of DALI lighting systems through Lunatone’s DALI gateway interface.
OpenRGB, added by @felipecrs
The OpenRGB integration allows unified control of RGB lighting across various hardware brands and devices through the OpenRGB project.
Noteworthy improvements to existing integrations
It’s 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:
The SwitchBot integration now supports garage door openers. Thanks @zerzhang!
@tr4nt0r added support for notifications to the Habitica integration. Nice work!
The VegeHub integration now has support for switches to control actuators. Cool @Thulrus!
The Portainer integration gained support for switches, buttons, and sensors, so you can control and monitor all your containers! Well done @erwindouna!
The Volvo integration can now show the location of your car and has buttons to control it. We got @thomasddn to thank for that!
Your Control4 climate devices (for example, thermostats) are now supported in Home Assistant. Thanks @davidrecordon!
Support for controlling Growatt MIN/TLX inverters was added, and you can now enable grid charge! Thanks @johanzander!
@hanwg added event entities to the Telegram bot integration. You can use these entities to more easily automate when you get a message, for example! Cool!
The Xbox integration now has support for images! It shows an image of the game you are currently playing, the avatar, and the Gamerpic for yourself and your friends. Thanks @tr4nt0r!
@AndyTempel added support for solar production forecasting to Victron Remote Monitoring, so you can now use it in the energy dashboard to see a forecast of how much solar energy you will produce today!
The Shelly integration now supports climate and valve entities. Thanks @thecode!
@starkillerOG improved the Reolink integration; it can now report bicycles and the type of person, vehicle, and animal. So you now know if a man or a woman is detected on your cameras. Great work!
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 a YAML configuration. We keep moving more integrations to the UI, making them more accessible for everyone to set up and use.
The following integration is now available via the Home Assistant UI:
One thing we are incredibly proud of in Home Assistant is our integration quality scale. This scale helps us and our contributors to ensure integrations are of high quality, maintainable, and provide the best possible user experience.
This release, we celebrate several integrationsIntegrations connect and integrate Home Assistant with your devices, services, and more. [Learn more] that have improved their quality scale:
This is a huge achievement for these integrations and their maintainers. The effort and dedication required to reach these quality levels is significant, as it involves extensive testing, documentation, error handling, and often complete rewrites of parts of the integration.
A big thank you to all the contributors involved! 👏
Farewell to the following
The following integrationsIntegrations connect and integrate Home Assistant with your devices, services, and more. [Learn more] are no longer available as of this release:
Vultr has been removed. The integration has not been working since the API v1 that it used was taken offline in September 2023.
IBM Watson IoT Platform has been removed. On September 8, 2020, IBM announced the withdrawal of its support for the IBM Watson IoT Platform and successively discontinued all versions until September 30, 2022.
Plum Lightpad has been removed. Their servers have been shut down, which made the integration non-functional.
Other noteworthy changes
There are many more improvements in this release; here are some of the other noteworthy changes:
@thecode added group support for valves, so you can group multiple valves into one.
Searching in data tables got a lot better; you can now search over multiple columns at once. Thanks @wendevlin!
Energy graphs now show the total of the period in the top-right corner. Great addition, @MindFreeze!
Thanks to @karwosts, you can now use images from any integration providing images for your dashboard background.
Improved logging efficiency
If you’re using the Home Assistant Operating System, we have some great news for you! We’ve made our logging system way more efficient. 🚀
You might not realize it, but all those Home Assistant logs you can find in Settings > System > Logs were actually being stored on your disk twice. 🙈
Home Assistant OS keeps all logs for everything, including Home Assistant itself, in a very efficient way, even across restarts! But on top of that, we were also writing them to a log file in your Home Assistant configuration folder.
That’s not ideal. It takes twice the disk space, but more importantly, it causes unnecessary wear on your storage medium, which means it will fail sooner. This is especially concerning if you’re using an SD card in, for example, a Raspberry Pi.
As of this release, we’ve stopped writing logs to the configuration folder. You can still view and download all logs from the Home Assistant settings page, just like before. We’ve adapted that page to read the logs from the OS directly instead.
Tip
Are you more into the command line? No worries, our Home Assistant CLI has you covered. Check it out by running ha core logs --help for more information.
The new Home Dashboard keeps getting smarter
Following the improvements introduced in the latest releases, this release makes the experience even smoother and more intuitive.
We’ve simplified and reorganized things:
Suggested entities and favorites are now combined into a single, smart section, showing you what’s most relevant in one place.
Areas are now grouped by floor, making it easier to browse and understand your home’s layout at a glance.
The Lights, Climate, and Security views have been moved to their own dedicated dashboards, so you can access them directly under Settings > Dashboards. These dashboards now also include devices that aren’t assigned to any specific area, ensuring nothing is overlooked.
These improvements bring everything together more naturally, helping your Home Dashboard feel less like a setup and more like a true reflection of your home.
Patch releases
We will also release patch releases for Home Assistant 2025.11 in November.
These patch releases only contain bug fixes. Our goal is to release a patch
release once a week, aiming for Friday.
2025.11.1 - November 7
Improve scan interval for Airthings Corentium Home 2 (@LaStrada - #155694)
Remove @progress_step decorator from ZHA and Hardware integration (@puddly - #155867)
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, 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 on more places you can go.
Are you more into email? Sign up for the Open Home Foundation Newsletter to get the latest on features, things happening in our community, and other projects that support the 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:
Set assumed state to group if at least one child has assumed state
Previously, the group’s assumed state was always false, regardless of the state of its child entities.
This has now changed:
The group will now have an assumed state of true if at least one child entity has an assumed state.
This makes the group’s assumed state reflect the uncertainty of its children more accurately.
These domains have been added: switch, fan, light, and cover.
The mealie integration now requires Mealie version 2 or later.
Mealie version 1 is no longer supported. Version 2 was released in October 2024, so over a year ago. Given the differences between versions 1 and 2, we are no longer able to support or test backward compatibility with version 1.
The tilt position of motion_blinds devices has been corrected to align with the Home Assistant standards.
The new tilt position will be: 0 = closed/covering the window opening, 100 = open/letting light through.
The previous tilt position can be converted to the new tilt position as follows:
new = 100 - old
current_tilt_position = 100 -> 0
current_tilt_position = 75 -> 25
current_tilt_position = 50 -> 50
current_tilt_position = 25 -> 75
current_tilt_position = 0 -> 100
open_cover_tilt -> close_cover_tilt
close_cover_tilt -> open_cover_tilt
Any automations concerning Motion Blinds devices that use the current_tilt_position attribute or use tilt open/close will need to be adjusted.
The mobile_app integration, which supports the iPhone and Android companion apps, now handles zone-only updates better. When your companion app sends just the zone name (not the exact coordinates), the device tracker will show the zone’s friendly name.
The person entity now shows the zone’s friendly name (not its object ID) for custom zones. This might break existing automations that trigger on a person’s state.
As an example, if you have a zone named zone.kids_school with the friendly name School:
Before this change, the state of the corresponding person and device_tracker entities would be kids_school when the “Location Sent” in the companion app was set to send “Zone Name Only” and School when it was set to “Exact”.
After this change, the state of the corresponding person and device_tracker entities will be School for both the “Location Sent” settings in the companion app.
The discovery of Renault functionality was previously based on assumptions that may have created invalid and non-functional entities.
These will no longer be created.
The Traccar integration has been updated to use a more secure API Token for authentication. This is a required, one-time breaking change to align with Traccar’s security recommendations and ensure the integration continues to work.
This release migrates the integration away from the older username/password method, ensuring continued stability and security for all users while also allowing users with SSO-based setups to use the integration.
When you update Home Assistant, the existing Traccar integration will need to be re-authenticated:
Generate an API Token on your Traccar server (you’ll find this option in your Traccar server’s user settings).
Go to Settings > Devices & services > Traccar Server.
Click “Reconfigure” and enter your new API Token when prompted.
Once you’ve done this, your Traccar devices and entities will work exactly as they did before.
The Account tier and Gold tenure sensors have been retired, as they no longer receive updates following the transition from Xbox Live Gold to Xbox Game Pass. Additionally, the In party and In multiplayer binary sensors have been removed, since they’ve been non-functional for quite some time.
If you are a custom integration developer and want to learn about changes and new features available for your integration, be sure to follow our developer blog. The following changes are the most notable for this release:
We’re delighted to welcome ELTAKO to the Works with Home Assistant program! ELTAKO’s robust relay switches have formed the blueprint for smart building and smart home control across Europe for decades – and happen to be the first Matter relays to join the program.
You may never have seen one of ELTAKO’s little blue devices before, and that’s the point. They usually sit quietly behind walls, furniture and in distribution boards, doing their jobs without interfering with interiors. Now, thanks to their joining the Works with Home Assistant program, you can bring these professional-level installations to your own smart set-up.
Out of the blue and into the open home
ELTAKO has been a well-known name in the German building trade and throughout Europe for more than 75 years. In fact, the name itself derives from ‘ELektrischer TAst-KOntakt’ (electrical push-button contact) in a nod to ELTAKO’s first impulse switch innovation that started it all back in 1949.
For those of us who haven’t been around quite that long, an impulse switch (also known as a latching or step relay) toggles a circuit on or off each time it receives an electrical pulse. Instead of requiring constant power, it ‘remembers’ its state until the next signal. As well as using less energy, this means it’s possible to control a single light or system from multiple switches without complex wiring – with obvious advantages for the smart home. So synonymous is the brand with this type of device that impulse switches are still referred to as ‘ELTAKOS’ by the professional electricians and engineers who use them.
Because of this innovative spirit, it’s perhaps no surprise that over the years ELTAKO has broadened its range to a full ecosystem of sensors, dimmers, and energy meters – all based on wired or wireless technologies, such as RS485, EnOcean, Modbus or DALI, which are built for longevity and local control, rather than cloud dependency.
True to that philosophy, ELTAKO has embraced open standards such as Matter, ensuring its products speak the same languages that support our mission to keep homes open, private, and locally controlled.
"As a manufacturer that has relied on open standards like Matter and EnOcean from the very beginning, joining the Works with Home Assistant program is a natural step for us. This allows us to make our products accessible to an even larger community and enables our customers to integrate them seamlessly into diverse smart home environments. We are convinced that the future lies in openness and interoperability – which is why we deliberately embrace partnerships that offer users long-term investment security and maximum flexibility."
- Kai Sepp, Sales Director North & West Europe at ELTAKO
Devices
ELTAKO’s integration with Home Assistant starts with items from the 64 series, which was awarded the SmartHome Germany Award this year. This is the brand’s line that uses Matter over Wi-Fi, showing just how serious they are about interoperability moving forward.
We were also lucky enough to see the ELTAKO team at ISE Barcelona this year, and we’ll be catching up with them again at the Connectivity Standards Alliance (CSA) meeting in November, also in Barca. Since CSA certification is a must for brands joining the program, it’s great to see ELTAKO so engaged.
As always, all the devices below have gone through our rigorous certification process to ensure they meet our standards for performance, reliability and open-home compatibility.
These Matter devices that work over Wi-Fi are all about giving you freedom to control your current hardware – switch lights on and off and dim them automatically – without replacing it all. The shading actuator is particularly useful in continental Europe, where shutters are more common. It has a good energy-saving use case to reduce the need for air conditioning, since automatic shutters help keep your home cool in summer and warm in winter, potentially reducing utility bills. This also reflects ELTAKO’s wider focus on sustainability – from low-power devices to recyclable packaging and shipping materials.
In case you didn’t know, when using Matter devices with Home Assistant you have local control with no need for external internet for day-to-day operation. If you do want to access your dashboard while you’re away from home, using Home Assistant Cloud is a simple, secure, way to do this (and help fund Home Assistant’s development in the process!).
Professional quality, support for all
Like all brands within the Works with Home Assistant program, ELTAKO isn’t just adding our little blue logo to their little blue products – they’re joining our community. That means active engagement and shared expertise to help everyone get the best from their devices. Because ELTAKO’s products are built to professional standards, installation can sometimes require a qualified electrician – especially for wired set-ups. That’s where ELTAKO’s directory of system partners and specialists in many regions, as well as a tech support hotline, can help you find the installation advice you need, whether you’re a complete novice or electrical enthusiast.
With ELTAKO on board, we hope Home Assistant users will have further flexibility to explore new devices and experiment with different set-ups, as well as open up more ways to mix and match products to build a professional-standard smart home.
FAQs
Q: If I have a device that is not listed under ‘Works with Home Assistant’ does this mean it’s not supported?
A: No! It just means that it hasn’t gone through a testing schedule with our team or doesn’t fit the requirements of the program. It might function perfectly well but be added to the testing schedule later down the road, or it might work under a different connectivity type that we don’t currently test under the program.
Q: OK, so what’s the point of the Works with program?
A: It highlights the devices we know work well with Home Assistant and the brands that make a long-term commitment to keeping support for these devices going. The certification agreement specifies that the devices must have key functionality within Home Assistant, operate locally without the need for cloud, and will continue to do so long-term.
Q: How were these devices tested?
A: All devices in this list were tested using a standard HA Green Hub and with our certified Matter Integration. If you have another set-up that’s not a problem, but we test against these as they are the most effective way for our team to certify within our ecosystem.
Q: Will you be adding more ELTAKO devices to the program?
A: Why not! We’re thrilled to foster a close relationship with the team at ELTAKO to work together on any upcoming releases, or add in further products that are not yet listed here. We’re really excited about what ELTAKO are doing with EnOcean and green power generally, but we haven’t tested or certified any of these products yet. We don’t have this protocol as part of the Works with Home Assistant certification (even if people are already using EnOcean in Home Assistant), and could explore how we certify these kinds of products.
Welcome to Voice Chapter 11 🎉, our long-running series where we share all the key developments in Open Voice. In this chapter, we will tell you how our assistant can now control more things in the home, in multiple languages at the same time, all while not talking your ear off. What’s more, our list of supported languages has grown again with several languages that big tech’s voice assistants won’t support. Join us for a deeper look at this voice chapter in our livestream on Wednesday, October 29. It’s been a couple of months, we’ve been building up our voice, and now have a lot to say, so let’s get to it!
Multilingual assistants
Our original goal for the Year of Voice back in 2023 was to “let users control Home Assistant in their own language”. We’ve come a long way towards that goal, and really broadened our language support. We’ve also provided options that allow users to customize voice assistant pipelines with the services that best support their language, whether run locally or in the cloud of their choice. But what if you speak two languages within your home?
For some time, users have been able to create Assist voice assistant pipelines for different languages in Home Assistant, but interacting with the different pipelines has either required multiple voice satellite devices (one per language) or some kind of automation trigger to switch languages.
Since even the tiniest voice satellite hardware we support is capable of running multiple wake words now, we’ve added support in 2025.10 for configuring up to two wake words and voice assistant pipelines on each Assist satellite! This makes it straightforward to support dual language households by assigning different wake words to different languages. For example, “Okay Nabu” could run an English voice assistant pipeline while “Hey Jarvis” is used for French.
Multiple wake words and pipelines can be used for other purposes as well. Want to keep your local and cloud-based voice assistants separate? Easy! Assign a wake word like “Okay Nabu” to a fully local pipeline using our own Speech-to-Phrase and Piper. This pipeline would be limited to basic voice commands, but would not require anything to run outside of your Home Assistant server. Alongside this, “Hey Jarvis” could be assigned to a different pipeline that uses external services like Home Assistant Cloud and an LLM to answer questions or perform complex actions.
We’d love to hear feedback on how you plan to use multiple wake words and voice assistants in your home!
Voice without AI
The whole world is engulfed in hype about AI and adding it to all the things — we’re not exactly quiet about the cool stuff we’re doing with AI. While powering your voice assistants with AI/LLMs makes them much more flexible and powerful, it comes at a cost: paying to use cloud-based services like OpenAI and Google, or pricey hardware and energy to run local models via systems like Ollama. We started building our voice assistant before AI was a thing, and thus it was designed without requiring it. We continue to make great progress towards delivering a solid voice experience to users who want to keep their home AI free — keeping AI opt-in only and not required are guidelines we follow.
Opening/closing and locking/unlocking doors, windows, shades, etc
Adjusting the brightness and color of lights
Running scripts and activating scenes
Controlling media players and adjusting their volume
Playing music on supported media players via Music Assistant
Starting/stopping/pausing multiple timers, optionally with names
Adding/completing items on to-do lists
Delaying a command for later (“turn off lights in 5 minutes”)…
…and more!
Want to include your own voice commands? You can quickly add custom sentences to an automation, allowing you to take any action and tailor the response.
The easiest way to get started is with Home Assistant Voice Preview Edition, our small and easy-to-start with Voice Assistant hardware. This, combined with a Home Assistant Cloud subscription, allows any Home Assistant system to quickly handle voice commands, as our privacy-focused cloud processes the speech-to-text (turning your voice into text for Home Assistant) and text-to-speech (turning Home Assistant’s response back into voice). This is all without the use of LLMs, and supports the development of Home Assistant 😎.
For users wanting to keep all voice processing local, we offer add-ons for both speech-to-text and text-to-speech:
All of this together shows just how much can be done without needing to include AI, even though it can do some pretty amazing things. And we’re continuing to close the gap with the features highlighted in this blog post, including multilingual assistants, improved sentence matching, and the ability to ask questions from automations.
More intents
Intents are what connect a voice command to the right actions in Home Assistant to get something done. While the end result is often simple, such as turning on a light, intents are designed as a “do what I mean” layer above the level of basic actions. In the previous section, we listed the sorts of voice commands that intents enable, from turning on lights to adding items to your to-do list. Over the last three years, we’ve been progressively adding new and more complex intents.
Recently, we’ve added three new intents to make Assist even better. To control media players, you can now set the relative volume with voice commands like “turn up the volume” or “decrease TV volume by 25%”. This adds to the existing volume intent, which allows you to set the absolute volume level like “set TV volume to 50%”.
Next, it’s now possible to set the speed of a fan by percentage. For example, “set desk fan speed to 50%” or even “set fans to 50%” to target all fans in the current area. Make sure you expose the fans you want Assist to be able to control.
Lastly, you can now tell the kids to “get off your lawn” because your robot is going to mow it! Making use of the lawn_mower integration, your voice assistant can now understand commands like “mow the lawn” and “stop the mower”. Paired with the existing smart vacuum commands, you may never need to lift a finger again to keep things clean and tidy.
Ask question
Picture this: you come home from work and, as you enter the living room, your voice assistant asks what type of music you’d like to hear while preparing dinner. As the music starts to play, it mentions you left the garage door open and wants to know if you’d like it closed. After dinner, as you’re hanging out on the couch, your voice assistant informs you that the temperature outside is lower than your AC setting and asks for confirmation to turn it off and open the windows.
Surely you’d need a powerful LLM to perform such wizardry, right? With the Ask Question action, this can all be done locally using Assist and a few automations!
Within an automation, the Ask Question action allows you to announce a message on a voice satellite, match the response against a list of possible answers, and take an action depending on the user’s answer. While answers can be open-ended, such as a musical artist or genre, limiting the possible answers allows you to use the fully local Speech-to-Phrase for recognizing speech without an internet connection.
Improved sentence matching
Assist was designed to run fast and fully offline on hardware like the Raspberry Pi 4 for many different languages. It works by matching the text of your voice commands against sentence templates, such as “turn on the {name}” or “turn off lights in the {area}”. While this is very fast and straightforward to translate to many languages, it can also be inflexible, resulting in the dreaded “Sorry, I couldn’t understand that” or other errors.
Starting in Home Assistant 2025.9, we’ve included an improved “fuzzy matcher” that is much better at handling extra words or alternative phrasings of our supported voice commands.
The fuzzy matcher is pre-trained on the existing sentence templates, so we will be able to use it for all of our supported languages. However, this is initially only available for the English language and we’re working to determine the best way to enable this for other languages.
Non-verbal confirmations
After a voice command, Assist responds with a short confirmation like “Turned on the lights” or “Brightness set”. This lets you know it understood your command and took the appropriate actions. However, if you’re in the same room as the voice assistant, this confirmation is redundant; you can see or hear that appropriate actions were taken.
Starting with Home Assistant 2025.10, Assist will detect if the voice command’s actions all took place within the same area as the satellite device. If so, a short confirmation “beep” will be played instead of the full verbal response. Besides being less verbose, this also serves as a reminder that your voice command only affected the current area.
Non-verbal confirmations will not be used in voice assistant pipelines with LLMs, since the user may have specific instructions in their prompt, such as “respond like a pirate”, and we wouldn’t want to deprive you of a fun response, me mateys 🏴☠️.
Text-to-speech streaming
Large language models (LLMs) can be especially verbose in their responses, and we quickly realized that this exposed a weakness in Home Assistant’s text-to-speech (TTS) implementation. For most of its life, TTS in Home Assistant has required the full response to be generated before any audio can be played. This meant a lot of waiting for multi-paragraph LLM responses, especially with local TTS systems like Piper.
Fixing this required an overhaul of the TTS architecture to allow for streaming. Instead of waiting for the entire audio message to be synthesized before playing, we enabled TTS services within Home Assistant to work with chunks of text (input) and audio (output). As chunks of text are streamed in from an LLM, the TTS service can synthesize audio chunks and send them out to be played immediately.
To demonstrate the benefit of streaming, we asked an LLM to “tell me a long story about a frog” and timed how long it took to start speaking the (multi-paragraph) response. Without streaming, both Home Assistant Cloud and Piper took more than five seconds to respond! This is long enough to make you wonder if your voice assistant heard you 😄 With streaming enabled, both TTS services took about half a second to start talking back. A 10x improvement in latency!
New Piper voices
Piper, our homegrown text-to-speech tool, continues to grow with support for several new languages! These new voices were trained from publicly available voice datasets, and are available now in the Piper add-on:
If your language is missing from Piper, or you don’t like the existing voices for your language, we’re always looking for volunteers to contribute their voices! Please contact us at voice@openhomefoundation.org
Conclusion
In the past three years, we’ve made great strides with Home Assistant Voice on both the hardware and software fronts. Users today have a wide variety of choices when it comes to voice: from fully local to using the latest and greatest AI to power their smart homes. The great thing about our experimentation with AI is that there are no investors looking for returns, fake money, or “rug-pulls”. We do everything for you, our community. We’re in this for the long haul, and want this all to be your choice, keeping you in full control of whether you want to use this technology or avoid the hype completely.
Much of the advanced work done on voice is only possible with the support of our community, especially those who subscribe to Home Assistant Cloud or anyone who has purchased our Home Assistant Voice Preview Edition (both great ways to get started with voice).
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