Home Assistant 2025.8! 🎉 In most parts of the world, summer mode is in full effect! ☀️ Many at the Open Home Foundation and many of our contributors are enjoying a well-deserved break from work and open source. I hope that you are maybe enjoying a well-deserved break as well! 🏖️ Summer breaks or not, we are currently very busy with our next **product launch**! In case you have missed it, this upcoming Wednesday, August 13 (12:00 PM PT, 3:00 PM ET, 21:00 CEST), we will have an extra live stream to announce the next big thing in the Home Assistant Connect series! Be sure to head over to YouTube to hit the reminder button so you don’t miss it! **Z-Wave is not dead!** 🌊 Alright, on to the release! We keep moving during summer and are excited to bring you the August release of Home Assistant! Let’s start with my personal favorite of this release: The improved experience when viewing a group, for example, a group helper with lights. 💡 When viewing such a group entity, you can now control the individual members of that group directly in that dialog. Super useful! I’m pretty sure that will be used a lot in our house. But as the release title suggests, this release brings in an important foundation for new AI opportunities in Home Assistant: **AI Tasks**. Think of it as a way to delegate tasks to AI and get back the result of that task in a structured way so it can be used. Sounds vague? Dive into the release notes below! Enjoy the release! ../Frenck * AI in Home Assistant in 2025 * Streaming Text-to-Speech for Home Assistant Cloud * Integrate AI into your workflow using AI Task * Work faster with Suggest with AI buttons * Area dashboard improvements * Integrations * New integrations * Noteworthy improvements to existing integrations * Integration quality scale achievements * Now available to set up from the UI * Other noteworthy changes * Control individual members of a group * Weekdays in time trigger * Energy flow on your energy dashboard * Patch releases * 2025.8.1 - August 11 * 2025.8.2 - August 15 * 2025.8.3 - August 21 * Need help? Join the community! * Backward-incompatible changes * All changes ## AI in Home Assistant in 2025 We introduced our first AI integration in Home Assistant 2023.2 where users could let OpenAI handle their interactions with Home Assistant Voice. Since that time, AI has seen a big surge in popularity within the Home Assistant community for _all kinds_ of use cases. Funny notifications when the laundry is done, analyzing what’s happening on a camera or skipping the song when AI determines it’s a country song 😅. Though AI gets many people excited, there are still people who would prefer not to have this technology in their smart homes. We want to accommodate everyone’s choices, whether that’s to use AI or not. These features won’t appear unless you set up an AI integration and configure some specific settings. Last year, we sat down to determine how all these use cases, all complicated to achieve, could be made accessible to everyone. The first thing that came out of this was integration sub-entries, which we shipped in the last release. It allows users to configure their Ollama server or API key for OpenAI _once_ , and then create many different agents using different models or configuration underneath. In this release we’re building two new things you can optionally enable via these new sub-entries for AI integrations: _AI tasks_ and _Suggest with AI_. We’re also introducing a new integration, OpenRouter, which is a unified LLM interface giving access to over 400 extra LLM models. Big thanks to our AI community contributors: @AllenPorter, @shulyaka, @tronikos, @IvanLH, and @joostlek! ### Streaming Text-to-Speech for Home Assistant Cloud When you use Home Assistant Voice to talk to an AI, you can do a lot more than just control your home. LLMs can summarize the state of your home, and when using LLMs from Google and OpenAI, they can search the web to answer your questions with up-to-date information. This is great, but these answers can become quite long. Previously, voice responses wouldn’t begin until the AI had finished generating the entire answer, so longer replies meant a longer wait before anything was read aloud. When a user waits for Home Assistant Voice to respond, long wait times really hurt the experience. We have overhauled Home Assistant so our Text-to-Speech system can start generating the response audio before the full response is done generating. Last release we launched this for Piper, our local Text-to-Speech system. In this release we’re making this available to the voices included in Home Assistant Cloud – the best way of supporting the Home Assistant project. This improvement will especially benefit users who use local AI (which can be slow in generating responses) or users who play long announcements on their speakers. ### Integrate AI into your workflow using AI Task AI Task is a new integration that allows you to generate data using AI. After you add the “AI Task” sub-entry in your AI of choice, the entity will appear in the integration. This allows you to attach files or cameras and ask it what is happening. The output can either be given in text or formatted in a data structure of your choice. This is all accessible from the new `ai_task.generate_data` action, which can be embedded in automations, scripts, and template entities. Below is an example of a template entity that updates every five minutes and counts the number of chickens in the coop. Example inspired by this blog post. template: - triggers: - trigger: homeassistant event: start - trigger: time_pattern minutes: "/5" actions: - action: ai_task.generate_data data: task_name: Count chickens instructions: >- This is the inside of my goose coop. How many birds (chickens, geese, and ducks) are inside the coop? structure: birds: selector: number: attachments: media_content_id: media-source://camera/camera.chicken_coop media_content_type: image/jpeg response_variable: result sensor: - name: "Chickens" state: "{{ result.data.birds }}" state_class: total To help get started with AI task, we’ve prepared a blueprint to analyze camera footage: ### Work faster with Suggest with AI buttons The AI Task integration has one extra feature under its belt: default entities. You can go to **Settings** > **System** > **General** and configure what AI Task entity you want to use as the default. With a default set, you no longer have to specify an entity when generating data, making it easier to share blueprints. Setting a default also does more: When a default is configured, and only then, a new type of button will start showing up in different places in Home Assistant: This button is not visible by default and will only appear if you enable it in the “AI suggestions” settings. For this release, the button has been added to the save dialog for automations and scripts. It helps users come up with a name, description, category, and label, while taking into account your current labels and other automation/script names. Keep in mind that generating this text sends the full contents of the automation or script, along with the names of your other automations/scripts and labels, to the LLM. So, this may be a task you will want to relegate to your shiny new local LLM. ## Area dashboard improvements We’ve added a small improvement to the areas dashboard based on your feedback. You can now choose to show the first camera in an area, or its image or icon, in the area dashboard editor. It’s a simple way to make certain area cards stand out a bit more—especially handy if you want quicker visual access to specific spaces. ## 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: * **OpenRouter** , added by @joostlek Access over 400 different large language models through the OpenRouter API, providing a unified interface for AI integrations in your automations. * **Ubiquiti UISP airOS** , added by @CoMPaTech Monitor and manage airOS devices through their local API, providing performance metrics and device status information of your wireless point-to-point infrastructure. * **Uptime Kuma** , added by @tr4nt0r Monitor the uptime and status of your services and websites with Uptime Kuma, keeping track of your infrastructure health directly in Home Assistant. * **Volvo** , added by @thomasddn Connect your Volvo vehicle to Home Assistant for remote monitoring of battery status, location, and other vehicle information. 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: * **Bauknecht** , provided by Whirlpool Appliances, added by @thost96 * **Z-Box Hub** , provided by Fibaro, added by @rappenze ### Noteworthy improvements to existing integrations It is not just new integrationsIntegrations connect and integrate Home Assistant with your devices, services, and more. [Learn more] that have been added; existing integrations are also being constantly improved. Here are some of the noteworthy changes to existing integrations: * The PlayStation Network integration received major updates from @tr4nt0r and @JackJPowell, adding sensors to track your and your friends’ online status, currently playing game, and last online time. Also a binary sensor for your PS Plus subscription status, and a notification platform. PS Vita is now supported as well! * Reolink cameras got multiple enhancements from @starkillerOG: WiFi signal sensors for IP cameras, post-recording time controls, and pre-recording entities. * The AI Task and OpenAI Conversation integrations now support camera and file attachments, thanks to @balloob. * YoLink device support expanded with @matrixd2 adding support for the YS8009, YS7A12, and YS6614 devices. * @ricohageman added dew point sensors to the Awair integration. * @bieniu enhanced both GIOS and IMGW PIB integrations with new sensors, including water flow monitoring for IMGW PIB. * WiZ now supports fans, added by @arturpragacz. * SwitchBot Cloud gained fan platform support from @XiaoLing-git. * Velux windows with rain sensors can now detect precipitation, thanks to @wollew. * SmartThings added vacuum support, implemented by @jennoian. * AmberElectric now provides forecast services, added by @madpilot. * OSO Energy got holiday mode services and custom away mode functionality from @osohotwateriot. * Nord Pool gained normalized price indices service, thanks to @gjohansson-ST. * Matter continues to expand with microwave oven and temperature control device support from @lboue. * @noahhusby added play media support to Russound RIO. * Pi-hole users can now leverage API v6 functionality, enabled by @HarvsG. * Immich users can now upload files directly through a new action, implemented by @mib1185. * KNX now includes a new group monitor with improved filtering and search options, thanks to @philippwaller. ### 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: * **5 integrations reached platinum** 🏆 * AirGradient, thanks to @joostlek * inexogy, thanks to @jpbede * EHEIM Digital, thanks to @autinerd * Pegel Online, thanks to @mib1185 * Tankerkönig, thanks to @mib1185 * **3 integrations reached silver** 🥈 * Amazon Alexa Devices, thanks to @chemelli74 * Homee, thanks to @Taraman17 * Mealie, thanks to @andrew-codechimp * **2 integrations reached bronze** 🥉 * Onkyo, thanks to @arturpragacz * Ring, thanks to @sdb9696 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: * **Datadog** , done by @avedor ## Other noteworthy changes There are many more improvements in this release; here are some of the other noteworthy changes: * Home Assistant’s interface has received a refresh for better accessibility! The primary color and button colors have been updated to meet WCAG AA accessibility standards, improving contrast and readability throughout the interface. All buttons have been redesigned with distinct styles, sizes, and visual priority variants, making it much easier to distinguish between primary, secondary, and less prominent actions. This marks the beginning of a broader effort to update other UI components for improved accessibility and consistency across Home Assistant. * @mib1185 added a new device class for **absolute humidity** with support for both sensor and number 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]. Nice! * Group management was improved by @piitaya, who added the ability to reorder members within a group, making it easier to organize your device groups exactly how you want them. Thanks! * System diagnostics was extended by @balloob with the addition of a device analytics dump download feature. Awesome! * The History Stats integrationIntegrations connect and integrate Home Assistant with your devices, services, and more. Learn more] now includes a preview in the options flow, thanks to [@karwosts. This makes it easier to configure your history statistics. * The Template integrationIntegrations connect and integrate Home Assistant with your devices, services, and more. Learn more] received a massive update from [@Petro31! Here’s what’s new: * Trigger-based numeric sensors can now be set to unknown state * The cover, fan, light, lock, and vacuum platforms are now supported in the UI * Availability templates are now supported in the UI for all available platforms * Preview entity has been added to the UI for alarm control panel and select platforms * Template locks now support the opening state * The alarm control panel, fan, light, lock, switch, and vacuum platforms now support all optimistic YAML modes ### Control individual members of a group Groups are a great way to control multiple 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] at once, but sometimes you want to control individual members of a group. So, for this release, @piitaya and @MindFreeze improved the entity information dialog to show the individual members of a light and cover group, allowing you to control them directly from that dialog. Super useful! ### Weekdays in time trigger The time trigger is already very useful, but @hmmbob had a feature request that could improve it even more. He suggested adding the ability to specify weekdays in the time trigger, allowing users to create automations that only trigger at a specific time on specific days of the week. This feature has been implemented in this release, allowing you to specify the weekdays in the time trigger. This is especially useful for automations that need to run on specific days, such as weekdays or weekends. ### Energy flow on your energy dashboard The Home Assistant energy dashboard is great, but as of this release it’s even a little better! Based on the Sankey Chart custom card, @MindFreeze added a new energy flow visualization for the energy dashboard, which shows exactly where your energy is coming from and where it is going to. Really cool addition to the energy dashboard @MindFreeze! ## Patch releases We will also release patch releases for Home Assistant 2025.8 in August. These patch releases only contain bug fixes. Our goal is to release a patch release once a week, aiming for Friday. ### 2025.8.1 - August 11 * Make Tuya complex type handling explicit (@epenet - #149677) * Fix Enigma2 startup hang (@BlackBadPinguin - #149756) * Fix dialog enhancement switch for Sonos Arc Ultra (@PeteRager - #150116) * Bump ZHA to 0.0.67 (@puddly - #150132) * Bump airOS to 0.2.6 improving device class matching more devices (@CoMPaTech - #150134) * Handle HusqvarnaWSClientError (@Thomas55555 - #150145) * Fix Progettihwsw config flow (@gaspa85 - #150149) * Bump imgw_pib to version 1.5.3 (@bieniu - #150178) * Fix description of `button.press` action (@NoRi2909 - #150181) * Migrate unique_id only if monitor_id is present in Uptime Kuma (@tr4nt0r - #150197) * Silence vacuum battery deprecation for built in integrations (@MartinHjelmare - #150204) * Bump ZHA to 0.0.68 (@puddly - #150208) * Bump hass-nabucasa from 0.111.1 to 0.111.2 (@ludeeus - #150209) * Fix JSON serialization for ZHA diagnostics download (@puddly - #150210) * Ignore MQTT vacuum battery warning (@MartinHjelmare - #150211) * Handle Unifi Protect BadRequest exception during API key creation (@RaHehl - #150223) * Fix Tibber coordinator ContextVar warning (@MartinHjelmare - #150229) * Fix handing for zero volume error in Squeezebox (@peteS-UK - #150265) * Fix error on startup when no Apps or Radio plugins are installed for Squeezebox (@peteS-UK - #150267) * Volvo: fix missing charging power options (@thomasddn - #150272) * Constraint num2words to 0.5.14 (@edenhaus - #150276) * Volvo: fix distance to empty battery (@thomasddn - #150278) * Add GPT-5 support (@Shulyaka - #150281) * Volvo: Skip unsupported API fields (@thomasddn - #150285) * Remove misleading “the” from Launch Library configuration (@NoRi2909 - #150288) * Set suggested display precision on Volvo energy/fuel consumption sensors (@steinmn - #150296) * Bump airOS to 0.2.7 supporting firmware 8.7.11 (@CoMPaTech - #150298) * Update knx-frontend to 2025.8.9.63154 (@philippwaller - #150323) * Update frontend to 20250811.0 (@bramkragten - #150404) * Handle empty electricity RAW sensors in Tuya (@epenet - #150406) * Lower Z-Wave firmware check delay (@MartinHjelmare - #150411) * Fix issue with Tuya suggested unit (@epenet - #150414) ### 2025.8.2 - August 15 * Add pymodbus to package constraints (@epenet - #150420) * Fix enphase_envoy non existing via device warning at first config. (@catsmanac - #149010) * Handle non-streaming TTS case correctly (@synesthesiam - #150218) * Pi_hole - Account for auth succeeding when it shouldn’t (@HarvsG - #150413) * Bump habiticalib to version 0.4.2 (@tr4nt0r - #150417) * Fix optimistic set to false for template entities (@Petro31 - #150421) * Fix error of the Powerfox integration in combination with the new Powerfox FLOW adapter (@DavidCraftDev - #150429) * Bump python-snoo to 0.7.0 (@kevin-david - #150434) * Fix brightness command not sent when in white color mode (@wedsa5 - #150439) * Bump cookidoo-api to 0.14.0 (@miaucl - #150450) * Fix YoLink valve state when device running in class A mode (@matrixd2 - #150456) * Additional Fix error on startup when no Apps or Radio plugins are installed for Squeezebox (@peteS-UK - #150475) * Fix re-auth flow for Volvo integration (@thomasddn - #150478) * Improve Z-Wave manual config flow step description (@MartinHjelmare - #150479) * Add missing boost2 code for Miele hobs (@astrandb - #150481) * Bump airOS to 0.2.8 (@CoMPaTech - #150504) * Bump aiowebostv to 0.7.5 (@thecode - #150514) * Bump bleak-retry-connector to 4.0.1 (@bdraco - #150515) * Bump aiodhcpwatcher to 1.2.1 (@bdraco - #150519) * Bump python-snoo to 0.8.1 (@Lash-L - #150530) * Bump uv to 0.8.9 (@edenhaus - #150542) * Bump python-snoo to 0.8.2 (@Lash-L - #150569) * Change Snoo to use MQTT instead of PubNub (@Lash-L - #150570) * Make sure we update the api version in philips_js discovery (@elupus - #150604) * Bump pymiele to 0.5.3 (@astrandb - #150216) * Bump pymiele to 0.5.4 (@astrandb - #150605) * Bump airOS to 0.2.11 (@CoMPaTech - #150627) * Bump uiprotect to 7.21.1 (@bdraco - #150657) * Bump onvif-zeep-async to 4.0.3 (@bdraco - #150663) * Bump python-snoo to 0.8.3 (@Lash-L - #150670) * Fix missing labels for subdiv in workday (@gjohansson-ST - #150684) * Improve handling decode errors in rest (@gjohansson-ST - #150699) ### 2025.8.3 - August 21 * Bump to zcc-helper==3.6 (@markhannon - #150608) (zimi docs) * fix(amberelectric): add request timeouts (@JP-Ellis - #150613) (amberelectric docs) * Bump renault-api to 0.4.0 (@epenet - #150624) (renault docs) * Update hassfest package exceptions (@cdce8p - #150744) * Bump boschshcpy to 0.2.107 (@tschamm - #150754) (bosch_shc docs) * Fix for bosch_shc: ‘device_registry.async_get_or_create’ referencing a non existing ‘via_device’ (@tschamm - #150756) (bosch_shc docs) * Fix volume step error in Squeezebox media player (@peteS-UK - #150760) (squeezebox docs) * Show charging power as 0 when not charging for the Volvo integration (@thomasddn - #150797) (volvo docs) * Pin gql to 3.5.3 (@joostlek - #150800) * Bump opower to 0.15.2 (@tronikos - #150809) (opower docs) * Include device data in Withings diagnostics (@joostlek - #150816) (withings docs) * Abort Nanoleaf discovery flows with user flow (@joostlek - #150818) (nanoleaf docs) * Bump yt-dlp to 2025.08.11 (@joostlek - #150821) (media_extractor docs) * Initialize the coordinator’s data to include data.options. (@LG-ThinQ-Integration - #150839) (lg_thinq docs) * Handle Z-Wave RssiErrorReceived (@MartinHjelmare - #150846) (zwave_js docs) * Use correct unit and class for the Imeon inverter sensors (@Imeon-Energy - #150847) (imeon_inverter docs) * Bump holidays to 0.79 (@gjohansson-ST - #150857) (workday docs) (holiday docs) * Bump aiorussound to 4.8.1 (@noahhusby - #150858) (russound_rio docs) * Add missing unsupported reasons to list (@agners - #150866) (hassio docs) * Fix icloud service calls (@epenet - #150881) (icloud docs) * Bump pysmartthings to 3.2.9 (@joostlek - #150892) (smartthings docs) * Fix PWA theme color to match darker blue color scheme in 2025.8 (@balloob - #150896) (frontend docs) * Bump bleak-retry-connector to 4.0.2 (@bdraco - #150899) (bluetooth docs) * update pyatmo to v9.2.3 (@cgtobi - #150900) (netatmo docs) * Fix structured output object selector conversion for OpenAI (@balloob - #150916) (openai_conversation docs) * Matter valve Open command doesn’t support TargetLevel=0 (@kepstin - #150922) (matter docs) * Bump ESPHome minimum stable BLE version to 2025.8.0 (@bdraco - #150924) (esphome docs) * Bump imgw-pib to version 1.5.4 (@bieniu - #150930) (imgw_pib docs) * Fix update retry for Imeon inverter integration (@Imeon-Energy - #150936) (imeon_inverter docs) * Bump python-mystrom to 2.5.0 (@elsi06 - #150947) (mystrom docs) * Ask user for Z-Wave RF region if country is missing (@MartinHjelmare - #150959) (zwave_js docs) * Bump onvif-zeep-async to 4.0.4 (@bdraco - #150969) (onvif docs) * Except ujson from license check (@emontnemery - #150980) * Enable country site autodetection in Alexa Devices (@chemelli74 - #150989) (alexa_devices docs) * Update frontend to 20250811.1 (@bramkragten - #151005) (frontend docs) ## Need help? Join the community! Home Assistant has a great community of users who are all more than willing to help each other out. So, join us! Our very active Discord chat server is an excellent place to be, 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: Android Debug Bridge (ADB) Android Debug Bridge media players entities now report to be off where they previously reported to be in standby state. If you have automations or scripts that rely on the Android Debug Bridge media player reporting standby state, you will need to update them to use the new `off` state. (@emontnemery - #148130) (documentation) Apple TV Apple TV media players entities now report to be off where they previously reported to be in standby state. If you have automations or scripts that rely on the Apple TV media player reporting standby state, you will need to update them to use the new `off` state. (@emontnemery - #148132) (documentation) Cambridge Audio Cambridge Audio media players entities now report to be off where they previously reported to be in standby state. If you have automations or scripts that rely on the Cambridge Audio media player reporting standby state, you will need to update them to use the new `off` state. (@emontnemery - #148133) (documentation) Ecovacs The battery property on vacuum entities is being removed in Home Assistant. Therefore, this property is now removed from this integration and is replaced by a battery level sensor. Please review your automations, scripts or cards using the battery property and update the code to use the battery sensor instead. (@mib1185 - #149084) (@edenhaus - #149581) (documentation) Husqvarna Automower The summary field of calendar events provided by the Husqvarna Automower calendar platform has been updated to include the device name as a prefix. This change improves clarity when multiple mowers are used, but may affect automations relying on the previous summary format. (@Thomas55555 - #147405) (documentation) LOOKin LOOKin media players entities now report to be off where they previously reported to be in standby state. If you have automations or scripts that rely on the LOOKin media player reporting standby state, you will need to update them to use the new `off` state. (@emontnemery - #148134) (documentation) Matter The battery property on vacuum entities is being removed in Home Assistant. Therefore, this property is now removed from this integration and is replaced by a battery level sensor. Please review your automations, scripts or cards using the battery property and update the code to use the battery sensor instead. (@MartinHjelmare - #150061) (documentation) Mediaroom Mediaroom media players entities now report to be off where they previously reported to be in standby state. If you have automations or scripts that rely on the Mediaroom media player reporting standby state, you will need to update them to use the new `off` state. (@emontnemery - #148135) (documentation) Miele The battery property on vacuum entities is being removed in Home Assistant. Therefore, this property is now removed from this integration and is replaced by a battery level sensor. Please review your automations, scripts or cards using the battery property and update the code to use the battery sensor instead. (@astrandb - #148765) (documentation) Reolink The Reolink Wi-Fi signal strength sensor has changed from an indicator value between 0 and 4 (amount of bars) to a value in dBm between -85 dBm and -30 dBm. Note that all values in this range are possible, but roughly the old values can be converted like this: * 0 > -85 dBm * 1 > -75 dBm * 2 > -65 dBm * 3 > -55 dBm * 4 > -45 dBm (@starkillerOG - #149191) (documentation) Roborock The battery property on vacuum entities is being removed in Home Assistant. Therefore, this property is now removed from this integration and is replaced by a battery level sensor. Please review your automations, scripts or cards using the battery property and update the code to use the battery sensor instead. (@luca-angemi - #150126) (documentation) Roku Roku media players entities now report to be off where they previously reported to be in standby state. If you have automations or scripts that rely on the Roku media player reporting standby state, you will need to update them to use the new `off` state. (@emontnemery - #148137) (documentation) Snapcast Snapcast media players entities now report to be off where they previously reported to be in standby state. If you have automations or scripts that rely on the Snapcast media player reporting standby state, you will need to update them to use the new `off` state. (@emontnemery - #148138) (documentation) Sony PlayStation 4 Sony PlayStation 4 media players entities now report to be off where they previously reported to be in standby state. If you have automations or scripts that rely on the Sony PlayStation 4 media player reporting standby state, you will need to update them to use the new `off` state. (@emontnemery - #148136) (documentation) Templates Returning `None` from a template binary sensor’s state template is now interpreted as `unknown` state instead of as `off` state. If this behavior is not desired, you need to adjust your templates to return `False` explicitly. (@epenet - #128861) (documentation) Tuya The battery property on vacuum entities is being removed in Home Assistant. Therefore, this property is now removed from this integration and is replaced by a battery level sensor. Please review your automations, scripts or cards using the battery property and update the code to use the battery sensor instead. (@epenet - #150086) (documentation) UniFi Protect Support for UniFi Protect installations running on versions below 6.0.0 has been removed. This change is necessary as we are migrating the Home Assistant integration to use the new UniFi Protect Public API, which is only available in current versions. If you are running an older version of UniFi Protect, you will need to upgrade to at least version 6.0.0 in order to continue using this integration. You can read more about the 6.0 release in Ubiquiti’s official blog post: 🔗 Introducing Protect 6.0 Note on future updates: The Public API is still under active development and may change over time. As we continue to migrate more features of the integration to use the Public API, it is likely that the minimum required version of UniFi Protect will increase further in upcoming Home Assistant releases. We will make these changes step by step as the API evolves and new capabilities become available. **What do I need to do?** Upgrade your UniFi Protect installation to version 6.0.0 or later. Be prepared for possible further minimum version increases in the future. If you are already using version 6.0.0 or newer, and the user in use has sufficient permissions, the integration will attempt to automatically create a new API key. If this succeeds, no further action is required. If it fails, a reauthentication will be triggered, requiring you to re-enter your password and provide your API key manually. (@RaHehl - #149126) (documentation) Whirlpool Appliances The door state for washer/dryer machines is now reported as a binary sensor instead of being part of the main machine state sensor, which now reports only the cycle states. Users relying on this state in automations or scripts will need to update their configurations to use the new binary sensor. (@abmantis - #144078) (documentation) Z-Wave With this release, you will need to update your zwave-js-server instance. You must use zwave-js-server 3.2.1 or greater (schema 44). * If you use the Z-Wave JS add-on, you need at least version 0.20.0. * If you use the Z-Wave JS UI add-on, you need at least version 4.8.0. * If you use the Z-Wave JS UI Docker container, you need at least version 10.11.0. * If you run your own Docker container or some other installation method, you will need to update your zwave-js-server instance to at least 3.2.1. (@MartinHjelmare - #149616) (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. The following changes are the most notable for this release: * Handling open file limit in add-ons since OS 16 * The media player STANDBY state is deprecated * The result attribute has been removed from the FlowResult typed dict * Updated guidelines for helper integrations linking to other integration’s device * Vacuum battery properties are deprecated ## All changes Of course, there is a lot more in this release. You can find a list of all changes made here: Full changelog for Home Assistant Core 2025.8

Home Assistant 2025.9! 🎉 But before we dive into this release: _Did you see we launched a new product?_ 👀 We’ve introduced the Home Assistant Connect ZWA-2, the ultimate way to connect Z-Wave devices to Home Assistant. You can read all about it in our announcement blog 📰 or re-watch the product launch live stream on YouTube 📺. It was a busy month, as we also had two new Works with Home Assistant program partners joining this month as well: AirGradient and Frient! 🎉 While the above was happening this month, as if the project wasn’t already busy enough, we kept on pushing to prepare for this release; and it is an absolute **massive** one! 🤯 This month introduces a new experimental Home dashboard, which aims to become the new default dashboard for Home Assistant in a future release. A first iteration, of which we love to see your feedback and input on. As you know, we develop and iterate in the open. Give it a shot and let us know what you think! Talking about dashboards, my personal favorite card is definitely the tile card; it is just so versatile. And this release brings in a staggering amount of new features for it! Most notably, the ability to add a trend graph to the tile card! 📈 I’m the most excited about the visual changes to the automation editor this release brings: a sidebar. It is a huge and very visible change, that just makes so much sense. This release denotes the start of a whole series of improvements to the automation editor in this, and upcoming releases. As automations make a smart home feel magical, I personally can’t wait to see how this evolves. 🤖 Enjoy the release! ../Frenck * Automation editor sidebar * Introducing the Home dashboard * New tile card features * Trend chart * Media player controls * Bar gauge * Fan direction and oscillation controls * Buttons * Valve open/close and position controls * Setting the date * Integrations * New integrations * Noteworthy improvements to existing integrations * Integration quality scale achievements * Now available to set up from the UI * Farewell to the following * Other noteworthy changes * Analog clock * Storage insights * Patch releases * 2025.9.1 - September 5 * 2025.9.2 - September 12 * 2025.9.3 - September 13 * 2025.9.4 - September 19 * Need help? Join the community! * Backward-incompatible changes * All changes ## Automation editor sidebar On this year’s Home Assistant roadmap, we have set the goal of making automations easier to create. We have big plans, all based on tons of research, and with this release… we are shipping the first part of all this work, with the intent to gradually add more improvements over multiple releases! This release tweaks the automation editor user interface experience by introducing a sidebar! If you select an item in your automation, instead of that item expanding, it will open a new sidebar to the right with the settings for that selected item. This allows you to keep an overview of your automation on the left side of your screen, while you can tweak its behavior on the right. Of course, we have thought of smaller screens as well. On mobile, instead of the sidebar, a sheet will pop up at the bottom of the screen. This pop-up is also resizable, making it easier than ever to edit an action while reviewing your triggers. Besides the sidebar, we have made tons of other little improvements as well. Tiny layout and styling changes that you will definitely notice as they really help with the overall readability. For example, small lines and borders around grouped elements have been added, making it easier to distinguish between different parts of your automation. Oh! And drag-and-drop support is now available on mobile! 🎉 Tip One of Home Assistant’s greatest strengths is our community. We’re building the changes to our automations together, and your input will shape where it goes next. There are two ways to get involved: * Share your thoughts in our survey * Join the conversation in the automations & scripts development channel on Discord ## Introducing the Home dashboard Over the past year, we have focused on dashboards and their capabilities a lot. We’ve looked at a lot of your dashboards you’ve shared on socials, and talked to many of you about how you organize all your smart home devices and services. The goal? Making dashboards faster and easier to create, while still making them very customizable. With this release, we’re introducing a brand-new _Home dashboard_. The purpose is simple: to give you easy access to the right information at the right time. The dashboard adapts to your Home Assistant experience level: powerful enough for advanced users, yet approachable for newcomers. We’re working to have it earn its name, and hope it will eventually become your new _Home_ page. As always, it’s optional; you can always pick your own dashboard. This is the first iteration, and we’ll continue developing it in the open. When you first open the Home dashboard, it gives you a quick way to navigate to useful summaries for your light, climate, security, and media devices. You can also browse by areas, getting an overview of all the devices and services associated with that part of your home. We’re also introducing Favorites. You can pin any entity to the top, whether it’s a light, climate, or a person. We’d love to see what you choose (more on this in the future). The Home dashboard is not just about quick control. It also brings insights and information about your home. This first release includes weather and energy cards. It’s a simple start, and we have a lot of ideas to explore with you. For example, helping you create your first automation, or show discovered devices. For now, the Home dashboard is considered experimental. Configuration options are limited, and it’s guaranteed to evolve. It won’t appear automatically, and if you want to try it you’ll need to add it manually in the dashboard settings, by adding a new “Home” dashboard. Tip One of Home Assistant’s greatest strengths is our community. We’re building this dashboard together, and your input will shape where it goes next. There are two ways to get involved: * Share your thoughts in our survey * Join the conversation in the dashboard development channel on Discord ## New tile card features The tile card is the most versatile card we have in our arsenal of cards for our dashboards. One superpower of the tile card is its “features”, which are small additions where you can add quick interactions to these cards. For example, a slider to control the brightness of a light or buttons for the speed presets of a fan. Features have been extended quite a bit in this release by a dedicated group of community members. ### Trend chart This release, an absolute banger is the addition of the trend chart features for tile cards created by @MindFreeze. This feature adds a handy quick graph to the tile card, showing the history of a specific entity over time. For this initial version, the time window shown is 24 hours. ### Media player controls @timmo001, added tile card features for media player controls and volume! This makes the tile card now a viable alternative to the media player card. Awesome! ### Bar gauge A new tile card feature, made by @MindFreeze: The bar gauge! For this initial version, it works with sensors that use a percentage (`%`) for their unit of measurement. This makes the card great, for example, for a battery overview dashboard. Nice work! ### Fan direction and oscillation controls Thanks to @pcan08 we now have a tile card feature to control fan direction and oscillation! ### Buttons Thanks to @dhoeben we now have a tile card feature for buttons! He added these buttons for automation, script, and button entities. The text can be changed to display standard button text or custom text. ### Valve open/close and position controls Thanks to @timmo001 we now have a tile card feature to control the open/close and the position of valves. ### Setting the date @timmo001 continued and also added a new tile card feature to support date and datetime entities (including the input datetime helpers). It allows you to add a feature that allows for setting a date. ## 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: * **Aladdin Connect** , added by @swcloudgenie Control and monitor your Genie Aladdin Connect garage doors directly from Home Assistant. * **SEKO PoolDose** , added by @lmaertin Integrate your SEKO water treatment system of your pool or spa to monitor temperature and chemical levels. * **Sleep as Android** , added by @tr4nt0r Connects the Sleep as Android app to Home Assistant, allowing you to trigger automations based on alarm clock or sleep cycle events. * **ToGrill Bluetooth BBQ thermometers** , added by @elupus Connect your ToGrill-compatible Bluetooth grill thermometer and monitor your BBQ efforts to cook steaks to absolute perfection. ### Noteworthy improvements to existing integrations It is not just new integrationsIntegrations connect and integrate Home Assistant with your devices, services, and more. [Learn more] that have been added; existing integrations are also being constantly improved. Here are some of the noteworthy changes to existing integrations: * Husqvarna Automower got some nice additions from @Thomas55555! You can now reset cutting blade usage time and track error events with a new event entity. Perfect for keeping track of your lawn mowing robot! * The Reolink integration now includes speak and doorbell volume controls, plus a chime silent time number entity! Nice @starkillerOG! * You can now send notifications with the PlayStation Network integration! Send direct messages to your friends! Thanks, @tr4nt0r! * Network admins will love @Tomeroeni bringing individual (enable/disable) switch port control to UniFi switches! * The OpenWeatherMap integration now includes a wind gust sensor, thanks to @gjohansson-ST! * @kizovinh added support for battery status and online status sensors to the EZVIZ integration, making it easier to monitor your EZVIZ cameras. Nice! * If you own a Russound RIO device, you can now browse your device’s saved presets directly from the media browser! Thanks, @noahhusby! * @mbo18 added an absolute humidity sensor to the Awair integration. Nice! * The Teslemetry integration added charging and preconditioning actions for your Tesla vehicle. Thanks, @Bre77! * @catsmanac added IQ Meter Collar and C6 Combiner support to the Enphase Envoy integration. Good work! ### 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: * **2 integrations reached platinum** 🏆 * Network UPS Tools (NUT), thanks to @tdfountain * Uptime Kuma, thanks to @tr4nt0r * **1 integration reached bronze** 🥉 * Mastodon, thanks to @andrew-codechimp 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: * **Bayesian** , done by @HarvsG ### Farewell to the following The following integrationIntegrations connect and integrate Home Assistant with your devices, services, and more. [Learn more] is no longer available as of this release: * **Uonet+ Vulcan** has been removed. Vulcan has changed their API and their policies forbid using the API from unofficial software. ## Other noteworthy changes There are many more improvements in this release; here are some of the other noteworthy changes: * Based on feature requests from the community, all modern template entity syntax now supports setting a default entity ID directly in YAML. Thanks @Petro31 for implementing that! * @Petro31 also added support for two new entity types to the template integration. You can now create your own templated event entities and update entities. Awesome! * Home Assistant now supports `m³/min` as a volume flow rate unit. Nice addition @fetzerch! * Our voice guy @synesthesiam has been busy with some great QoL improvements this release as well. * The intent handling for the default agent (non-LLM) now supports fuzzy matching. The technique ensures voice pipelines recognize many more sentences. This improvement is available for English only, while we are looking for ways to extend this to other languages. * We now have built-in intents to control the volume of (active) media players! Like the song? Just ask Home Assistant to turn it up a notch! * After all that dancing, you might have gotten a little warm. Hence in this release, we now also have intents to control fan speeds. Nice! ### Analog clock In Home Assistant 2025.4, we introduced the clock card, which provides a digital clock display for your dashboards. For this release, @timmo001 made this card more feature-rich by adding support for displaying the clock in a customizable analog clock style. Nice! ### Storage insights Disk almost full? You might wonder where your storage space has gone… This release adds disk metrics to the storage configuration panel, letting you see usage at a glance, helping you identify what is taking up space. You can find these metrics by navigating to **Settings** > **System** > **Storage**, or by selecting the My Home Assistant button down below. ## Patch releases We will also release patch releases for Home Assistant 2025.9 in September. These patch releases only contain bug fixes. Our goal is to release a patch release once a week, aiming for Friday. ### 2025.9.1 - September 5 * Add support for migrated Hue bridge (@marcelveldt - #151411) * Add missing device trigger duration localizations (@karwosts - #151578) * Correct capitalization of “FRITZ!Box” in FRITZ!Box Tools integration (@tr4nt0r - #151637) * Fix Sonos Dialog Select type conversion (@PeteRager - #151649) * Fix WebSocket proxy for add-ons not forwarding ping/pong frame data (@felipecrs - #151654) * Fix, entities stay unavailable after timeout error, Imeon inverter integration (@Imeon-Energy - #151671) * Bump aiohue to 4.7.5 (@marcelveldt - #151684) * Update frontend to 20250903.3 (@bramkragten - #151694) * Require OhmeAdvancedSettingsCoordinator to run regardless of entities (@dan-r - #151701) * Bump ohmepy version to 1.5.2 (@dan-r - #151707) * Update Mill library 0.13.1 (@Danielhiversen - #151712) * Handle match failures in intent HTTP API (@synesthesiam - #151726) * Bump pyschlage to 2025.9.0 (@dknowles2 - #151731) * Bump bimmer_connected to 0.17.3 (@rikroe - #151756) * Fix recognition of entity names in default agent with interpunction (@arturpragacz - #151759) * Fix enable/disable entity in modbus (@janiversen - #151626) ### 2025.9.2 - September 12 * Fix XMPP not working with non-TLS servers (@Human - #150957) * Update SharkIQ authentication method (@funkybunch - #151046) * Add event entity on websocket ready in Husqvarna Automower (@Thomas55555 - #151428) * Fix Aladdin Connect state not updating (@hbludworth - #151652) * Fix support for Ecowitt soil moisture sensors (@blotus - #151685) * Fix update of the entity ID does not clean up an old restored state (@jbouwh - #151696) * Revert “Jewish Calendar add coordinator “ (@tsvi - #151780) * Remove device class for Matter NitrogenDioxideSensor (@lboue - #151782) * Improve config entry migration for edge cases in Alexa Devices (@chemelli74 - #151788) * Bump habluetooth to 5.3.1 (@bdraco - #151803) * Fix KNX BinarySensor config_store data (@farmio - #151808) * Fix KNX Light - individual color initialisation from UI config (@farmio - #151815) * Mark Tractive switches as unavailable when tacker is in the enegy saving zone (@bieniu - #151817) * Allow delay > 1 in modbus. (@janiversen - #151832) * max_temp / min_temp in modbus light could only be int, otherwise an assert was provoked. (@janiversen - #151833) * removed assert fron entity in modbus. (@janiversen - #151834) * Bump pydrawise to 2025.9.0 (@dknowles2 - #151842) * Bump aioharmony to 0.5.3 (@bdraco - #151853) * Update pysmarty2 to 0.10.3 (@martinssipenko - #151855) * fix rain sensor for Velux GPU windows (@wollew - #151857) * Bump aioecowitt to 2025.9.1 (@edenhaus - #151859) * Use `native_visibility` property instead of `visibility` for OpenWeatherMap weather entity (@bieniu - #151867) * Bump aiontfy to v0.5.5 (@tr4nt0r - #151869) * Bump aiolifx-themes to 1.0.2 to support newer LIFX devices (@Djelibeybi - #151898) * Bump aiovodafone to 1.2.1 (@chemelli74 - #151901) * Avoid cleanup/recreate of device_trackers not linked to a device for Vodafone Station (@chemelli74 - #151904) * Fix _is_valid_suggested_unit in sensor platform (@epenet - #151912) * Bump habluetooth to 5.5.1 (@bdraco - #151921) * Bump bleak-esphome to 3.3.0 (@bdraco - #151922) * Bump habluetooth to 5.6.0 (@bdraco - #151942) * Fix invalid logger in Tuya (@epenet - #151957) * Fix for squeezebox track content_type (@peteS-UK - #151963) * Fix playlist media_class_filter in search_media for squeezebox (@peteS-UK - #151973) * Bump habluetooth to 5.6.2 (@bdraco - #151985) * Bump yt-dlp to 2025.09.05 (@joostlek - #152006) * Bump `accuweather` to version 4.2.1 (@bieniu - #152029) * Fix HomeKit Controller stale values at startup (@bdraco - #152086) * Fix duplicated IP port usage in Govee Light Local (@abmantis - #152087) * Fix DoorBird being updated with wrong IP addresses during discovery (@bdraco - #152088) * Fix supported _color_modes attribute not set for on/off MQTT JSON light (@jbouwh - #152126) * Fix reauth for Alexa Devices (@chemelli74 - #152128) * Bump hass-nabucasa from 1.1.0 to 1.1.1 (@ludeeus - #152147) * Update frontend to 20250903.5 (@bramkragten - #152170) * Use position percentage for closed status in Velux (@wollew - #151679) ### 2025.9.3 - September 13 * Bump habluetooth to 5.6.4 (@bdraco - #152227) ### 2025.9.4 - September 19 * Bump habiticalib to v0.4.4 (@tr4nt0r - #151332) * Bump habiticalib to v0.4.5 (@tr4nt0r - #151720) * Fix bug with the hardcoded configuration_url (asuswrt) (@Vaskivskyi - #151858) * Fix HomeKit Controller overwhelming resource-limited devices by batching characteristic polling (@bdraco - #152209) * Upgrade waterfurnace to 1.2.0 (@sdague - #152241) * Bump aiohomekit to 3.2.16 (@bdraco - #152255) * Bump bluetooth-auto-recovery to 1.5.3 (@bdraco - #152256) * Add proper error handling for /actions endpoint for miele (@astrandb - #152290) * Bump aiohomekit to 3.2.17 (@bdraco - #152297) * Update authorization server to prefer absolute urls (@allenporter - #152313) * Bump imeon_inverter_api to 0.4.0 (@Imeon-Energy - #152351) * Bump pylamarzocco to 2.1.0 (@zweckj - #152364) * Add La Marzocco specific client headers (@zweckj - #152419) * Fix KNX UI schema missing DPT (@farmio - #152430) * Bump pyemoncms to 0.1.3 (@alexandrecuer - #152436) * Fix Sonos set_volume float precision issue (@PeteRager - #152493) * Bump opower to 0.15.5 (@tronikos - #152531) * Bump holidays to 0.80 (@gjohansson-ST - #152306) * Bump holidays to 0.81 (@gjohansson-ST - #152569) * Bump asusrouter to 1.21.0 (@Vaskivskyi - #151607) ## Need help? Join the community! Home Assistant has a great community of users who are all more than willing to help each other out. So, join us! Our very active Discord chat server is an excellent place to be, 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: Encoding units containing the μ character The encoding for some units that contain the μ character has been changed. Users that consume state data from sensors that have changed units will be impacted (such as exported state data to InfluxDB). The units with a changed encoding are: * `μSv/h` for the `aranet` integration as a unit for radiation rate * `μS/cm` for `UnitOfConductivity.MICROSIEMENS_PER_CM` * `μV` for `UnitOfElectricPotential.MICROVOLT` * `μg/ft³` for concentration in micrograms per cubic foot * `μg/m³` for concentration in micrograms per cubic meter * `μmol/s⋅m²` for the `fyta` integration as a unit for light * `μg` for `UnitOfMass.MICROGRAMS` * `μs` for `UnitOfTime.MICROSECONDS` (@jbouwh - #144853) 1-Wire The `raw_value` attribute was previously deprecated and has now been removed. (@gjohansson-ST - #150112) (documentation) Alexa Devices The sound list has been updated to match the one used by the Alexa Mobile app. The `variant` parameter is no longer required. Check your automations to ensure the selected sound is still present. (@chemelli74 - #151317) (documentation) Husqvarna Automower BLE The integration now requires the Automower PIN when being set up. This ensures Home Assistant can communicate with more models of mowers and with higher security levels. (@alistair23 - #135440) (documentation) KNX KNX scene entities now also change their state when a scene was activated externally (from bus). Previously they only updated when activated from within Home Assistant. (@farmio - #151218) (documentation) SIA Alarm Systems SIA alarm status code CF (armed with malfunctions) is now mapped to `armed_away` instead of to `armed_custom_bypass`. (@etnoy - #132628) (documentation) SwitchBot Bluetooth The battery property on vacuum entities is being removed in Home Assistant. Therefore, this property is now removed from this integration and is replaced by a battery level sensor. Please review your automations, scripts, and dashboards using the battery property and update the code to use the battery sensor instead. (@MartinHjelmare - #150227) (documentation) Yale August The August integration now uses OAuth authentication with Yale August’s official API. This is a required one-time breaking change as the unofficial authentication method will stop working soon. This migration helps reduce unnecessary load on Yale August’s servers while ensuring continued access for all users. When you update Home Assistant, you’ll be prompted to re-authenticate your August account: 1. Select the notification or go to **Settings** → **Devices & Services** → **August** 2. Select “Reconfigure” and follow the OAuth flow to sign in 3. Once authenticated, your devices will work exactly as before We’re grateful to Yale August for officially supporting Home Assistant with dedicated API access! (@bdraco - #151080) (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. The following changes are the most notable for this release: * Standardize encoding of μ in units of measurement * The DeviceEntry.suggested_area attribute is deprecated and will be removed ## All changes Of course, there is a lot more in this release. You can find a list of all changes made here: Full changelog for Home Assistant Core 2025.9

Last year, we laid out our vision for AI in the smart home, which opened up experimentation with AI in Home Assistant. In that update, we made it easier to integrate all sorts of local and cloud AI tools, and provided ways to use them to control and automate your home. A year has passed, a lot has happened in the AI space, and our community has made sure that Home Assistant has stayed at the frontier. We beat big tech to the punch; we were the first to make AI useful in the home. We did it by giving our community complete control over how and when they use AI, making AI a powerful _tool_ to use in the home. As opposed to something that takes over your home. Our community is taking advantage of AI’s unique abilities (for instance, its image recognition or summarizing skills), while having the ability to exclude it from mission-critical things they’d prefer it not to handle. Best of all, this can all be run locally, without any data leaving your home! Moreover, if users don’t want AI in their homes, that’s their choice, and they can choose not to enable any of these features. I hope to see big tech take an approach this measured, but judging by their last couple of keynotes, I’m not holding my breath. Over the past year, we’ve added many new AI features and made them easy to use directly through Home Assistant’s user interface. We have kept up with all the developments in AI land and are using the latest standard to integrate more models and tools than ever before. We’re also continuing to benchmark local and cloud models to give users an idea of what works best. Keep reading to check out everything new, and maybe you can teach your smart home some cool new tricks. Local AI is making the home very natural to control Big thanks to our AI community contributor team: @AllenPorter, @shulyaka, @tronikos, @IvanLH, @Joostlek! ## Supercharging voice control with AI We were doing voice assistants before AI was cool. In 2023, we kicked off our Year of the Voice. Since then, we’ve worked towards our goal of building all the parts needed for a local, open, and private voice assistant. When AI became the rage, we were quick to integrate it. Today, users can chat with any large language model (LLM) that is integrated into Home Assistant, whether that’s in the cloud or run locally via a service like Ollama. Where Assist, our home-grown (non-AI) voice assistant agent, is focused on a predetermined list of mostly home control commands, AI allows you to ask more open-ended questions. Summarize what’s happening across the smart home sensors you’ve exposed to Assist, or get answers to trivia questions. You can even give your LLM a personality! Users can also leverage the power of AI to speak the way _they speak_ , as LLMs are much better at understanding the intent behind the words. By default, Assist will handle commands first. Only questions or commands it can’t understand will be sent to the AI you’ve set up. For instance, _“Turn on the kitchen light”_ can be handled by Assist, while _“It’s dark in the kitchen, can you help?”_ could be processed by an AI. This speeds up response times for simple commands and makes for a more sustainable voice assistant. Another powerful addition from the past year is context sharing between agents. So your Assist agent can share the most recent commands with your chosen AI agent. This shared context lets you say something like _“Add milk to my shopping list,”_ which Assist will act on, and to add more items, just say _“Add rice.”_ The AI agent understands that these commands are connected and can act accordingly. Here is an excellent walkthrough video of JLo's AI-powered home, showing many of these new features in action Another helpful addition keeps the conversation going; if the LLM asks you a question, your Assist hardware will listen for your reply. If you say something like “It’s dark”, it might ask whether you’d like to turn on some lights, and you could tell it to proceed. We have taken this even further than other voice assistants, as you can now have Home Assistant initiate conversations. For example, you could set up an automation that detects when the garage door is open and asks if you’d like to close it (though this can also be done without AI with a very clever Blueprint). AI pushed us to completely revamp our Text-to-Speech (TTS) system to take advantage of streaming responses from LLMs. While local AI models can be slow, we use a simple trick to make the delay almost unnoticeable. Now, both Piper (our local TTS) and Home Assistant Cloud TTS can begin generating audio as soon as the LLM produces the first few words, improving the speed of the spoken response by a factor of ten. **Prompt: “Tell me a long story about a frog”** **Setup** | **Time to start speaking** ---|--- Cloud, non-streaming | 6.62 sec Cloud, streaming | 0.51 sec (13x faster) Piper, non-streaming | 5.31 sec Piper, streaming | 0.56 sec (9.5x faster) _Ollama gemma3:4b on an RTX 3090, and Piper on an i5_ ## Great hardware to work with AI People built some really cool voice hardware, from landline telephones to little talking robots, but the fact that it was so DIY was always a barrier to entry. To make our voice assistant available to everyone, we released the Home Assistant Voice Preview Edition. This is an easy and affordable way to try Home Assistant Voice. It has some seriously powerful audio processing hardware inside its sleek package. If you were on the fence about trying out voice, it really is the best way to get started. Voice Preview Edition is not only open and powerful, but it looks and feels great too! It’s now easier than ever to set up your Assist hardware to work with LLMs with our Voice Assistants settings page, and you can even assign a different LLM to each device. The LLM can recognize the room it’s in and the devices within it, making its responses more relevant. Assist was built to be a great way to control devices in your home, but with AI, it becomes so much more. ## AI-powered suggestions Last month, Home Assistant launched a new opt-in feature to leverage the power of AI when automating with Home Assistant. The goal is to shorten the journey from a blank slate to your finished idea. When saving an automation or script, users can now leverage the new Suggest button: When clicked, it will send your automation configuration along with the titles of your existing automations and labels to AI to suggest a name, description, category, and labels for your new automation. Over the coming months, we’re going to explore what other features can benefit from AI suggestions. To opt-in to this feature, you need to take two steps. First, you need to configure an integration that provides an _AI Tasks_ entity. For local AI, you can configure Ollama, or you can also leverage cloud-based AI like Google, OpenAI, or Anthropic. Once configured, you need to go to the new AI Task preferences pane under **_System - > General_** and pick the AI Task entity to power suggestions in the UI. If you don’t configure an AI Tasks entity, the Suggest button will not be visible. ## AI Tasks gets the job done Enabling AI Tasks does more than quickly label and summarize your automations; its true superpower is making AI easy to use in templates, scripts, and automations. AI Tasks allow other code to leverage AI to generate data, including options to attach files and define how you want that data output (for instance, a JSON schema). We have all seen those incredible community creations, where a user leverages AI image recognition and analysis to detect available parking spots or count the number of chickens in the chicken coop. It’s likely that AI Tasks can now help you easily do this in Home Assistant, without the need for complex scripts, extra add-ons, or HACS integrations. Below is a template entity that counts chickens in a video feed, all via a short and simple set of instructions. template: - triggers: - trigger: homeassistant event: start - trigger: time_pattern minutes: "/5" actions: - action: ai_task.generate_data data: task_name: Count chickens instructions: >- This is the inside of my coop. How many birds (chickens, geese, and ducks) are inside the coop? structure: birds: selector: number: attachments: media_content_id: media-source://camera/camera.chicken_coop media_content_type: image/jpeg response_variable: result sensor: - name: "Chickens" state: "{{ result.data.birds }}" state_class: total This template sends a snapshot of the camera to the AI, asking it to analyze what is going on. It defines that the output should always be a number, since we want to use that information in Home Assistant. All of this is embedded in a template entity that automatically updates every 5 minutes. An AI Task could also be embedded in an automation, a script, or any other place that can execute actions. An automation triggers an AI Task to identify what caused motion on a camera. Lastly, users can set a default AI Task entity. This allows users to skip picking an entity ID when creating AI automations. It also lets you migrate everything that uses AI Tasks to the latest model with a single click. This also makes it easy to share blueprints that leverage AI Tasks, like this blueprint that analyzes a camera snapshot when motion is detected: ## MCP opens a whole new world Model Context Protocol (MCP) is a thin layer allowing LLMs to integrate _anything_. When the specification was announced, we quickly jumped on it and integrated it into Home Assistant. Effectively, these servers give Home Assistant’s Assist conversation agent access to all sorts of new tools. You could connect MCP servers that give Assist access to the latest news stories, your to-do lists, or a server that catalogues your vinyl collection, allowing you to have richer conversations (_“Okay Nabu, which Replacements albums do I have, and which aren’t on my Vinyl-to-Purchase list?”_). On the flip side, you can also turn Home Assistant into an MCP server, allowing an AI system to access information about your home. For instance, you could create a local AI that’s great at making Home Assistant automations, and it could include all your entity names or available actions. MCP keeps gaining more support, and there are some great cloud and self-hosted solutions available. ## How to pick a model There are a lot of models available, it’s hard to know where to start. Luckily, Home Assistant’s resident AI guru @AllenPorter is here to help. He has put together an incredibly useful Home LLM Leaderboard. This dataset includes his extensive tests of cloud and local LLM options, and even has tests that give small local LLMs a fighting chance (see assist-mini). Currently, the charts show the big cloud players’ most recent models ranking pretty close to each other, while recent local models that use 8GB or more of VRAM are nearly keeping up. In the past, there was a big disparity between most models, but now it’s hard to go wrong. This is especially helpful as the options for LLMs in Home Assistant have just grown exponentially with the addition of OpenRouter, a unified interface for LLMs. With OpenRouter, users can access over 400 new models in Home Assistant, and it supports AI Tasks right from day one. We really are spoiled for choice. ## The future is Open, and Open Source Home Assistant is open. We believe that you should be in control of your data, and your smart home. All of it. Local LLMs and the way we have architected Home Assistant extends this choice to the AI space, all while maintaining your privacy. Most crucially, we’ve made all of this open source. We are community-driven and work on this together with our community. The Open Home Foundation has no investors and is not beholden to anyone but our users. Our work is funded through hardware purchases and Home Assistant Cloud subscriptions, allowing us to make all the technology we build free and open.

The Home Assistant companion app for Android just keeps getting better with every release, and recently, it gained some dedicated support to help accelerate its development. Several months ago, I (Timothy Nibeaudeau, also known as @TimoPtr) joined the Open Home Foundation as our dedicated Android developer 🎉. It’s been over two years, and hundreds of thousands of installs, since we’ve published a dedicated update for our community on the development of the app, and I’d like to give you a quick update on recent improvements and what’s coming next. ## Behind the Screens In the beginning, all of Home Assistant’s official companion apps were developed by the community in their spare time, with many still being part-time projects. It’s incredible the work they put into building these apps. This gives you not just the ability to view your Home Assistant instance on the go (or around the house) and takes advantage of many of the sensors available on the device while providing rich notifications to users. Very impressive growth in installs over the years! The Android app alone has seen over 2,700 contributions! It’s a lot of work keeping up with Android versions, new capabilities of Home Assistant, and bug fixes. This app doesn’t just support Android phones and tablets but also devices they connect to, specifically Android Auto, Android Automotive, and Wear OS. ### Progress in the millions They did all this work while reaching nearly **1.5 million installs** , with over 6 million total installs over the years. There are 400,000 daily active users and 1 million monthly active users. The phone app also has a very nice **4.3-star rating** on the Play Store and **2,800 stars** on GitHub 🤩. This feedback really helps us improve. It’s been over a year and a half since the Apple companion apps gained a full-time developer with the addition of the amazing Bruno Pantaleão 😎. Around the same time as Bruno was hired, we began looking for an Android developer, and let’s say that took a little longer. My name is Timothy Nibeaudeau, and as mentioned at the start, I’m your new dedicated Android engineer. As someone who has been using Home Assistant since 2018, I’m passionate about open source and smart home technology. I’ve been working in software development for nearly a decade, developing apps for all sorts of projects from medical-grade IoT products to smart toothbrushes 🪥. I am committed to bringing my talents to the project, but I cannot do it alone. The community is what makes Home Assistant special, and together, we can achieve even more. Specifically, I’d like to thank @dshokouhi, @jpelgrom, and @JBassett for their years of work making this app what it is today! I’d also like to thank you! Your support (by subscribing to Home Assistant Cloud and buying official hardware) allows the Open Home Foundation to hire dedicated developers. Dedicated developers keep development focused, helping the community to work together in delivering the feature they’re passionate about. ## Since our last blog Like I said at the top, it’s been a long time (over two years 🫢) since we’ve published a blog highlighting the improvements made to the Android app. You’ve probably been enjoying these new features for some time, but in case you missed it, here are some of the biggest improvements made by the community over that time. * Health Connect sensors linked to your Android phone have been added, including heart rate, fitness data, and glucose levels (as always, you have complete control over what you share with your Home Assistant instance, and that data stays local). * By working with Android natively, Assist can now replace your phone’s (or Wear OS devices’) assistant. * You can now set the Home Assistant app as your device’s default launcher, which is great for wall panel setups. * We’ve updated our widgets to support some of the new features, like To-do lists. * Wear OS has had its Tile capabilities improved and a new thermostat tile was added. * There are now more Android Auto sensors, like speed and remaining range. * A simpler way to connect Wi-Fi compatible devices to your home network (such as the Home Assistant Voice Preview Edition) using Improv Wi-Fi over Bluetooth (an open standard for connecting devices to Wi-Fi using Bluetooth, built by the Open Home Foundation). * The Z-Wave device onboarding experience has been improved with the addition of a QR code scanner. * We’ve also improved the speed and stability of the app. * It’s now easier than ever for new contributors to jump in and start helping with the app (much more on that below 👇). For a full list of the app’s capabilities, check out our breakdown of the companion apps from the companion documentation. ## What’s next for our Android app In our latest update of the Android app 2025.7.1, we’ve added a couple of useful features. Including a new basic invite flow, which will be shared between Android and iOS, adding a good layer of consistency between our most-used companion apps. The idea is to make it much more seamless to add new users or set up new devices (no need to type the URL in your Android Automotive device!). We’ve also made My Links work better. If you’re unfamiliar with My Links, they’re those cool links (that anyone can make) that bring you right to an integration, blueprint, add-on, or settings page. They have always worked great on desktop, but up until recently, they were a bit clunky to use on mobile. Now you can get to the link’s destination with a single click. Android has many different screen sizes and layouts, and we’re working to better leverage them with edge-to-edge support. Our recent update has edge-to-edge working on Android native UI elements like the settings page, and we’re looking to implement them elsewhere in future updates so we can make the most of your screen real estate. ## Important changes for Android users A huge percentage of our users are on pretty new versions of Android, but we want to support as many older devices as possible. One significant change on the horizon is ending support for Android 5.0 and 5.1 (also known as Android Lollipop, released in 2014… it had a good run 🫡). Google has announced that starting in June 2025, many AndroidX libraries will require a minimum of Android 6.0 (API 23). Google has already updated Firebase Cloud Messaging to require this as well. This means we will need to stop supporting Android 5.0 and 5.1 (API 21 and 22) to keep up with new features and security updates. Less than 0.3% of installs are on Android versions below API 23 (Android 6.0), and we always work to keep older devices working, but sometimes our hand is forced. If you are using an older device, the app will not be removed, but you will not receive new updates once we make this change. We plan to make one final release for these older versions before support ends. This release is expected before the end of the summer, so you will have the latest updates available for your device before we move on. ## Let’s work together We want to make it easier for you to contribute, whether you are a seasoned developer or just getting started. This includes making the contribution journey smoother and giving people an easy place to start. We’ve even compiled a list of “first issues” to tackle for prospective developers looking to help out. We’ve started work on dedicated Android developer documentation, which will give in-depth information about the inner workings of this app. We’ve made many behind-the-scenes changes to improve the developer experience (defining best practices, linters for faster/automated feedback, and continuous integration for quicker feedback on PRs). Our focus is always on improving stability, reducing crash rates, and catching issues early. One example of this is our new fail-fast approach, which has already helped us catch and fix issues early. We want more Android native/exclusive features while also balancing the need to keep parity between the Android and iOS companion apps (the iOS app is excellent, and each app’s community is learning so much from each other). ### How you can help The companion app for Android is a community effort, and your help makes a real difference. Here is how you can get involved: * Join the beta program to test new features. * Suggest a feature and share your ideas. * Help triage issues on GitHub, Discord, or the Home Assistant forum. * Join the Android Project thread on Discord. (Head to _Channels & Roles_ and select “I want to contribute developer skills!” to assign yourself the Developer role if you can’t see the thread.) * Submit issues, review pull requests, start your first pull request, and ask questions — your feedback is valuable. * Help us translate the app. Thanks again for making all this possible. I look forward to your help making this app even more amazing!

Introducing the Home Assistant Connect ZWA-2, the ultimate way to connect Z-Wave devices to Home Assistant. Between its optimized antenna and seamless integration with Home Assistant, it should be a big upgrade for anyone using Z-Wave today. If you’re not using Z-Wave, it’s time to take a second look, as Connect ZWA-2 is a different beast. It might be just what you need to reach that tricky spot in your home… or even beyond. Connect ZWA-2 supports Z-Wave Long Range, and this modern take on the standard delivers exceptional reach along with more responsive, battery-efficient devices. Every home is different, but our testers have managed connections in places they once thought impossible. Join the smart home range revolution for **$69 or €59** (that’s the recommended MSRP, and pricing will vary by retailer). For quick details, specs, and where to buy, visit our Home Assistant Connect ZWA-2 page. It’s available for purchase today. Read on to learn what goes into the ultimate Z-Wave upgrade. ## We love open standards Open standards let you connect devices directly to Home Assistant for local, private control, and keep working for years, even if the manufacturer disappears. To make connecting these standards as seamless as possible, we like to build our own hardware. In late 2022, we launched Home Assistant Connect ZBT-1 (formerly SkyConnect), a USB adapter for Zigbee and Thread. It made both protocols much easier to get started with, and sales helped fund Home Assistant development. We knew the next standard to tackle was Z-Wave, and after another couple of hardware launches (Home Assistant Green and Voice Preview Edition), we finally had the time to do it right. ### Why Z-Wave? If you’re new to Z-Wave, its key advantage over other open standards is its use of sub-GHz radio waves, which are better at getting through thick walls and reaching across large households. While Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, Zigbee, and Thread all compete for the same crowded airspace (2.4 GHz), Z-Wave operates in its own much quieter spectrum (865-926 MHz). Z-Wave is great for range, but its new Z-Wave Long Range variant builds even further on this… _but more on that later_. As the standard is over two decades old, it’s had a lot of time to iron out any kinks, but it also has over 4,500 certified devices to choose from. Our opt-in stats show over 130,000 Home Assistant households are using Z-Wave today. Several Works with Home Assistant partners are building amazing Z-Wave products, including Zooz, Shelly, Ultraloq, Leviton, and Homeseer. You can also go to any local marketplace and pick up any working Z-Wave smart device, no matter how old, and it will still connect with Home Assistant! ## Connect ZWA-2 in-depth We’ve learned a lot about hardware since the launch of Connect ZBT-1, and we also knew we could breathe some new life into Z-Wave on Home Assistant. Making this device was the start of us leveling up the Connect platform and establishing our **second generation** , which is all about building the most performant and open design. That is why we jumped straight to _two_ for this Connect ZWA-2! ### Go big or go home To be the most performant, we knew we had to ditch the “stick” form factor. It was never ideal, as USB ports can output a lot of interference. We even shipped a USB extender with Connect ZBT-1, and urged people to use it, as it kept the device away from any noisy components. Instead of building a stick we built an _adapter_ , which includes an optimized standalone antenna and base that connects to your Home Assistant system with a USB cable. We’re not compensating for anything; a big antenna does make a big difference. For starters, you need an antenna that’s the right size for your wavelength. As Z-Wave is in the sub-GHz, this means the antenna has to be longer than your average Wi-Fi antenna (about 33 cm or a foot is the sweet spot). You need to optimize not just the antenna, but also the base of the device (also known as the _ground plane_). Our hardware experts really went deep into all the physics involved, and the results speak for themselves. Basically, by choosing the right ratio of antenna to base, the two work in harmony to maximize the range and reliability of the signal. While some Z-Wave adapters may claim they can hit the maximum transmit levels with their postage-stamp-sized antennas, that can sometimes come with a lot of interference. We’ve engineered away that problem. Connect ZWA-2 can speak loudly and clearly 🗣️, and what’s even more important, it’s a great listener 👂. ### Positioning is everything Having a big optimized antenna is great, but placement is almost as important. Its sturdy base and good-sized USB cable allow it to be placed in the right spot. No more will you have a dangling dongle hidden behind a server cabinet. We even put in an accelerometer to ensure people position the antenna upright, this ensures devices are in the sweet spot of the antenna. If you place it on its side, it will subtly blink the status light at the top. ### All the Z-Wave Inside Connect ZWA-2, we include the latest Z-Wave 800 chip, which supports all Z-Wave devices. We’re also Z-Wave certified, giving you that extra peace of mind. This, combined with Home Assistant’s industry-leading Z-Wave software, means Z-Wave has never been this good. On your certified smart devices, you might see Security 2 (S2), SmartStart, Z-Wave Plus, or Z-Wave Plus V2 — don’t worry, we support it all. One new feature we support that is getting people very excited is Z-Wave Long Range👇. ### Go long Combining Z-Wave’s natural abilities with an optimized antenna has given us some impressive range, but we took it a few steps further. We added Z-Wave Long Range to Connect ZWA-2, which might be one of the most substantial updates to Z-Wave yet. **Z-Wave Long Range** Long Range doesn’t use mesh, where devices relay messages through each other to reach the hub. Instead, each device talks straight to your hub, which brings some benefits. It runs on the same frequency as regular Z-Wave but at a higher power, and uses new technology that lets it reach farther, handle more devices, respond faster, and save battery. Right now, it is only available in North America and Europe, and the selection of compatible devices is still growing. This is just scratching the surface; for more on this impressive tech, read a full breakdown from our friends at the Z-Wave Alliance. Z-Wave Long Range is different enough that it needs its own separate network. Connect ZWA-2 can run both Z-Wave and Z-Wave Long Range **at the same time**. When you add a Long Range capable device to Home Assistant, the setup wizard lets you choose which network to use. This way, you get the best of both worlds: a strong mesh network for your older devices, and the reach of Long Range for the newest devices that include support. ### How long? See that bridge in the background? Our prototype connected to a device all the way over there. People are getting some impressive results with ZWA-2: * You might have seen our range testing in a previous blog. Since then, we’ve optimized the design and achieved a line-of-sight range of 1.5 kilometers (0.9 miles) 🤯. This was under less than ideal circumstances (raining and within a car), and we think we could go even further. * The certifying engineer said it was “the best range she had ever seen”. * Another test had it communicating via Z-Wave Long Range through several floors of concrete. * Testers with outdoor lights and internal brick walls have commented on how this is the first time they’ve had reliable connections with devices. * Interesting Long Range use cases have included smart mailboxes that notify you when _you’ve got mail_ , or contact sensors on garden gates. Every home and setup is different, so we can’t definitively say how far your devices will span. What we can say is that nothing else we’ve tested comes close to what Connect ZWA-2 can do. ### Built for Home Assistant Whenever we build new hardware, we step up our software development to match. You may have noticed a lot of love going into Z-Wave for Home Assistant. All Z-Wave users benefit from this, and when people buy Connect ZWA-2, they’re helping fund this development. Connect ZWA-2 is built for Home Assistant, and because of this, it’s super easy to get started with. We’ve built Connect ZWA-2 to support every region, no matter where you buy it from. When you plug in Connect ZWA-2, it automatically detects and sets your region using the location configured in your Home Assistant system. We’ve built handy wizards to help you set up your first Z-Wave network and to guide you in setting up new devices. A wizard also helps you quickly migrate from most Z-Wave adapters to Connect ZWA-2 in a couple of clicks. We also have the ability to update the firmware of Connect ZWA-2 right from Home Assistant, and update the firmware over-the-air (OTA) of Z-Wave devices in a single click. ### ESP inside I’ll save you the time opening it up; here is the front and back of the PCB. As always, we’ve made Connect ZWA-2 easy to open. Just pop out the rubber feet and remove the four Phillips screws, with no glue or clips to get in the way. If you do open it up, you’ll see a familiar sight, an ESP32-S3. We’re using it as a USB controller, and it’s not running ESPHome. Yes, it does have a “Wi-Fi antenna”, but we’re not using it. We’ve provided a lot of easily accessible pins/pads, open source firmware files, unlocked bootloader, and good documentation, so feel free to tinker. We’ll also provide all the files to allow you to 3D-print the outer casing. ### Blending into the home It’s no small feat to make something 33 cm (1 ft) long look so subtle in the home. We’ve modeled its design after a candle and even used the top of the antenna as a status indicator. Its quality injection-molded exterior has a premium feel and shares many design cues from our sleek-looking Voice Preview Edition. ## Join the smart home range revolution Last year, we proclaimed in a blog that “Z-Wave is not dead”, and this hardware is a testament to that belief. Even with new technologies being released every week, there’s still room to innovate with something tried and tested. We will always support technology that respects your privacy, allows you to control your devices without the cloud, all while keeping the things you already have in your home running for years to come. After 1600 words on a Z-Wave adapter, we’re obviously very proud of what we’ve built and excited to see what amazing things people will do with this labor of love. So, whether you’re a Z-Wave veteran or just interested in cool new technology, take a look at Home Assistant Connect ZWA-2 today.

Our Works with Home Assistant program is expanding once again, and this time we’re excited to announce Zooz is joining us! We have tested many new devices of all different types, ensuring they provide the best experience possible with Home Assistant. As well as classic staples for the smart home, they also bring some very cool flood protection devices to help safeguard your home. These will be the first certified Z-Wave devices added to the program in some time, and are just part of the exciting future the Home Assistant community and Zooz see for this smart home protocol. ## Zooz zooms in Zooz started out not as a manufacturer, but as a retailer of smart devices. They focused so much on customer support that they soon realized they could do a better job than manufacturers already in the market, and so turned instead to creating their own products. They focus on Z-Wave for its interoperability and security, and they include easy-to-understand installation guides with these devices. They also have a wide knowledge base on their website and a very responsive support team. As Z-Wave experts, they’re members of the Z-Wave Alliance (where Paulus is also a member as the voice of the open source community). While Zooz is based in the USA, many of their products are available worldwide. ## It takes Zooz Zooz has really embraced the Home Assistant community. Agnes, their VP of Brand and Partnership Support, recently spoke to the team over at the Home Assistant podcast about their startup journey. She also came along to our Community Day in Brooklyn, hosted by our very own Product Lead, Madelena. It’s awesome to see manufacturers get out and connect with our community members. "Zooz has been contributing quality hardware to the smart home community for over 10 years now and our biggest takeaway is that thoughtful integration is key for our customers. We recognize that our devices are part of an ecosystem and that's why we are so excited to partner with Home Assistant, a platform we highly respect for its commitment to making products work together seamlessly. I especially appreciate how quickly Home Assistant embraced Z-Wave Long Range and how easy it is to set up Z-Wave on a brand new system thanks to hardware like Home Assistant Green. We look forward to connecting with the Home Assistant community, learning together, and creating new devices driven by your feedback." _- Agnes Lorenz, VP, Brand and Partnership Support, Zooz._ ## Devices In case you didn’t know, Works with Home Assistant differs from other certification programs as products are rigorously tested in-house to ensure they work seamlessly out of the box. Any company joining also commits to providing long-term support and firmware updates while being a positive force in the Home Assistant community. Works with Home Assistant is operated by the Open Home Foundation, and the support of Home Assistant Cloud subscribers funds this work. Zooz has had a large group of devices certified, one of the largest number of devices we’ve ever certified for a launch into the program. Kudos to the foundation team, and Zooz for making such a great variety of new devices available to our community. **Leak Protection** ZAC36 Titan Water Valve Actuator **Plugs** ZEN04 Smart Plug ZEN05 Outdoor Plug **Relays** ZEN16 Multi Relay ZEN51 Dry Contact Relay ZEN52 Double Relay ZEN53 DC Motor Controller **Lighting Switches** ZEN30 Double Switch ZEN32 Scene Controller ZEN71 On Off Switch ZEN72 Dimmer ZEN74 Toggle Dimmer ZEN76 S2 On Off Switch ZEN77 S2 Dimmer **Sensors** ZSE11 Q Sensor (4in1) ZSE18 Motion Sensor ZSE41 Open / Close XS Sensor ZSE42 Water Leak XS Sensor ZSE43 Tilt Shock XS Sensor ZSE44 Temperature Humidity XS Sensor ZSE70 Outdoor Motion Sensor ## Frequencies and firmware If you’re based in North America, all new devices will come with Z-Wave Long Range (ZWLR) as standard. If you are based elsewhere, like in Europe, Long Range won’t be enabled quite yet. The reason is that even though the Z-Wave Long Range protocol has been available for some time in North America, it was only released in Europe in April 2025, as certification took a bit longer. The nice thing about Zooz’s North American 700 series and European 800 series Z-Wave, is that ZWLR can be enabled via an over-the-air (OTA) firmware update, so hopefully everyone will be taking part in the Z-Wave Long Range revolution soon. Watch this space for a not-so-secret Home Assistant Z-Wave hardware announcement coming your way… Z-Wave Long Range opens up a whole new world of options and makes for an even more flexible smart home. Maybe you have a large backyard, or an awkwardly shaped long, but narrow home that is hard to get other protocols to cover adequately. Or perhaps you have devices that are just too far away for other protocols. A common example is wanting a way to get notified when the mailbox at the front of your driveway is opened or closed. Many of the certified devices can function outdoors or be purchased with accessories to make them waterproof. Speaking on a personal note, we had a leak in our garage a year or so ago after some bad weather. Other protocols couldn’t reach that far, and we had no way to be notified. I cannot wait for an easy way to be notified across that bigger distance, and avoid all the unpleasant clean-up. It’s great to read stories on social media or our forums where smart home devices have kicked in and saved the day, like getting that all-important notification or cutting off the water supply with something like Zooz’s valve actuator. Z-Wave, like other open standards we support, works locally, and all of the devices listed above will work locally, without the need for any extra cloud connection or apps. Remember, if you’re also looking for remote access to make sure you don’t miss any critical notifications while you’re away from home, an easy way to get this set up is to subscribe to Home Assistant Cloud. Not only will this help you monitor your smart home remotely, but you’ll also be supporting the development of Home Assistant. ## 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 the expected 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 with our Z-Wave Integration. If you have another hub integration 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 Zooz devices to the program?** A: Absolutely! We’re thrilled to foster a close relationship with the team at Zooz to work together on any upcoming releases or add in further products that are not yet listed here.

We’re making new frients this week, and they’re bringing an extensive line of Zigbee devices to our Works With Home Assistant program. Each device is tested by our team, ensuring they provide the best experience possible for Home Assistant. Frient is widely available across Europe, and are well-known for their sleek, unobtrusive designs that its customers love for their high Home Approval Factor. ## Our newest frient Based in Denmark, the frient brand was developed by Onics, (formerly Develco Products), and they have years of experience with Zigbee devices. Frient is bringing its proven technology to the Works With Home Assistant program, as well as their Danish design that easily blends into almost any home. Recent Works With partners have brought Z-Wave, Matter, and even Bluetooth devices to Home Assistant, but it’s been _a couple of years_ 😅 since Zigbee-specific devices have joined the program. Zigbee is one of the most popular open protocols that is used with Home Assistant, with hundreds of thousands of users making use of it today. It’s a proven technology that connects directly to Home Assistant, no cloud or Wi-Fi connection required. Zigbee is a mesh protocol, where some devices act as repeaters, strengthening the network as more are added. It was built from the ground up to power the smart home, and has been optimized to give devices really long (sometimes multi-year) battery life. "Joining the Works With Home Assistant program is a proud milestone for frient. It reflects our strong commitment to open, user-centric smart home experiences and ensures that our products seamlessly integrate with one of the most trusted platforms in the market. For Home Assistant users, it means more choice and flexibility — and for frient, it strengthens our position as a key player in the connected smart home space." _- Martin Langballe, International Business Development Manager at frient_ All you need to get started with Zigbee in Home Assistant is a Zigbee adapter or ‘stick’, such as the Home Assistant Connect ZBT-1 (wow, we released this in 2022, I wonder when we’re finally going to build a successor? 😉). By plugging the adapter into a USB port on your Home Assistant system, it should then discover the device and add the ZHA integration. After that is set up, you can start adding devices to your Zigbee network. We’ve even added in a cool new visualization so that you can see how your Zigbee devices interact with each other. ZHA is built with the support of the Open Home Foundation, and it even has a full-time developer (@puddly) dedicated to improving it and helping certify new Works With partner devices. Your support makes this possible, whether through a Home Assistant Cloud subscription or by purchasing official hardware. ## Devices When your energy company won’t provide your raw usage data, there’s always another way 😉 In case you didn’t know, Works With Home Assistant differs from other certification programs as products are rigorously tested in-house to ensure they work seamlessly out of the box with Home Assistant. Any company joining also commits to providing long-term support and firmware updates while being a positive force in the Home Assistant community. Works With Home Assistant is operated by the Open Home Foundation, and the support of Home Assistant Cloud subscribers funds this work. Our team has worked extensively with frient to ensure that the following items work seamlessly with Home Assistant. * frient Motion Sensor Pro * frient IO Module * frient Smart Plug Mini * frient Entry Sensor 2 Pro * frient Smart Siren UK * frient Smart Siren EU * frient Intelligent Keypad * frient Water Leak Detector * frient Smart Button * frient Intelligent Smoke Alarm * frient Air Quality Sensor * frient Smart Humidity Sensor * frient Electricity Meter Interface 2 LED This is a big portion of frient’s product line, and provides energy monitoring, device control, safety, and security sensors. The frient IO Module is the first certified Zigbee module that can be used to turn low-voltage dumb devices like electric blinds or garage doors into devices that can be controlled by Home Assistant. There are some great devices here for building a more sustainable smart home. The Electricity Meter Interface 2 LED allows you to get the data off your energy meter and record it into Home Assistant. Another win for sustainability is their use of AA and AAA batteries wherever practical, meaning you can use rechargeables instead of constantly buying and recycling coin cells. I also selfishly love to see some great UK-specific devices being brought into the program with the frient Smart Siren having both UK and EU versions. ## Best frients forever It’s great to see Zigbee get some high-quality certified Works With Home Assistant devices after a multi-year wait. Frient has put a good deal of work into this launch and are big fans of our work and the community. There are more exciting Zigbee developments to come, so stay tuned! ## 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 full 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 with the ZBT-1 and with the ZHA integration. We haven’t tested these devices with Zigbee2MQTT, so we would recommend checking their device compatibility documentation. If you have another hub, Zigbee adapter, or integration, 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 frient devices to the program?** A: Why not! We’re thrilled to foster a close relationship with the team at frient to work together on any upcoming releases or add in further products that are not yet listed here.

We’re excited to welcome Shelly to the Works with Home Assistant program! Shelly is very well-established in both our ecosystem and the smart home world, so it’s great to formally certify a selection of their Z-Wave devices. Their retrofit smart switches and relays are amazing for turning all sorts of _dumb_ devices, like light fixtures or ceiling fans, into devices you can easily control in _smart_ new ways. Also, being Works with certified means they have been thoroughly tested, ensuring they give the best possible experience with Home Assistant. The variety of complex settings and functionality, like energy monitoring, makes them popular with our community doing advanced smart retrofits, like connecting an old garage door or motorized shutters. These are perfect for keeping non-smart devices out of the landfill and working for years to come. ## From A to Z-Wave Shelly, originally launched in Bulgaria in 2017, has been a mainstay in our community for some years. They became known initially for their WiFi smart switches and relays that could be easily used locally, but now offer a wide range of smart devices and ways to connect them. For this first round of Works with Home Assistant certified products, the focus is firmly on the Z-Wave lines. If you’re not familiar with Z-Wave, it’s a well-established low-powered wireless technology designed with the smart home in mind. It uses an entirely different bit of radio spectrum than WiFi, meaning it has less chance of experiencing interference. This spectrum makes it better at getting through thick walls and communicating over longer distances — with the recent Long Range iteration of the standard, they can communicate even further. Given our focus on local control, items that work on Z-Wave are ideal if you want to avoid the cloud. Home Assistant will act as your Z-Wave controller using the Z-Wave JS add-on (another awesome Open Home Foundation project). So, all you need is a Z-Wave adapter to use alongside these devices. _If you haven’t purchased one yet, you might want to wait before hitting that buy button_ 😉. Shelly shares our focus on interoperability, with items using a variety of protocols, while being available worldwide. These items are also super helpful for the energy-conscious. They have low power consumption, power metering, and can easily blend in with your current home decor, as they sit in the wall behind your existing switches. Mini? This thing is microscopic! ## Getting Involved We’ve been lucky enough to meet the Shelly team on several occasions, and they were kind enough to showcase how the Las Vegas Mob Museum uses Shelly and Home Assistant during our annual ‘State of the Open Home’ event. In May, they went one step further and hosted one of our Community Days in South Florida. It’s really exciting to see that partners who join the ‘Works with’ program don’t just see it as a badge to stick on a box, but a real chance to engage with, and contribute to, this amazing community. "Many of our users already rely on Home Assistant to power their smart homes, and we’ve seen firsthand how important local control, privacy, and flexibility are to them. By joining the _Works with Home Assistant_ program, we’re reinforcing our commitment to open, reliable smart home solutions. With the upcoming launch of our **Shelly Wave Long Range** devices—offering wireless coverage of up to **1 kilometer** — we’re pushing the boundaries of what smart home technology can do. Combined with Home Assistant’s powerful platform, this will be a **market-leading solution** , capable of covering **use cases no other ecosystem today can reach**. Together, we’re building the future of smart homes: open, powerful, and ready for real-world demands." _- Leon Kralj, CTO at Shelly_ ## Devices In case you didn’t know, Works with Home Assistant differs from other certification programs as products are rigorously tested in-house to ensure they work seamlessly out of the box. Any company joining also commits to providing long-term support and firmware updates while being a positive force in the Home Assistant community. Works with Home Assistant is operated by the Open Home Foundation, and the support of Home Assistant Cloud subscribers funds this work. **What devices have been certified?** * Shelly Wave PM Mini * Shelly Wave i4 * Shelly Wave 1PM Mini * Shelly Wave 2PM * Shelly Wave Pro 1PM Whilst the Shelly Wave Pro 1PM sits in an electrical box, the remaining devices sit behind a standard plug, switch or device. This means they are a super cost-effective way to retrofit devices, which in turn reduces e-waste. The Minis are very small (duh), and so should fit in most tight places around the home, even with low-profile installations. The Shelly Wave 1PM Mini is the world’s smallest Z-Wave smart switch. In some areas of the world, you may need professional installation by a qualified electrician, so be sure to check your region’s regulations. If you’re a confident DIYer, Shelly has a lot of helpful guides on their site to walk you through installing it yourself. ## The first of many waves These devices are the first from Shelly to join the program, but certainly won’t be the last, as we look forward to many exciting developments with Z-Wave Long Range. Keep your eyes peeled for our upcoming hardware announcement that will work perfectly with our Z-Wave partners. Thanks again for your support (by subscribing to Home Assistant Cloud and buying official hardware), which allows the Open Home Foundation to build these partnerships and certify new devices to join Works with Home Assistant. ### 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 yet or doesn’t fit the requirements of the program. It might function 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. It may also have a feature missing in Home Assistant that we’re working to add. **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 work well 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, a Z-Wave adapter and with our Z Wave integration. If you have another hub / adapter / integration 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 Shelly devices to the program?** A: Absolutely. Shelly has a huge number of product lines and will be expanding their Z-Wave Long Range list. We’re sure they’ll keep our testers busy with a steady stream of devices to add.

We’re excited to announce that AirGradient is the latest manufacturer to join the fast-growing Works With Home Assistant program! They bring their air quality monitors to the program, with both indoor and outdoor models. AirGradient is the first partner in the program focused on building advanced indoor and outdoor air quality monitors. They are also well known within our community for their powerful tech, and for their focus on open source and dedication to local air quality projects around the world. ## A breath of fresh air AirGradient is the first partner to join that operates out of Thailand, and they initially started making their air monitors to help their local community. They actively support air quality improvement projects both in Thailand itself, but also globally. AirGradient donates monitors and has partnered with a variety of different organisations and NGOs, including UNICEF. These monitors are often placed in schools, helping young people to better understand and work to protect their air quality. An Open Air Monitor in Vietnam Community is central to our work with AirGradient. Their hardware and software are open source, just like our own. Plus, they’ve taken an active role in integrating into Home Assistant, bringing their local Wi-Fi integration up to not just the gold, but the platinum tier on our integration quality scale. Like all of our _Works With_ partners, the devices work completely locally with no need for a cloud connection. What’s more, they really embrace the DIY aspect of the smart home, with their devices available fully assembled or as a build-it-yourself kit! AirGradient’s open approach even extends to the data collected by their community of users. Whilst completely optional, users can share their air quality readings with the world (which they visualize into an amazing map). This helpful air quality map grows every time a user opts to share their data, and is a fantastic open resource for climate researchers, students, or anyone concerned about air quality in their local area. If your area is a blank spot on this map, that is all the more reason to buy an AirGradient outdoor monitor. Each kit comes with a screwdriver and is designed for easy repair. Broken sensor? Swap it out. Firmware update needed? Flash it yourself. Sustainability is one of the core guiding principles of the Open Home Foundation, and we love that repairability is built in. AirGradient also donates at least 1% of annual sales to non-profits and community direct donations. In fact, they asked us to include in this blog an open invitation to our community: If you have a local project that you think would benefit from open source air quality monitors, get in touch through this link. "We're excited to join the Works With Home Assistant program because it aligns perfectly with our open-source philosophy. Home Assistant represents the same values we believe in - local control, privacy, and community-driven innovation. Together, we're proving that open systems don't just work better for users, they create better outcomes for the planet." _- Achim Haug, Founder and CEO of AirGradient_ ## Certified Devices In case you’re new to Works With Home Assistant, unlike some certification programs, it’s not just a badge. We rigorously test items in-house and provide feedback to the manufacturers to ensure that products work easily out of the box and provide a seamless experience. The Works With program is operated by the Open Home Foundation and funded by the support of Home Assistant Cloud Subscribers. AirGradient has certified the following devices with us: * AirGradient One - Indoor Air Quality Monitor * AirGradient Open Air - Outdoor Air Quality Monitor Finally, a metric to show precisely how badly you burned your dinner When we talk about sustainability in relation to the smart home, it’s easy to focus on energy management and reducing our carbon impact. However, with AirGradient, you can deep dive into the impacts of the release of CO2 and other air pollutants, better understanding what you, your family, and friends breathe in every day. With an in-house science team of atmospheric chemists and public health experts, they ensure that the monitors are accurate and each of the fully assembled monitors are tested in a dedicated test chamber. Whether you want to see if your new furniture is putting dangerous VOCs into the air, or if a smelly candle is going to aggravate any allergies, the use cases are endless. The AirGradient One also has a built-in display with both detailed data and a set of LEDs to show general air quality at a glance. Both devices measure carbon dioxide, VOCs, nitrogen oxides, particulate matter, temperature, and humidity. AirGradient also provides helpful documentation on their website that helps you understand these measurements and the impact they can have on your household. These devices can not only give you in-depth information about the air in and out of your home, but they can also unlock powerful automations. We often see these devices paired with door or window open/close sensors, air purifiers, dehumidifiers, or air conditioners to reduce particulates in the home from pets or carpets. ## Clearing the air We’re so excited to be partnered with AirGradient. Their mission is important, and their open and sustainable approach is precisely what we love to see. Partnerships like this are only possible with the support of Home Assistant Cloud subscribers. Many of us at the Open Home Foundation have picked up AirGradient monitors and are sharing our air quality data today, and we’d love for you to join us on the map! ## 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 full 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 with the local AirGradient integration and a Wi-Fi network. HA will automatically discover them after they join your network (following the device’s instructions to add it to the WiFi). If you have another setup, 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 AirGradient devices to the program?** A: Why not! We’re thrilled to foster a close relationship with the team at AirGradient to work together on any upcoming releases or add in further products that are not yet listed here.

Every September, we celebrate the anniversary of Home Assistant’s first PR in 2013 – for our 12th birthday, we’re going all in on community again. Last month, we asked for submissions on how Home Assistant helps you, and today we will highlight our favorites! We will also take a look at all the cool milestones over the past year in the project, thanks to contributions from you all, and the new things coming up for the community. ## It’s a communal effort When I (Missy Quarry) joined as the Community & Social Media Manager in February 2024, I was still new to how an open source project the size of Home Assistant manages its community. Over the past 18 months, I’ve seen Home Assistant community members from all walks of life — whether DIY tinkerers or people simply looking to make small improvements at home — contribute in their own ways. By sharing your stories and inspiring others, you’ve helped the project grow. For our 12th birthday, I want to celebrate these contributions, no matter the size or complexity. 😌 Before I jump into celebrating all your amazing contributions and how they shape the projects managed by the Open Home Foundation, I have a couple of birthday presents for you. 🎁 First, I’m thrilled to share our new Community website! Right now, it’s a simple hub to find community information with ease, but we expect to evolve this over the coming months (or so). You’ll find links to our official community platforms, information on events, and details on meetups, including how to get reimbursed for certain fees as a host. In the future, I’d like to include links to regional communities we’re aware of and showcase more of the kinds of stories I’ll be sharing today. _Feel like something’s missing from this new page?Let me know!_ Next, we’ve been working hard to do more of our development in the open. Last September, I redesigned the Discord server and in doing so I gated the _Developer_ category behind a role. This has made it more difficult to develop in the open with the channels hidden behind a role, so we’re switching things up. As of this week, the Developer category is now **read-only** for every member. Want to take a peek into the future of Home Assistant? Head to the #projects channel and see what contributors are talking about! Want to join in and contribute with either your feedback or skills? I’ve created an info thread for the channel that explains how to assign yourself either the Developer or Designer role and unlock the ability to chat in the threads. Let’s jump into those submitted stories now… 🤩 ## Happily ever after In my opinion, the best thing about Home Assistant is its flexibility - you can integrate such a wide range of devices into it and use their data to build a unique-to-your-home experience. And that’s exactly why I wanted to hear how you, the community, use it in your own home to benefit you. Here are my favorite stories you submitted - I hope one inspires your next project. ✨ * A coffee automation to improve Home Approval Factor. ☕️ Jordan made a morning automation to avoid having the coffee grinder grind his morning mood. * u/katschung helped their girlfriend fully accept Home Assistant by creating a dashboard with a retrogame-style floor plan. 🕹️ * Sythsaz uses Home Assistant to make sure their pupper is fed. 🐾 “ _I’ve managed to make it so my dog’s food auto emails the vet then the response to the email gets put on my calendar so I know how long a bag of food lasts as well as adding the receipts to Google Drive._ ” * Inspired by PowerDisplayESPHome, JannickBlmndl made an LED matrix that helps their household be more sustainable by being energy flexible. It displays the live energy prices from their energy provider. 📊 * Tano Spirits in Melbourne, Australia, uses Home Assistant to automate their Japanese Shochu distillery, inspired by the brewing automations at Little Island Brewing Co in Singapore. 🍻 * Several years ago, HillPhantom found that Home Assistant wasn’t quite ready for him. Over the past year, though, he’s now got Ollama set up with his Home Assistant Voice Preview Edition and has been building guides on how to make your own mmWave radar sensors in Home Assistant. 👋🏻 * Over just a few weeks, Pieter van Kampen recently integrated 190 devices that respond to voice control and more than 1200 active entities from his KNX home to create over 30 automations to help with everything from mowing the lawn to controlling shades based on the sun’s location and intensity. 🪟 * MB used Zigbee buttons to help collect data for their son’s doctor after he developed some trouble sleeping. This gave excellent insight for the doctor to start looking into causes, and they even used the system remotely while doing further evaluation. 📈 * Graham Hosking took automations to another level (before we did) with his AI Automation Suggester and Automation Inspector. It takes the load off your brain by helping come up with new, clever automations! 🤖 * Wessam Lauf fell down the rabbit hole that is Home Assistant once he got his setup running. Inspired by the Graphite theme and after some LLM vibe-coding, he wrote a template for his very own theme, Frosted Glass - now available in HACS. 🎨 * Too many of us anthropomorphize our homes, telling it to chill out when five things break the same day. Biofects took that to heart and created this Home Assistant avatar for his home (here’s a bonus, nightmare fuel first version). 🫣 ## Developers! 👏🏻 Developers! 👏🏻 Developers! 👏🏻 Our community is more than developers, it’s true. But we wouldn’t be the largest open source project on GitHub if we didn’t have a vibrant and active developer community. This ship sails largely due to their contributions, and we genuinely appreciate all of their efforts. That’s why we’re eager to interview community members when we open new roles at the foundation. We’ve employed community members like Joostlek (who designed the new Integration Quality Scale and helps onboard new integrations into Core), Timo (who is our first ever Android developer and has focused on polishing the Android app), and Maxim (a talented developer from the Music Assistant community who works on both Music Assistant and ESPHome and is one of our newest additions to the team). Their contributions have helped shape how things work around here, but it was their contributions as community members that helped pave the way for their joining the foundation. These are just a select few of the _several_ new hires at the foundation who were active community members. (Have you checked our jobs page recently to see what roles are open? 👀) With our community of contributors and working with Nabu Casa on the hardware design, we have successfully launched a few new pieces of hardware. The Home Assistant Voice Preview Edition brought in language experts from every corner of the world to help ensure our language coverage is the most robust in the industry. Thanks to contributors, we support languages like Greek, Icelandic, and more recently Irish Gaeilge! 😎 We had community contributors help make sure the Home Assistant Connect ZWA-2 was prepared for launch last month. Sincerely, we couldn’t be more grateful for your support and efforts in these spaces. Here are some fun stats from our GitHub contributors (commits on our Core repo): * Last 12 months (Sept - Aug) - 14,385 * Previous 12 months - 14,503 A SPECIAL CONGRATULATIONS to bdraco, who just last week surpassed balloob (the founder of Home Assistant) as the contributor with the most commits! The top 8 contributors of all time in home-assistant/core👏🏻 This is just a small peek into all the hard work that goes into maintaining Home Assistant - we have more repositories than just Core, and every single contribution is valued. Honorable dev mention from the submitted community stories - I couldn’t leave Joostlek’s (joke) submission out. 🤣 * Our very own Head of Developer Relations (his words), Joost Lekkerkerker, says Home Assistant helps keep him off the street. He’s just launched his new blog that talks about his vision of a smart home, and how he was inspired to not buy Tuya Wi-Fi lights after seeing my experience with some path lights. ## Our humble gratitude Community is the core of what we do and the heart of Home Assistant. We thrive because you care and contribute your valuable time to support our collective success. Whether you found our platform because you wanted more privacy from big tech, were intrigued by the number of choices implemented into a single app, or needed something to track your sustainability efforts — you support our values every day. Thanks for choosing us, and thank you for all you do to help support the foundation and the projects we maintain. A very special thanks to all our Home Assistant Cloud subscribers and anyone who has purchased our official Home Assistant hardware. These support the full-time development of Home Assistant (along with ESPHome, Music Assistant, and so much more), and are the easiest way to ensure these projects keep getting cool new features! We have more things coming down the line for you. In the near future, we plan on announcing a new merch store 👕. In the first half of next year, I’ll announce when Home Assistant Community Day 2026 will be. We’re already working with Nabu Casa on the next exciting hardware announcement (no spoilers…for now). And that’s not even touching the industry events we plan on attending, the State of the Open Home, and so much more. I’m excited to take you all on the journey we’re already working on over the next 12 months, and I’m always looking forward to another year of amazing contributions. 😌

Home Assistant 2025.8! 🎉 In most parts of the world, summer mode is in full effect! ☀️ Many at the Open Home Foundation and many of our contributors are enjoying a well-deserved break from work and open source. I hope that you are maybe enjoying a well-deserved break as well! 🏖️ Summer breaks or not, we are currently very busy with our next **product launch**! In case you have missed it, this upcoming Wednesday, August 13 (12:00 PM PT, 3:00 PM ET, 21:00 CEST), we will have an extra live stream to announce the next big thing in the Home Assistant Connect series! Be sure to head over to YouTube to hit the reminder button so you don’t miss it! **Z-Wave is not dead!** 🌊 Alright, on to the release! We keep moving during summer and are excited to bring you the August release of Home Assistant! Let’s start with my personal favorite of this release: The improved experience when viewing a group, for example, a group helper with lights. 💡 When viewing such a group entity, you can now control the individual members of that group directly in that dialog. Super useful! I’m pretty sure that will be used a lot in our house. But as the release title suggests, this release brings in an important foundation for new AI opportunities in Home Assistant: **AI Tasks**. Think of it as a way to delegate tasks to AI and get back the result of that task in a structured way so it can be used. Sounds vague? Dive into the release notes below! Enjoy the release! ../Frenck * AI in Home Assistant in 2025 * Streaming Text-to-Speech for Home Assistant Cloud * Integrate AI into your workflow using AI Task * Work faster with Suggest with AI buttons * Area dashboard improvements * Integrations * New integrations * Noteworthy improvements to existing integrations * Integration quality scale achievements * Now available to set up from the UI * Other noteworthy changes * Control individual members of a group * Weekdays in time trigger * Energy flow on your energy dashboard * Patch releases * 2025.8.1 - August 11 * 2025.8.2 - August 15 * 2025.8.3 - August 21 * Need help? Join the community! * Backward-incompatible changes * All changes ## AI in Home Assistant in 2025 We introduced our first AI integration in Home Assistant 2023.2 where users could let OpenAI handle their interactions with Home Assistant Voice. Since that time, AI has seen a big surge in popularity within the Home Assistant community for _all kinds_ of use cases. Funny notifications when the laundry is done, analyzing what’s happening on a camera or skipping the song when AI determines it’s a country song 😅. Though AI gets many people excited, there are still people who would prefer not to have this technology in their smart homes. We want to accommodate everyone’s choices, whether that’s to use AI or not. These features won’t appear unless you set up an AI integration and configure some specific settings. Last year, we sat down to determine how all these use cases, all complicated to achieve, could be made accessible to everyone. The first thing that came out of this was integration sub-entries, which we shipped in the last release. It allows users to configure their Ollama server or API key for OpenAI _once_ , and then create many different agents using different models or configuration underneath. In this release we’re building two new things you can optionally enable via these new sub-entries for AI integrations: _AI tasks_ and _Suggest with AI_. We’re also introducing a new integration, OpenRouter, which is a unified LLM interface giving access to over 400 extra LLM models. Big thanks to our AI community contributors: @AllenPorter, @shulyaka, @tronikos, @IvanLH, and @joostlek! ### Streaming Text-to-Speech for Home Assistant Cloud When you use Home Assistant Voice to talk to an AI, you can do a lot more than just control your home. LLMs can summarize the state of your home, and when using LLMs from Google and OpenAI, they can search the web to answer your questions with up-to-date information. This is great, but these answers can become quite long. Previously, voice responses wouldn’t begin until the AI had finished generating the entire answer, so longer replies meant a longer wait before anything was read aloud. When a user waits for Home Assistant Voice to respond, long wait times really hurt the experience. We have overhauled Home Assistant so our Text-to-Speech system can start generating the response audio before the full response is done generating. Last release we launched this for Piper, our local Text-to-Speech system. In this release we’re making this available to the voices included in Home Assistant Cloud – the best way of supporting the Home Assistant project. This improvement will especially benefit users who use local AI (which can be slow in generating responses) or users who play long announcements on their speakers. ### Integrate AI into your workflow using AI Task AI Task is a new integration that allows you to generate data using AI. After you add the “AI Task” sub-entry in your AI of choice, the entity will appear in the integration. This allows you to attach files or cameras and ask it what is happening. The output can either be given in text or formatted in a data structure of your choice. This is all accessible from the new `ai_task.generate_data` action, which can be embedded in automations, scripts, and template entities. Below is an example of a template entity that updates every five minutes and counts the number of chickens in the coop. Example inspired by this blog post. template: - triggers: - trigger: homeassistant event: start - trigger: time_pattern minutes: "/5" actions: - action: ai_task.generate_data data: task_name: Count chickens instructions: >- This is the inside of my goose coop. How many birds (chickens, geese, and ducks) are inside the coop? structure: birds: selector: number: attachments: media_content_id: media-source://camera/camera.chicken_coop media_content_type: image/jpeg response_variable: result sensor: - name: "Chickens" state: "{{ result.data.birds }}" state_class: total To help get started with AI task, we’ve prepared a blueprint to analyze camera footage: ### Work faster with Suggest with AI buttons The AI Task integration has one extra feature under its belt: default entities. You can go to **Settings** > **System** > **General** and configure what AI Task entity you want to use as the default. With a default set, you no longer have to specify an entity when generating data, making it easier to share blueprints. Setting a default also does more: When a default is configured, and only then, a new type of button will start showing up in different places in Home Assistant: This button is not visible by default and will only appear if you enable it in the “AI suggestions” settings. For this release, the button has been added to the save dialog for automations and scripts. It helps users come up with a name, description, category, and label, while taking into account your current labels and other automation/script names. Keep in mind that generating this text sends the full contents of the automation or script, along with the names of your other automations/scripts and labels, to the LLM. So, this may be a task you will want to relegate to your shiny new local LLM. ## Area dashboard improvements We’ve added a small improvement to the areas dashboard based on your feedback. You can now choose to show the first camera in an area, or its image or icon, in the area dashboard editor. It’s a simple way to make certain area cards stand out a bit more—especially handy if you want quicker visual access to specific spaces. ## 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: * **OpenRouter** , added by @joostlek Access over 400 different large language models through the OpenRouter API, providing a unified interface for AI integrations in your automations. * **Ubiquiti UISP airOS** , added by @CoMPaTech Monitor and manage airOS devices through their local API, providing performance metrics and device status information of your wireless point-to-point infrastructure. * **Uptime Kuma** , added by @tr4nt0r Monitor the uptime and status of your services and websites with Uptime Kuma, keeping track of your infrastructure health directly in Home Assistant. * **Volvo** , added by @thomasddn Connect your Volvo vehicle to Home Assistant for remote monitoring of battery status, location, and other vehicle information. 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: * **Bauknecht** , provided by Whirlpool Appliances, added by @thost96 * **Z-Box Hub** , provided by Fibaro, added by @rappenze ### Noteworthy improvements to existing integrations It is not just new integrationsIntegrations connect and integrate Home Assistant with your devices, services, and more. [Learn more] that have been added; existing integrations are also being constantly improved. Here are some of the noteworthy changes to existing integrations: * The PlayStation Network integration received major updates from @tr4nt0r and @JackJPowell, adding sensors to track your and your friends’ online status, currently playing game, and last online time. Also a binary sensor for your PS Plus subscription status, and a notification platform. PS Vita is now supported as well! * Reolink cameras got multiple enhancements from @starkillerOG: WiFi signal sensors for IP cameras, post-recording time controls, and pre-recording entities. * The AI Task and OpenAI Conversation integrations now support camera and file attachments, thanks to @balloob. * YoLink device support expanded with @matrixd2 adding support for the YS8009, YS7A12, and YS6614 devices. * @ricohageman added dew point sensors to the Awair integration. * @bieniu enhanced both GIOS and IMGW PIB integrations with new sensors, including water flow monitoring for IMGW PIB. * WiZ now supports fans, added by @arturpragacz. * SwitchBot Cloud gained fan platform support from @XiaoLing-git. * Velux windows with rain sensors can now detect precipitation, thanks to @wollew. * SmartThings added vacuum support, implemented by @jennoian. * AmberElectric now provides forecast services, added by @madpilot. * OSO Energy got holiday mode services and custom away mode functionality from @osohotwateriot. * Nord Pool gained normalized price indices service, thanks to @gjohansson-ST. * Matter continues to expand with microwave oven and temperature control device support from @lboue. * @noahhusby added play media support to Russound RIO. * Pi-hole users can now leverage API v6 functionality, enabled by @HarvsG. * Immich users can now upload files directly through a new action, implemented by @mib1185. * KNX now includes a new group monitor with improved filtering and search options, thanks to @philippwaller. ### 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: * **5 integrations reached platinum** 🏆 * AirGradient, thanks to @joostlek * inexogy, thanks to @jpbede * EHEIM Digital, thanks to @autinerd * Pegel Online, thanks to @mib1185 * Tankerkönig, thanks to @mib1185 * **3 integrations reached silver** 🥈 * Amazon Alexa Devices, thanks to @chemelli74 * Homee, thanks to @Taraman17 * Mealie, thanks to @andrew-codechimp * **2 integrations reached bronze** 🥉 * Onkyo, thanks to @arturpragacz * Ring, thanks to @sdb9696 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: * **Datadog** , done by @avedor ## Other noteworthy changes There are many more improvements in this release; here are some of the other noteworthy changes: * Home Assistant’s interface has received a refresh for better accessibility! The primary color and button colors have been updated to meet WCAG AA accessibility standards, improving contrast and readability throughout the interface. All buttons have been redesigned with distinct styles, sizes, and visual priority variants, making it much easier to distinguish between primary, secondary, and less prominent actions. This marks the beginning of a broader effort to update other UI components for improved accessibility and consistency across Home Assistant. * @mib1185 added a new device class for **absolute humidity** with support for both sensor and number 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]. Nice! * Group management was improved by @piitaya, who added the ability to reorder members within a group, making it easier to organize your device groups exactly how you want them. Thanks! * System diagnostics was extended by @balloob with the addition of a device analytics dump download feature. Awesome! * The History Stats integrationIntegrations connect and integrate Home Assistant with your devices, services, and more. Learn more] now includes a preview in the options flow, thanks to [@karwosts. This makes it easier to configure your history statistics. * The Template integrationIntegrations connect and integrate Home Assistant with your devices, services, and more. Learn more] received a massive update from [@Petro31! Here’s what’s new: * Trigger-based numeric sensors can now be set to unknown state * The cover, fan, light, lock, and vacuum platforms are now supported in the UI * Availability templates are now supported in the UI for all available platforms * Preview entity has been added to the UI for alarm control panel and select platforms * Template locks now support the opening state * The alarm control panel, fan, light, lock, switch, and vacuum platforms now support all optimistic YAML modes ### Control individual members of a group Groups are a great way to control multiple 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] at once, but sometimes you want to control individual members of a group. So, for this release, @piitaya and @MindFreeze improved the entity information dialog to show the individual members of a light and cover group, allowing you to control them directly from that dialog. Super useful! ### Weekdays in time trigger The time trigger is already very useful, but @hmmbob had a feature request that could improve it even more. He suggested adding the ability to specify weekdays in the time trigger, allowing users to create automations that only trigger at a specific time on specific days of the week. This feature has been implemented in this release, allowing you to specify the weekdays in the time trigger. This is especially useful for automations that need to run on specific days, such as weekdays or weekends. ### Energy flow on your energy dashboard The Home Assistant energy dashboard is great, but as of this release it’s even a little better! Based on the Sankey Chart custom card, @MindFreeze added a new energy flow visualization for the energy dashboard, which shows exactly where your energy is coming from and where it is going to. Really cool addition to the energy dashboard @MindFreeze! ## Patch releases We will also release patch releases for Home Assistant 2025.8 in August. These patch releases only contain bug fixes. Our goal is to release a patch release once a week, aiming for Friday. ### 2025.8.1 - August 11 * Make Tuya complex type handling explicit (@epenet - #149677) * Fix Enigma2 startup hang (@BlackBadPinguin - #149756) * Fix dialog enhancement switch for Sonos Arc Ultra (@PeteRager - #150116) * Bump ZHA to 0.0.67 (@puddly - #150132) * Bump airOS to 0.2.6 improving device class matching more devices (@CoMPaTech - #150134) * Handle HusqvarnaWSClientError (@Thomas55555 - #150145) * Fix Progettihwsw config flow (@gaspa85 - #150149) * Bump imgw_pib to version 1.5.3 (@bieniu - #150178) * Fix description of `button.press` action (@NoRi2909 - #150181) * Migrate unique_id only if monitor_id is present in Uptime Kuma (@tr4nt0r - #150197) * Silence vacuum battery deprecation for built in integrations (@MartinHjelmare - #150204) * Bump ZHA to 0.0.68 (@puddly - #150208) * Bump hass-nabucasa from 0.111.1 to 0.111.2 (@ludeeus - #150209) * Fix JSON serialization for ZHA diagnostics download (@puddly - #150210) * Ignore MQTT vacuum battery warning (@MartinHjelmare - #150211) * Handle Unifi Protect BadRequest exception during API key creation (@RaHehl - #150223) * Fix Tibber coordinator ContextVar warning (@MartinHjelmare - #150229) * Fix handing for zero volume error in Squeezebox (@peteS-UK - #150265) * Fix error on startup when no Apps or Radio plugins are installed for Squeezebox (@peteS-UK - #150267) * Volvo: fix missing charging power options (@thomasddn - #150272) * Constraint num2words to 0.5.14 (@edenhaus - #150276) * Volvo: fix distance to empty battery (@thomasddn - #150278) * Add GPT-5 support (@Shulyaka - #150281) * Volvo: Skip unsupported API fields (@thomasddn - #150285) * Remove misleading “the” from Launch Library configuration (@NoRi2909 - #150288) * Set suggested display precision on Volvo energy/fuel consumption sensors (@steinmn - #150296) * Bump airOS to 0.2.7 supporting firmware 8.7.11 (@CoMPaTech - #150298) * Update knx-frontend to 2025.8.9.63154 (@philippwaller - #150323) * Update frontend to 20250811.0 (@bramkragten - #150404) * Handle empty electricity RAW sensors in Tuya (@epenet - #150406) * Lower Z-Wave firmware check delay (@MartinHjelmare - #150411) * Fix issue with Tuya suggested unit (@epenet - #150414) ### 2025.8.2 - August 15 * Add pymodbus to package constraints (@epenet - #150420) * Fix enphase_envoy non existing via device warning at first config. (@catsmanac - #149010) * Handle non-streaming TTS case correctly (@synesthesiam - #150218) * Pi_hole - Account for auth succeeding when it shouldn’t (@HarvsG - #150413) * Bump habiticalib to version 0.4.2 (@tr4nt0r - #150417) * Fix optimistic set to false for template entities (@Petro31 - #150421) * Fix error of the Powerfox integration in combination with the new Powerfox FLOW adapter (@DavidCraftDev - #150429) * Bump python-snoo to 0.7.0 (@kevin-david - #150434) * Fix brightness command not sent when in white color mode (@wedsa5 - #150439) * Bump cookidoo-api to 0.14.0 (@miaucl - #150450) * Fix YoLink valve state when device running in class A mode (@matrixd2 - #150456) * Additional Fix error on startup when no Apps or Radio plugins are installed for Squeezebox (@peteS-UK - #150475) * Fix re-auth flow for Volvo integration (@thomasddn - #150478) * Improve Z-Wave manual config flow step description (@MartinHjelmare - #150479) * Add missing boost2 code for Miele hobs (@astrandb - #150481) * Bump airOS to 0.2.8 (@CoMPaTech - #150504) * Bump aiowebostv to 0.7.5 (@thecode - #150514) * Bump bleak-retry-connector to 4.0.1 (@bdraco - #150515) * Bump aiodhcpwatcher to 1.2.1 (@bdraco - #150519) * Bump python-snoo to 0.8.1 (@Lash-L - #150530) * Bump uv to 0.8.9 (@edenhaus - #150542) * Bump python-snoo to 0.8.2 (@Lash-L - #150569) * Change Snoo to use MQTT instead of PubNub (@Lash-L - #150570) * Make sure we update the api version in philips_js discovery (@elupus - #150604) * Bump pymiele to 0.5.3 (@astrandb - #150216) * Bump pymiele to 0.5.4 (@astrandb - #150605) * Bump airOS to 0.2.11 (@CoMPaTech - #150627) * Bump uiprotect to 7.21.1 (@bdraco - #150657) * Bump onvif-zeep-async to 4.0.3 (@bdraco - #150663) * Bump python-snoo to 0.8.3 (@Lash-L - #150670) * Fix missing labels for subdiv in workday (@gjohansson-ST - #150684) * Improve handling decode errors in rest (@gjohansson-ST - #150699) ### 2025.8.3 - August 21 * Bump to zcc-helper==3.6 (@markhannon - #150608) (zimi docs) * fix(amberelectric): add request timeouts (@JP-Ellis - #150613) (amberelectric docs) * Bump renault-api to 0.4.0 (@epenet - #150624) (renault docs) * Update hassfest package exceptions (@cdce8p - #150744) * Bump boschshcpy to 0.2.107 (@tschamm - #150754) (bosch_shc docs) * Fix for bosch_shc: ‘device_registry.async_get_or_create’ referencing a non existing ‘via_device’ (@tschamm - #150756) (bosch_shc docs) * Fix volume step error in Squeezebox media player (@peteS-UK - #150760) (squeezebox docs) * Show charging power as 0 when not charging for the Volvo integration (@thomasddn - #150797) (volvo docs) * Pin gql to 3.5.3 (@joostlek - #150800) * Bump opower to 0.15.2 (@tronikos - #150809) (opower docs) * Include device data in Withings diagnostics (@joostlek - #150816) (withings docs) * Abort Nanoleaf discovery flows with user flow (@joostlek - #150818) (nanoleaf docs) * Bump yt-dlp to 2025.08.11 (@joostlek - #150821) (media_extractor docs) * Initialize the coordinator’s data to include data.options. (@LG-ThinQ-Integration - #150839) (lg_thinq docs) * Handle Z-Wave RssiErrorReceived (@MartinHjelmare - #150846) (zwave_js docs) * Use correct unit and class for the Imeon inverter sensors (@Imeon-Energy - #150847) (imeon_inverter docs) * Bump holidays to 0.79 (@gjohansson-ST - #150857) (workday docs) (holiday docs) * Bump aiorussound to 4.8.1 (@noahhusby - #150858) (russound_rio docs) * Add missing unsupported reasons to list (@agners - #150866) (hassio docs) * Fix icloud service calls (@epenet - #150881) (icloud docs) * Bump pysmartthings to 3.2.9 (@joostlek - #150892) (smartthings docs) * Fix PWA theme color to match darker blue color scheme in 2025.8 (@balloob - #150896) (frontend docs) * Bump bleak-retry-connector to 4.0.2 (@bdraco - #150899) (bluetooth docs) * update pyatmo to v9.2.3 (@cgtobi - #150900) (netatmo docs) * Fix structured output object selector conversion for OpenAI (@balloob - #150916) (openai_conversation docs) * Matter valve Open command doesn’t support TargetLevel=0 (@kepstin - #150922) (matter docs) * Bump ESPHome minimum stable BLE version to 2025.8.0 (@bdraco - #150924) (esphome docs) * Bump imgw-pib to version 1.5.4 (@bieniu - #150930) (imgw_pib docs) * Fix update retry for Imeon inverter integration (@Imeon-Energy - #150936) (imeon_inverter docs) * Bump python-mystrom to 2.5.0 (@elsi06 - #150947) (mystrom docs) * Ask user for Z-Wave RF region if country is missing (@MartinHjelmare - #150959) (zwave_js docs) * Bump onvif-zeep-async to 4.0.4 (@bdraco - #150969) (onvif docs) * Except ujson from license check (@emontnemery - #150980) * Enable country site autodetection in Alexa Devices (@chemelli74 - #150989) (alexa_devices docs) * Update frontend to 20250811.1 (@bramkragten - #151005) (frontend docs) ## Need help? Join the community! Home Assistant has a great community of users who are all more than willing to help each other out. So, join us! Our very active Discord chat server is an excellent place to be, 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: Android Debug Bridge (ADB) Android Debug Bridge media players entities now report to be off where they previously reported to be in standby state. If you have automations or scripts that rely on the Android Debug Bridge media player reporting standby state, you will need to update them to use the new `off` state. (@emontnemery - #148130) (documentation) Apple TV Apple TV media players entities now report to be off where they previously reported to be in standby state. If you have automations or scripts that rely on the Apple TV media player reporting standby state, you will need to update them to use the new `off` state. (@emontnemery - #148132) (documentation) Cambridge Audio Cambridge Audio media players entities now report to be off where they previously reported to be in standby state. If you have automations or scripts that rely on the Cambridge Audio media player reporting standby state, you will need to update them to use the new `off` state. (@emontnemery - #148133) (documentation) Ecovacs The battery property on vacuum entities is being removed in Home Assistant. Therefore, this property is now removed from this integration and is replaced by a battery level sensor. Please review your automations, scripts or cards using the battery property and update the code to use the battery sensor instead. (@mib1185 - #149084) (@edenhaus - #149581) (documentation) Husqvarna Automower The summary field of calendar events provided by the Husqvarna Automower calendar platform has been updated to include the device name as a prefix. This change improves clarity when multiple mowers are used, but may affect automations relying on the previous summary format. (@Thomas55555 - #147405) (documentation) LOOKin LOOKin media players entities now report to be off where they previously reported to be in standby state. If you have automations or scripts that rely on the LOOKin media player reporting standby state, you will need to update them to use the new `off` state. (@emontnemery - #148134) (documentation) Matter The battery property on vacuum entities is being removed in Home Assistant. Therefore, this property is now removed from this integration and is replaced by a battery level sensor. Please review your automations, scripts or cards using the battery property and update the code to use the battery sensor instead. (@MartinHjelmare - #150061) (documentation) Mediaroom Mediaroom media players entities now report to be off where they previously reported to be in standby state. If you have automations or scripts that rely on the Mediaroom media player reporting standby state, you will need to update them to use the new `off` state. (@emontnemery - #148135) (documentation) Miele The battery property on vacuum entities is being removed in Home Assistant. Therefore, this property is now removed from this integration and is replaced by a battery level sensor. Please review your automations, scripts or cards using the battery property and update the code to use the battery sensor instead. (@astrandb - #148765) (documentation) Reolink The Reolink Wi-Fi signal strength sensor has changed from an indicator value between 0 and 4 (amount of bars) to a value in dBm between -85 dBm and -30 dBm. Note that all values in this range are possible, but roughly the old values can be converted like this: * 0 > -85 dBm * 1 > -75 dBm * 2 > -65 dBm * 3 > -55 dBm * 4 > -45 dBm (@starkillerOG - #149191) (documentation) Roborock The battery property on vacuum entities is being removed in Home Assistant. Therefore, this property is now removed from this integration and is replaced by a battery level sensor. Please review your automations, scripts or cards using the battery property and update the code to use the battery sensor instead. (@luca-angemi - #150126) (documentation) Roku Roku media players entities now report to be off where they previously reported to be in standby state. If you have automations or scripts that rely on the Roku media player reporting standby state, you will need to update them to use the new `off` state. (@emontnemery - #148137) (documentation) Snapcast Snapcast media players entities now report to be off where they previously reported to be in standby state. If you have automations or scripts that rely on the Snapcast media player reporting standby state, you will need to update them to use the new `off` state. (@emontnemery - #148138) (documentation) Sony PlayStation 4 Sony PlayStation 4 media players entities now report to be off where they previously reported to be in standby state. If you have automations or scripts that rely on the Sony PlayStation 4 media player reporting standby state, you will need to update them to use the new `off` state. (@emontnemery - #148136) (documentation) Templates Returning `None` from a template binary sensor’s state template is now interpreted as `unknown` state instead of as `off` state. If this behavior is not desired, you need to adjust your templates to return `False` explicitly. (@epenet - #128861) (documentation) Tuya The battery property on vacuum entities is being removed in Home Assistant. Therefore, this property is now removed from this integration and is replaced by a battery level sensor. Please review your automations, scripts or cards using the battery property and update the code to use the battery sensor instead. (@epenet - #150086) (documentation) UniFi Protect Support for UniFi Protect installations running on versions below 6.0.0 has been removed. This change is necessary as we are migrating the Home Assistant integration to use the new UniFi Protect Public API, which is only available in current versions. If you are running an older version of UniFi Protect, you will need to upgrade to at least version 6.0.0 in order to continue using this integration. You can read more about the 6.0 release in Ubiquiti’s official blog post: 🔗 Introducing Protect 6.0 Note on future updates: The Public API is still under active development and may change over time. As we continue to migrate more features of the integration to use the Public API, it is likely that the minimum required version of UniFi Protect will increase further in upcoming Home Assistant releases. We will make these changes step by step as the API evolves and new capabilities become available. **What do I need to do?** Upgrade your UniFi Protect installation to version 6.0.0 or later. Be prepared for possible further minimum version increases in the future. If you are already using version 6.0.0 or newer, and the user in use has sufficient permissions, the integration will attempt to automatically create a new API key. If this succeeds, no further action is required. If it fails, a reauthentication will be triggered, requiring you to re-enter your password and provide your API key manually. (@RaHehl - #149126) (documentation) Whirlpool Appliances The door state for washer/dryer machines is now reported as a binary sensor instead of being part of the main machine state sensor, which now reports only the cycle states. Users relying on this state in automations or scripts will need to update their configurations to use the new binary sensor. (@abmantis - #144078) (documentation) Z-Wave With this release, you will need to update your zwave-js-server instance. You must use zwave-js-server 3.2.1 or greater (schema 44). * If you use the Z-Wave JS add-on, you need at least version 0.20.0. * If you use the Z-Wave JS UI add-on, you need at least version 4.8.0. * If you use the Z-Wave JS UI Docker container, you need at least version 10.11.0. * If you run your own Docker container or some other installation method, you will need to update your zwave-js-server instance to at least 3.2.1. (@MartinHjelmare - #149616) (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. The following changes are the most notable for this release: * Handling open file limit in add-ons since OS 16 * The media player STANDBY state is deprecated * The result attribute has been removed from the FlowResult typed dict * Updated guidelines for helper integrations linking to other integration’s device * Vacuum battery properties are deprecated ## All changes Of course, there is a lot more in this release. You can find a list of all changes made here: Full changelog for Home Assistant Core 2025.8

Home Assistant 2025.9! 🎉 But before we dive into this release: _Did you see we launched a new product?_ 👀 We’ve introduced the Home Assistant Connect ZWA-2, the ultimate way to connect Z-Wave devices to Home Assistant. You can read all about it in our announcement blog 📰 or re-watch the product launch live stream on YouTube 📺. It was a busy month, as we also had two new Works with Home Assistant program partners joining this month as well: AirGradient and Frient! 🎉 While the above was happening this month, as if the project wasn’t already busy enough, we kept on pushing to prepare for this release; and it is an absolute **massive** one! 🤯 This month introduces a new experimental Home dashboard, which aims to become the new default dashboard for Home Assistant in a future release. A first iteration, of which we love to see your feedback and input on. As you know, we develop and iterate in the open. Give it a shot and let us know what you think! Talking about dashboards, my personal favorite card is definitely the tile card; it is just so versatile. And this release brings in a staggering amount of new features for it! Most notably, the ability to add a trend graph to the tile card! 📈 I’m the most excited about the visual changes to the automation editor this release brings: a sidebar. It is a huge and very visible change, that just makes so much sense. This release denotes the start of a whole series of improvements to the automation editor in this, and upcoming releases. As automations make a smart home feel magical, I personally can’t wait to see how this evolves. 🤖 Enjoy the release! ../Frenck * Automation editor sidebar * Introducing the Home dashboard * New tile card features * Trend chart * Media player controls * Bar gauge * Fan direction and oscillation controls * Buttons * Valve open/close and position controls * Setting the date * Integrations * New integrations * Noteworthy improvements to existing integrations * Integration quality scale achievements * Now available to set up from the UI * Farewell to the following * Other noteworthy changes * Analog clock * Storage insights * Patch releases * 2025.9.1 - September 5 * 2025.9.2 - September 12 * 2025.9.3 - September 13 * 2025.9.4 - September 19 * Need help? Join the community! * Backward-incompatible changes * All changes ## Automation editor sidebar On this year’s Home Assistant roadmap, we have set the goal of making automations easier to create. We have big plans, all based on tons of research, and with this release… we are shipping the first part of all this work, with the intent to gradually add more improvements over multiple releases! This release tweaks the automation editor user interface experience by introducing a sidebar! If you select an item in your automation, instead of that item expanding, it will open a new sidebar to the right with the settings for that selected item. This allows you to keep an overview of your automation on the left side of your screen, while you can tweak its behavior on the right. Of course, we have thought of smaller screens as well. On mobile, instead of the sidebar, a sheet will pop up at the bottom of the screen. This pop-up is also resizable, making it easier than ever to edit an action while reviewing your triggers. Besides the sidebar, we have made tons of other little improvements as well. Tiny layout and styling changes that you will definitely notice as they really help with the overall readability. For example, small lines and borders around grouped elements have been added, making it easier to distinguish between different parts of your automation. Oh! And drag-and-drop support is now available on mobile! 🎉 Tip One of Home Assistant’s greatest strengths is our community. We’re building the changes to our automations together, and your input will shape where it goes next. There are two ways to get involved: * Share your thoughts in our survey * Join the conversation in the automations & scripts development channel on Discord ## Introducing the Home dashboard Over the past year, we have focused on dashboards and their capabilities a lot. We’ve looked at a lot of your dashboards you’ve shared on socials, and talked to many of you about how you organize all your smart home devices and services. The goal? Making dashboards faster and easier to create, while still making them very customizable. With this release, we’re introducing a brand-new _Home dashboard_. The purpose is simple: to give you easy access to the right information at the right time. The dashboard adapts to your Home Assistant experience level: powerful enough for advanced users, yet approachable for newcomers. We’re working to have it earn its name, and hope it will eventually become your new _Home_ page. As always, it’s optional; you can always pick your own dashboard. This is the first iteration, and we’ll continue developing it in the open. When you first open the Home dashboard, it gives you a quick way to navigate to useful summaries for your light, climate, security, and media devices. You can also browse by areas, getting an overview of all the devices and services associated with that part of your home. We’re also introducing Favorites. You can pin any entity to the top, whether it’s a light, climate, or a person. We’d love to see what you choose (more on this in the future). The Home dashboard is not just about quick control. It also brings insights and information about your home. This first release includes weather and energy cards. It’s a simple start, and we have a lot of ideas to explore with you. For example, helping you create your first automation, or show discovered devices. For now, the Home dashboard is considered experimental. Configuration options are limited, and it’s guaranteed to evolve. It won’t appear automatically, and if you want to try it you’ll need to add it manually in the dashboard settings, by adding a new “Home” dashboard. Tip One of Home Assistant’s greatest strengths is our community. We’re building this dashboard together, and your input will shape where it goes next. There are two ways to get involved: * Share your thoughts in our survey * Join the conversation in the dashboard development channel on Discord ## New tile card features The tile card is the most versatile card we have in our arsenal of cards for our dashboards. One superpower of the tile card is its “features”, which are small additions where you can add quick interactions to these cards. For example, a slider to control the brightness of a light or buttons for the speed presets of a fan. Features have been extended quite a bit in this release by a dedicated group of community members. ### Trend chart This release, an absolute banger is the addition of the trend chart features for tile cards created by @MindFreeze. This feature adds a handy quick graph to the tile card, showing the history of a specific entity over time. For this initial version, the time window shown is 24 hours. ### Media player controls @timmo001, added tile card features for media player controls and volume! This makes the tile card now a viable alternative to the media player card. Awesome! ### Bar gauge A new tile card feature, made by @MindFreeze: The bar gauge! For this initial version, it works with sensors that use a percentage (`%`) for their unit of measurement. This makes the card great, for example, for a battery overview dashboard. Nice work! ### Fan direction and oscillation controls Thanks to @pcan08 we now have a tile card feature to control fan direction and oscillation! ### Buttons Thanks to @dhoeben we now have a tile card feature for buttons! He added these buttons for automation, script, and button entities. The text can be changed to display standard button text or custom text. ### Valve open/close and position controls Thanks to @timmo001 we now have a tile card feature to control the open/close and the position of valves. ### Setting the date @timmo001 continued and also added a new tile card feature to support date and datetime entities (including the input datetime helpers). It allows you to add a feature that allows for setting a date. ## 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: * **Aladdin Connect** , added by @swcloudgenie Control and monitor your Genie Aladdin Connect garage doors directly from Home Assistant. * **SEKO PoolDose** , added by @lmaertin Integrate your SEKO water treatment system of your pool or spa to monitor temperature and chemical levels. * **Sleep as Android** , added by @tr4nt0r Connects the Sleep as Android app to Home Assistant, allowing you to trigger automations based on alarm clock or sleep cycle events. * **ToGrill Bluetooth BBQ thermometers** , added by @elupus Connect your ToGrill-compatible Bluetooth grill thermometer and monitor your BBQ efforts to cook steaks to absolute perfection. ### Noteworthy improvements to existing integrations It is not just new integrationsIntegrations connect and integrate Home Assistant with your devices, services, and more. [Learn more] that have been added; existing integrations are also being constantly improved. Here are some of the noteworthy changes to existing integrations: * Husqvarna Automower got some nice additions from @Thomas55555! You can now reset cutting blade usage time and track error events with a new event entity. Perfect for keeping track of your lawn mowing robot! * The Reolink integration now includes speak and doorbell volume controls, plus a chime silent time number entity! Nice @starkillerOG! * You can now send notifications with the PlayStation Network integration! Send direct messages to your friends! Thanks, @tr4nt0r! * Network admins will love @Tomeroeni bringing individual (enable/disable) switch port control to UniFi switches! * The OpenWeatherMap integration now includes a wind gust sensor, thanks to @gjohansson-ST! * @kizovinh added support for battery status and online status sensors to the EZVIZ integration, making it easier to monitor your EZVIZ cameras. Nice! * If you own a Russound RIO device, you can now browse your device’s saved presets directly from the media browser! Thanks, @noahhusby! * @mbo18 added an absolute humidity sensor to the Awair integration. Nice! * The Teslemetry integration added charging and preconditioning actions for your Tesla vehicle. Thanks, @Bre77! * @catsmanac added IQ Meter Collar and C6 Combiner support to the Enphase Envoy integration. Good work! ### 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: * **2 integrations reached platinum** 🏆 * Network UPS Tools (NUT), thanks to @tdfountain * Uptime Kuma, thanks to @tr4nt0r * **1 integration reached bronze** 🥉 * Mastodon, thanks to @andrew-codechimp 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: * **Bayesian** , done by @HarvsG ### Farewell to the following The following integrationIntegrations connect and integrate Home Assistant with your devices, services, and more. [Learn more] is no longer available as of this release: * **Uonet+ Vulcan** has been removed. Vulcan has changed their API and their policies forbid using the API from unofficial software. ## Other noteworthy changes There are many more improvements in this release; here are some of the other noteworthy changes: * Based on feature requests from the community, all modern template entity syntax now supports setting a default entity ID directly in YAML. Thanks @Petro31 for implementing that! * @Petro31 also added support for two new entity types to the template integration. You can now create your own templated event entities and update entities. Awesome! * Home Assistant now supports `m³/min` as a volume flow rate unit. Nice addition @fetzerch! * Our voice guy @synesthesiam has been busy with some great QoL improvements this release as well. * The intent handling for the default agent (non-LLM) now supports fuzzy matching. The technique ensures voice pipelines recognize many more sentences. This improvement is available for English only, while we are looking for ways to extend this to other languages. * We now have built-in intents to control the volume of (active) media players! Like the song? Just ask Home Assistant to turn it up a notch! * After all that dancing, you might have gotten a little warm. Hence in this release, we now also have intents to control fan speeds. Nice! ### Analog clock In Home Assistant 2025.4, we introduced the clock card, which provides a digital clock display for your dashboards. For this release, @timmo001 made this card more feature-rich by adding support for displaying the clock in a customizable analog clock style. Nice! ### Storage insights Disk almost full? You might wonder where your storage space has gone… This release adds disk metrics to the storage configuration panel, letting you see usage at a glance, helping you identify what is taking up space. You can find these metrics by navigating to **Settings** > **System** > **Storage**, or by selecting the My Home Assistant button down below. ## Patch releases We will also release patch releases for Home Assistant 2025.9 in September. These patch releases only contain bug fixes. Our goal is to release a patch release once a week, aiming for Friday. ### 2025.9.1 - September 5 * Add support for migrated Hue bridge (@marcelveldt - #151411) * Add missing device trigger duration localizations (@karwosts - #151578) * Correct capitalization of “FRITZ!Box” in FRITZ!Box Tools integration (@tr4nt0r - #151637) * Fix Sonos Dialog Select type conversion (@PeteRager - #151649) * Fix WebSocket proxy for add-ons not forwarding ping/pong frame data (@felipecrs - #151654) * Fix, entities stay unavailable after timeout error, Imeon inverter integration (@Imeon-Energy - #151671) * Bump aiohue to 4.7.5 (@marcelveldt - #151684) * Update frontend to 20250903.3 (@bramkragten - #151694) * Require OhmeAdvancedSettingsCoordinator to run regardless of entities (@dan-r - #151701) * Bump ohmepy version to 1.5.2 (@dan-r - #151707) * Update Mill library 0.13.1 (@Danielhiversen - #151712) * Handle match failures in intent HTTP API (@synesthesiam - #151726) * Bump pyschlage to 2025.9.0 (@dknowles2 - #151731) * Bump bimmer_connected to 0.17.3 (@rikroe - #151756) * Fix recognition of entity names in default agent with interpunction (@arturpragacz - #151759) * Fix enable/disable entity in modbus (@janiversen - #151626) ### 2025.9.2 - September 12 * Fix XMPP not working with non-TLS servers (@Human - #150957) * Update SharkIQ authentication method (@funkybunch - #151046) * Add event entity on websocket ready in Husqvarna Automower (@Thomas55555 - #151428) * Fix Aladdin Connect state not updating (@hbludworth - #151652) * Fix support for Ecowitt soil moisture sensors (@blotus - #151685) * Fix update of the entity ID does not clean up an old restored state (@jbouwh - #151696) * Revert “Jewish Calendar add coordinator “ (@tsvi - #151780) * Remove device class for Matter NitrogenDioxideSensor (@lboue - #151782) * Improve config entry migration for edge cases in Alexa Devices (@chemelli74 - #151788) * Bump habluetooth to 5.3.1 (@bdraco - #151803) * Fix KNX BinarySensor config_store data (@farmio - #151808) * Fix KNX Light - individual color initialisation from UI config (@farmio - #151815) * Mark Tractive switches as unavailable when tacker is in the enegy saving zone (@bieniu - #151817) * Allow delay > 1 in modbus. (@janiversen - #151832) * max_temp / min_temp in modbus light could only be int, otherwise an assert was provoked. (@janiversen - #151833) * removed assert fron entity in modbus. (@janiversen - #151834) * Bump pydrawise to 2025.9.0 (@dknowles2 - #151842) * Bump aioharmony to 0.5.3 (@bdraco - #151853) * Update pysmarty2 to 0.10.3 (@martinssipenko - #151855) * fix rain sensor for Velux GPU windows (@wollew - #151857) * Bump aioecowitt to 2025.9.1 (@edenhaus - #151859) * Use `native_visibility` property instead of `visibility` for OpenWeatherMap weather entity (@bieniu - #151867) * Bump aiontfy to v0.5.5 (@tr4nt0r - #151869) * Bump aiolifx-themes to 1.0.2 to support newer LIFX devices (@Djelibeybi - #151898) * Bump aiovodafone to 1.2.1 (@chemelli74 - #151901) * Avoid cleanup/recreate of device_trackers not linked to a device for Vodafone Station (@chemelli74 - #151904) * Fix _is_valid_suggested_unit in sensor platform (@epenet - #151912) * Bump habluetooth to 5.5.1 (@bdraco - #151921) * Bump bleak-esphome to 3.3.0 (@bdraco - #151922) * Bump habluetooth to 5.6.0 (@bdraco - #151942) * Fix invalid logger in Tuya (@epenet - #151957) * Fix for squeezebox track content_type (@peteS-UK - #151963) * Fix playlist media_class_filter in search_media for squeezebox (@peteS-UK - #151973) * Bump habluetooth to 5.6.2 (@bdraco - #151985) * Bump yt-dlp to 2025.09.05 (@joostlek - #152006) * Bump `accuweather` to version 4.2.1 (@bieniu - #152029) * Fix HomeKit Controller stale values at startup (@bdraco - #152086) * Fix duplicated IP port usage in Govee Light Local (@abmantis - #152087) * Fix DoorBird being updated with wrong IP addresses during discovery (@bdraco - #152088) * Fix supported _color_modes attribute not set for on/off MQTT JSON light (@jbouwh - #152126) * Fix reauth for Alexa Devices (@chemelli74 - #152128) * Bump hass-nabucasa from 1.1.0 to 1.1.1 (@ludeeus - #152147) * Update frontend to 20250903.5 (@bramkragten - #152170) * Use position percentage for closed status in Velux (@wollew - #151679) ### 2025.9.3 - September 13 * Bump habluetooth to 5.6.4 (@bdraco - #152227) ### 2025.9.4 - September 19 * Bump habiticalib to v0.4.4 (@tr4nt0r - #151332) * Bump habiticalib to v0.4.5 (@tr4nt0r - #151720) * Fix bug with the hardcoded configuration_url (asuswrt) (@Vaskivskyi - #151858) * Fix HomeKit Controller overwhelming resource-limited devices by batching characteristic polling (@bdraco - #152209) * Upgrade waterfurnace to 1.2.0 (@sdague - #152241) * Bump aiohomekit to 3.2.16 (@bdraco - #152255) * Bump bluetooth-auto-recovery to 1.5.3 (@bdraco - #152256) * Add proper error handling for /actions endpoint for miele (@astrandb - #152290) * Bump aiohomekit to 3.2.17 (@bdraco - #152297) * Update authorization server to prefer absolute urls (@allenporter - #152313) * Bump imeon_inverter_api to 0.4.0 (@Imeon-Energy - #152351) * Bump pylamarzocco to 2.1.0 (@zweckj - #152364) * Add La Marzocco specific client headers (@zweckj - #152419) * Fix KNX UI schema missing DPT (@farmio - #152430) * Bump pyemoncms to 0.1.3 (@alexandrecuer - #152436) * Fix Sonos set_volume float precision issue (@PeteRager - #152493) * Bump opower to 0.15.5 (@tronikos - #152531) * Bump holidays to 0.80 (@gjohansson-ST - #152306) * Bump holidays to 0.81 (@gjohansson-ST - #152569) * Bump asusrouter to 1.21.0 (@Vaskivskyi - #151607) ## Need help? Join the community! Home Assistant has a great community of users who are all more than willing to help each other out. So, join us! Our very active Discord chat server is an excellent place to be, 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: Encoding units containing the μ character The encoding for some units that contain the μ character has been changed. Users that consume state data from sensors that have changed units will be impacted (such as exported state data to InfluxDB). The units with a changed encoding are: * `μSv/h` for the `aranet` integration as a unit for radiation rate * `μS/cm` for `UnitOfConductivity.MICROSIEMENS_PER_CM` * `μV` for `UnitOfElectricPotential.MICROVOLT` * `μg/ft³` for concentration in micrograms per cubic foot * `μg/m³` for concentration in micrograms per cubic meter * `μmol/s⋅m²` for the `fyta` integration as a unit for light * `μg` for `UnitOfMass.MICROGRAMS` * `μs` for `UnitOfTime.MICROSECONDS` (@jbouwh - #144853) 1-Wire The `raw_value` attribute was previously deprecated and has now been removed. (@gjohansson-ST - #150112) (documentation) Alexa Devices The sound list has been updated to match the one used by the Alexa Mobile app. The `variant` parameter is no longer required. Check your automations to ensure the selected sound is still present. (@chemelli74 - #151317) (documentation) Husqvarna Automower BLE The integration now requires the Automower PIN when being set up. This ensures Home Assistant can communicate with more models of mowers and with higher security levels. (@alistair23 - #135440) (documentation) KNX KNX scene entities now also change their state when a scene was activated externally (from bus). Previously they only updated when activated from within Home Assistant. (@farmio - #151218) (documentation) SIA Alarm Systems SIA alarm status code CF (armed with malfunctions) is now mapped to `armed_away` instead of to `armed_custom_bypass`. (@etnoy - #132628) (documentation) SwitchBot Bluetooth The battery property on vacuum entities is being removed in Home Assistant. Therefore, this property is now removed from this integration and is replaced by a battery level sensor. Please review your automations, scripts, and dashboards using the battery property and update the code to use the battery sensor instead. (@MartinHjelmare - #150227) (documentation) Yale August The August integration now uses OAuth authentication with Yale August’s official API. This is a required one-time breaking change as the unofficial authentication method will stop working soon. This migration helps reduce unnecessary load on Yale August’s servers while ensuring continued access for all users. When you update Home Assistant, you’ll be prompted to re-authenticate your August account: 1. Select the notification or go to **Settings** → **Devices & Services** → **August** 2. Select “Reconfigure” and follow the OAuth flow to sign in 3. Once authenticated, your devices will work exactly as before We’re grateful to Yale August for officially supporting Home Assistant with dedicated API access! (@bdraco - #151080) (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. The following changes are the most notable for this release: * Standardize encoding of μ in units of measurement * The DeviceEntry.suggested_area attribute is deprecated and will be removed ## All changes Of course, there is a lot more in this release. You can find a list of all changes made here: Full changelog for Home Assistant Core 2025.9

The Home Assistant companion app for Android just keeps getting better with every release, and recently, it gained some dedicated support to help accelerate its development. Several months ago, I (Timothy Nibeaudeau, also known as @TimoPtr) joined the Open Home Foundation as our dedicated Android developer 🎉. It’s been over two years, and hundreds of thousands of installs, since we’ve published a dedicated update for our community on the development of the app, and I’d like to give you a quick update on recent improvements and what’s coming next. ## Behind the Screens In the beginning, all of Home Assistant’s official companion apps were developed by the community in their spare time, with many still being part-time projects. It’s incredible the work they put into building these apps. This gives you not just the ability to view your Home Assistant instance on the go (or around the house) and takes advantage of many of the sensors available on the device while providing rich notifications to users. Very impressive growth in installs over the years! The Android app alone has seen over 2,700 contributions! It’s a lot of work keeping up with Android versions, new capabilities of Home Assistant, and bug fixes. This app doesn’t just support Android phones and tablets but also devices they connect to, specifically Android Auto, Android Automotive, and Wear OS. ### Progress in the millions They did all this work while reaching nearly **1.5 million installs** , with over 6 million total installs over the years. There are 400,000 daily active users and 1 million monthly active users. The phone app also has a very nice **4.3-star rating** on the Play Store and **2,800 stars** on GitHub 🤩. This feedback really helps us improve. It’s been over a year and a half since the Apple companion apps gained a full-time developer with the addition of the amazing Bruno Pantaleão 😎. Around the same time as Bruno was hired, we began looking for an Android developer, and let’s say that took a little longer. My name is Timothy Nibeaudeau, and as mentioned at the start, I’m your new dedicated Android engineer. As someone who has been using Home Assistant since 2018, I’m passionate about open source and smart home technology. I’ve been working in software development for nearly a decade, developing apps for all sorts of projects from medical-grade IoT products to smart toothbrushes 🪥. I am committed to bringing my talents to the project, but I cannot do it alone. The community is what makes Home Assistant special, and together, we can achieve even more. Specifically, I’d like to thank @dshokouhi, @jpelgrom, and @JBassett for their years of work making this app what it is today! I’d also like to thank you! Your support (by subscribing to Home Assistant Cloud and buying official hardware) allows the Open Home Foundation to hire dedicated developers. Dedicated developers keep development focused, helping the community to work together in delivering the feature they’re passionate about. ## Since our last blog Like I said at the top, it’s been a long time (over two years 🫢) since we’ve published a blog highlighting the improvements made to the Android app. You’ve probably been enjoying these new features for some time, but in case you missed it, here are some of the biggest improvements made by the community over that time. * Health Connect sensors linked to your Android phone have been added, including heart rate, fitness data, and glucose levels (as always, you have complete control over what you share with your Home Assistant instance, and that data stays local). * By working with Android natively, Assist can now replace your phone’s (or Wear OS devices’) assistant. * You can now set the Home Assistant app as your device’s default launcher, which is great for wall panel setups. * We’ve updated our widgets to support some of the new features, like To-do lists. * Wear OS has had its Tile capabilities improved and a new thermostat tile was added. * There are now more Android Auto sensors, like speed and remaining range. * A simpler way to connect Wi-Fi compatible devices to your home network (such as the Home Assistant Voice Preview Edition) using Improv Wi-Fi over Bluetooth (an open standard for connecting devices to Wi-Fi using Bluetooth, built by the Open Home Foundation). * The Z-Wave device onboarding experience has been improved with the addition of a QR code scanner. * We’ve also improved the speed and stability of the app. * It’s now easier than ever for new contributors to jump in and start helping with the app (much more on that below 👇). For a full list of the app’s capabilities, check out our breakdown of the companion apps from the companion documentation. ## What’s next for our Android app In our latest update of the Android app 2025.7.1, we’ve added a couple of useful features. Including a new basic invite flow, which will be shared between Android and iOS, adding a good layer of consistency between our most-used companion apps. The idea is to make it much more seamless to add new users or set up new devices (no need to type the URL in your Android Automotive device!). We’ve also made My Links work better. If you’re unfamiliar with My Links, they’re those cool links (that anyone can make) that bring you right to an integration, blueprint, add-on, or settings page. They have always worked great on desktop, but up until recently, they were a bit clunky to use on mobile. Now you can get to the link’s destination with a single click. Android has many different screen sizes and layouts, and we’re working to better leverage them with edge-to-edge support. Our recent update has edge-to-edge working on Android native UI elements like the settings page, and we’re looking to implement them elsewhere in future updates so we can make the most of your screen real estate. ## Important changes for Android users A huge percentage of our users are on pretty new versions of Android, but we want to support as many older devices as possible. One significant change on the horizon is ending support for Android 5.0 and 5.1 (also known as Android Lollipop, released in 2014… it had a good run 🫡). Google has announced that starting in June 2025, many AndroidX libraries will require a minimum of Android 6.0 (API 23). Google has already updated Firebase Cloud Messaging to require this as well. This means we will need to stop supporting Android 5.0 and 5.1 (API 21 and 22) to keep up with new features and security updates. Less than 0.3% of installs are on Android versions below API 23 (Android 6.0), and we always work to keep older devices working, but sometimes our hand is forced. If you are using an older device, the app will not be removed, but you will not receive new updates once we make this change. We plan to make one final release for these older versions before support ends. This release is expected before the end of the summer, so you will have the latest updates available for your device before we move on. ## Let’s work together We want to make it easier for you to contribute, whether you are a seasoned developer or just getting started. This includes making the contribution journey smoother and giving people an easy place to start. We’ve even compiled a list of “first issues” to tackle for prospective developers looking to help out. We’ve started work on dedicated Android developer documentation, which will give in-depth information about the inner workings of this app. We’ve made many behind-the-scenes changes to improve the developer experience (defining best practices, linters for faster/automated feedback, and continuous integration for quicker feedback on PRs). Our focus is always on improving stability, reducing crash rates, and catching issues early. One example of this is our new fail-fast approach, which has already helped us catch and fix issues early. We want more Android native/exclusive features while also balancing the need to keep parity between the Android and iOS companion apps (the iOS app is excellent, and each app’s community is learning so much from each other). ### How you can help The companion app for Android is a community effort, and your help makes a real difference. Here is how you can get involved: * Join the beta program to test new features. * Suggest a feature and share your ideas. * Help triage issues on GitHub, Discord, or the Home Assistant forum. * Join the Android Project thread on Discord. (Head to _Channels & Roles_ and select “I want to contribute developer skills!” to assign yourself the Developer role if you can’t see the thread.) * Submit issues, review pull requests, start your first pull request, and ask questions — your feedback is valuable. * Help us translate the app. Thanks again for making all this possible. I look forward to your help making this app even more amazing!

Last year, we laid out our vision for AI in the smart home, which opened up experimentation with AI in Home Assistant. In that update, we made it easier to integrate all sorts of local and cloud AI tools, and provided ways to use them to control and automate your home. A year has passed, a lot has happened in the AI space, and our community has made sure that Home Assistant has stayed at the frontier. We beat big tech to the punch; we were the first to make AI useful in the home. We did it by giving our community complete control over how and when they use AI, making AI a powerful _tool_ to use in the home. As opposed to something that takes over your home. Our community is taking advantage of AI’s unique abilities (for instance, its image recognition or summarizing skills), while having the ability to exclude it from mission-critical things they’d prefer it not to handle. Best of all, this can all be run locally, without any data leaving your home! Moreover, if users don’t want AI in their homes, that’s their choice, and they can choose not to enable any of these features. I hope to see big tech take an approach this measured, but judging by their last couple of keynotes, I’m not holding my breath. Over the past year, we’ve added many new AI features and made them easy to use directly through Home Assistant’s user interface. We have kept up with all the developments in AI land and are using the latest standard to integrate more models and tools than ever before. We’re also continuing to benchmark local and cloud models to give users an idea of what works best. Keep reading to check out everything new, and maybe you can teach your smart home some cool new tricks. Local AI is making the home very natural to control Big thanks to our AI community contributor team: @AllenPorter, @shulyaka, @tronikos, @IvanLH, @Joostlek! ## Supercharging voice control with AI We were doing voice assistants before AI was cool. In 2023, we kicked off our Year of the Voice. Since then, we’ve worked towards our goal of building all the parts needed for a local, open, and private voice assistant. When AI became the rage, we were quick to integrate it. Today, users can chat with any large language model (LLM) that is integrated into Home Assistant, whether that’s in the cloud or run locally via a service like Ollama. Where Assist, our home-grown (non-AI) voice assistant agent, is focused on a predetermined list of mostly home control commands, AI allows you to ask more open-ended questions. Summarize what’s happening across the smart home sensors you’ve exposed to Assist, or get answers to trivia questions. You can even give your LLM a personality! Users can also leverage the power of AI to speak the way _they speak_ , as LLMs are much better at understanding the intent behind the words. By default, Assist will handle commands first. Only questions or commands it can’t understand will be sent to the AI you’ve set up. For instance, _“Turn on the kitchen light”_ can be handled by Assist, while _“It’s dark in the kitchen, can you help?”_ could be processed by an AI. This speeds up response times for simple commands and makes for a more sustainable voice assistant. Another powerful addition from the past year is context sharing between agents. So your Assist agent can share the most recent commands with your chosen AI agent. This shared context lets you say something like _“Add milk to my shopping list,”_ which Assist will act on, and to add more items, just say _“Add rice.”_ The AI agent understands that these commands are connected and can act accordingly. Here is an excellent walkthrough video of JLo's AI-powered home, showing many of these new features in action Another helpful addition keeps the conversation going; if the LLM asks you a question, your Assist hardware will listen for your reply. If you say something like “It’s dark”, it might ask whether you’d like to turn on some lights, and you could tell it to proceed. We have taken this even further than other voice assistants, as you can now have Home Assistant initiate conversations. For example, you could set up an automation that detects when the garage door is open and asks if you’d like to close it (though this can also be done without AI with a very clever Blueprint). AI pushed us to completely revamp our Text-to-Speech (TTS) system to take advantage of streaming responses from LLMs. While local AI models can be slow, we use a simple trick to make the delay almost unnoticeable. Now, both Piper (our local TTS) and Home Assistant Cloud TTS can begin generating audio as soon as the LLM produces the first few words, improving the speed of the spoken response by a factor of ten. **Prompt: “Tell me a long story about a frog”** **Setup** | **Time to start speaking** ---|--- Cloud, non-streaming | 6.62 sec Cloud, streaming | 0.51 sec (13x faster) Piper, non-streaming | 5.31 sec Piper, streaming | 0.56 sec (9.5x faster) _Ollama gemma3:4b on an RTX 3090, and Piper on an i5_ ## Great hardware to work with AI People built some really cool voice hardware, from landline telephones to little talking robots, but the fact that it was so DIY was always a barrier to entry. To make our voice assistant available to everyone, we released the Home Assistant Voice Preview Edition. This is an easy and affordable way to try Home Assistant Voice. It has some seriously powerful audio processing hardware inside its sleek package. If you were on the fence about trying out voice, it really is the best way to get started. Voice Preview Edition is not only open and powerful, but it looks and feels great too! It’s now easier than ever to set up your Assist hardware to work with LLMs with our Voice Assistants settings page, and you can even assign a different LLM to each device. The LLM can recognize the room it’s in and the devices within it, making its responses more relevant. Assist was built to be a great way to control devices in your home, but with AI, it becomes so much more. ## AI-powered suggestions Last month, Home Assistant launched a new opt-in feature to leverage the power of AI when automating with Home Assistant. The goal is to shorten the journey from a blank slate to your finished idea. When saving an automation or script, users can now leverage the new Suggest button: When clicked, it will send your automation configuration along with the titles of your existing automations and labels to AI to suggest a name, description, category, and labels for your new automation. Over the coming months, we’re going to explore what other features can benefit from AI suggestions. To opt-in to this feature, you need to take two steps. First, you need to configure an integration that provides an _AI Tasks_ entity. For local AI, you can configure Ollama, or you can also leverage cloud-based AI like Google, OpenAI, or Anthropic. Once configured, you need to go to the new AI Task preferences pane under **_System - > General_** and pick the AI Task entity to power suggestions in the UI. If you don’t configure an AI Tasks entity, the Suggest button will not be visible. ## AI Tasks gets the job done Enabling AI Tasks does more than quickly label and summarize your automations; its true superpower is making AI easy to use in templates, scripts, and automations. AI Tasks allow other code to leverage AI to generate data, including options to attach files and define how you want that data output (for instance, a JSON schema). We have all seen those incredible community creations, where a user leverages AI image recognition and analysis to detect available parking spots or count the number of chickens in the chicken coop. It’s likely that AI Tasks can now help you easily do this in Home Assistant, without the need for complex scripts, extra add-ons, or HACS integrations. Below is a template entity that counts chickens in a video feed, all via a short and simple set of instructions. template: - triggers: - trigger: homeassistant event: start - trigger: time_pattern minutes: "/5" actions: - action: ai_task.generate_data data: task_name: Count chickens instructions: >- This is the inside of my coop. How many birds (chickens, geese, and ducks) are inside the coop? structure: birds: selector: number: attachments: media_content_id: media-source://camera/camera.chicken_coop media_content_type: image/jpeg response_variable: result sensor: - name: "Chickens" state: "{{ result.data.birds }}" state_class: total This template sends a snapshot of the camera to the AI, asking it to analyze what is going on. It defines that the output should always be a number, since we want to use that information in Home Assistant. All of this is embedded in a template entity that automatically updates every 5 minutes. An AI Task could also be embedded in an automation, a script, or any other place that can execute actions. An automation triggers an AI Task to identify what caused motion on a camera. Lastly, users can set a default AI Task entity. This allows users to skip picking an entity ID when creating AI automations. It also lets you migrate everything that uses AI Tasks to the latest model with a single click. This also makes it easy to share blueprints that leverage AI Tasks, like this blueprint that analyzes a camera snapshot when motion is detected: ## MCP opens a whole new world Model Context Protocol (MCP) is a thin layer allowing LLMs to integrate _anything_. When the specification was announced, we quickly jumped on it and integrated it into Home Assistant. Effectively, these servers give Home Assistant’s Assist conversation agent access to all sorts of new tools. You could connect MCP servers that give Assist access to the latest news stories, your to-do lists, or a server that catalogues your vinyl collection, allowing you to have richer conversations (_“Okay Nabu, which Replacements albums do I have, and which aren’t on my Vinyl-to-Purchase list?”_). On the flip side, you can also turn Home Assistant into an MCP server, allowing an AI system to access information about your home. For instance, you could create a local AI that’s great at making Home Assistant automations, and it could include all your entity names or available actions. MCP keeps gaining more support, and there are some great cloud and self-hosted solutions available. ## How to pick a model There are a lot of models available, it’s hard to know where to start. Luckily, Home Assistant’s resident AI guru @AllenPorter is here to help. He has put together an incredibly useful Home LLM Leaderboard. This dataset includes his extensive tests of cloud and local LLM options, and even has tests that give small local LLMs a fighting chance (see assist-mini). Currently, the charts show the big cloud players’ most recent models ranking pretty close to each other, while recent local models that use 8GB or more of VRAM are nearly keeping up. In the past, there was a big disparity between most models, but now it’s hard to go wrong. This is especially helpful as the options for LLMs in Home Assistant have just grown exponentially with the addition of OpenRouter, a unified interface for LLMs. With OpenRouter, users can access over 400 new models in Home Assistant, and it supports AI Tasks right from day one. We really are spoiled for choice. ## The future is Open, and Open Source Home Assistant is open. We believe that you should be in control of your data, and your smart home. All of it. Local LLMs and the way we have architected Home Assistant extends this choice to the AI space, all while maintaining your privacy. Most crucially, we’ve made all of this open source. We are community-driven and work on this together with our community. The Open Home Foundation has no investors and is not beholden to anyone but our users. Our work is funded through hardware purchases and Home Assistant Cloud subscriptions, allowing us to make all the technology we build free and open.

We’re excited to welcome Shelly to the Works with Home Assistant program! Shelly is very well-established in both our ecosystem and the smart home world, so it’s great to formally certify a selection of their Z-Wave devices. Their retrofit smart switches and relays are amazing for turning all sorts of _dumb_ devices, like light fixtures or ceiling fans, into devices you can easily control in _smart_ new ways. Also, being Works with certified means they have been thoroughly tested, ensuring they give the best possible experience with Home Assistant. The variety of complex settings and functionality, like energy monitoring, makes them popular with our community doing advanced smart retrofits, like connecting an old garage door or motorized shutters. These are perfect for keeping non-smart devices out of the landfill and working for years to come. ## From A to Z-Wave Shelly, originally launched in Bulgaria in 2017, has been a mainstay in our community for some years. They became known initially for their WiFi smart switches and relays that could be easily used locally, but now offer a wide range of smart devices and ways to connect them. For this first round of Works with Home Assistant certified products, the focus is firmly on the Z-Wave lines. If you’re not familiar with Z-Wave, it’s a well-established low-powered wireless technology designed with the smart home in mind. It uses an entirely different bit of radio spectrum than WiFi, meaning it has less chance of experiencing interference. This spectrum makes it better at getting through thick walls and communicating over longer distances — with the recent Long Range iteration of the standard, they can communicate even further. Given our focus on local control, items that work on Z-Wave are ideal if you want to avoid the cloud. Home Assistant will act as your Z-Wave controller using the Z-Wave JS add-on (another awesome Open Home Foundation project). So, all you need is a Z-Wave adapter to use alongside these devices. _If you haven’t purchased one yet, you might want to wait before hitting that buy button_ 😉. Shelly shares our focus on interoperability, with items using a variety of protocols, while being available worldwide. These items are also super helpful for the energy-conscious. They have low power consumption, power metering, and can easily blend in with your current home decor, as they sit in the wall behind your existing switches. Mini? This thing is microscopic! ## Getting Involved We’ve been lucky enough to meet the Shelly team on several occasions, and they were kind enough to showcase how the Las Vegas Mob Museum uses Shelly and Home Assistant during our annual ‘State of the Open Home’ event. In May, they went one step further and hosted one of our Community Days in South Florida. It’s really exciting to see that partners who join the ‘Works with’ program don’t just see it as a badge to stick on a box, but a real chance to engage with, and contribute to, this amazing community. "Many of our users already rely on Home Assistant to power their smart homes, and we’ve seen firsthand how important local control, privacy, and flexibility are to them. By joining the _Works with Home Assistant_ program, we’re reinforcing our commitment to open, reliable smart home solutions. With the upcoming launch of our **Shelly Wave Long Range** devices—offering wireless coverage of up to **1 kilometer** — we’re pushing the boundaries of what smart home technology can do. Combined with Home Assistant’s powerful platform, this will be a **market-leading solution** , capable of covering **use cases no other ecosystem today can reach**. Together, we’re building the future of smart homes: open, powerful, and ready for real-world demands." _- Leon Kralj, CTO at Shelly_ ## Devices In case you didn’t know, Works with Home Assistant differs from other certification programs as products are rigorously tested in-house to ensure they work seamlessly out of the box. Any company joining also commits to providing long-term support and firmware updates while being a positive force in the Home Assistant community. Works with Home Assistant is operated by the Open Home Foundation, and the support of Home Assistant Cloud subscribers funds this work. **What devices have been certified?** * Shelly Wave PM Mini * Shelly Wave i4 * Shelly Wave 1PM Mini * Shelly Wave 2PM * Shelly Wave Pro 1PM Whilst the Shelly Wave Pro 1PM sits in an electrical box, the remaining devices sit behind a standard plug, switch or device. This means they are a super cost-effective way to retrofit devices, which in turn reduces e-waste. The Minis are very small (duh), and so should fit in most tight places around the home, even with low-profile installations. The Shelly Wave 1PM Mini is the world’s smallest Z-Wave smart switch. In some areas of the world, you may need professional installation by a qualified electrician, so be sure to check your region’s regulations. If you’re a confident DIYer, Shelly has a lot of helpful guides on their site to walk you through installing it yourself. ## The first of many waves These devices are the first from Shelly to join the program, but certainly won’t be the last, as we look forward to many exciting developments with Z-Wave Long Range. Keep your eyes peeled for our upcoming hardware announcement that will work perfectly with our Z-Wave partners. Thanks again for your support (by subscribing to Home Assistant Cloud and buying official hardware), which allows the Open Home Foundation to build these partnerships and certify new devices to join Works with Home Assistant. ### 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 yet or doesn’t fit the requirements of the program. It might function 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. It may also have a feature missing in Home Assistant that we’re working to add. **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 work well 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, a Z-Wave adapter and with our Z Wave integration. If you have another hub / adapter / integration 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 Shelly devices to the program?** A: Absolutely. Shelly has a huge number of product lines and will be expanding their Z-Wave Long Range list. We’re sure they’ll keep our testers busy with a steady stream of devices to add.

Our Works with Home Assistant program is expanding once again, and this time we’re excited to announce Zooz is joining us! We have tested many new devices of all different types, ensuring they provide the best experience possible with Home Assistant. As well as classic staples for the smart home, they also bring some very cool flood protection devices to help safeguard your home. These will be the first certified Z-Wave devices added to the program in some time, and are just part of the exciting future the Home Assistant community and Zooz see for this smart home protocol. ## Zooz zooms in Zooz started out not as a manufacturer, but as a retailer of smart devices. They focused so much on customer support that they soon realized they could do a better job than manufacturers already in the market, and so turned instead to creating their own products. They focus on Z-Wave for its interoperability and security, and they include easy-to-understand installation guides with these devices. They also have a wide knowledge base on their website and a very responsive support team. As Z-Wave experts, they’re members of the Z-Wave Alliance (where Paulus is also a member as the voice of the open source community). While Zooz is based in the USA, many of their products are available worldwide. ## It takes Zooz Zooz has really embraced the Home Assistant community. Agnes, their VP of Brand and Partnership Support, recently spoke to the team over at the Home Assistant podcast about their startup journey. She also came along to our Community Day in Brooklyn, hosted by our very own Product Lead, Madelena. It’s awesome to see manufacturers get out and connect with our community members. "Zooz has been contributing quality hardware to the smart home community for over 10 years now and our biggest takeaway is that thoughtful integration is key for our customers. We recognize that our devices are part of an ecosystem and that's why we are so excited to partner with Home Assistant, a platform we highly respect for its commitment to making products work together seamlessly. I especially appreciate how quickly Home Assistant embraced Z-Wave Long Range and how easy it is to set up Z-Wave on a brand new system thanks to hardware like Home Assistant Green. We look forward to connecting with the Home Assistant community, learning together, and creating new devices driven by your feedback." _- Agnes Lorenz, VP, Brand and Partnership Support, Zooz._ ## Devices In case you didn’t know, Works with Home Assistant differs from other certification programs as products are rigorously tested in-house to ensure they work seamlessly out of the box. Any company joining also commits to providing long-term support and firmware updates while being a positive force in the Home Assistant community. Works with Home Assistant is operated by the Open Home Foundation, and the support of Home Assistant Cloud subscribers funds this work. Zooz has had a large group of devices certified, one of the largest number of devices we’ve ever certified for a launch into the program. Kudos to the foundation team, and Zooz for making such a great variety of new devices available to our community. **Leak Protection** ZAC36 Titan Water Valve Actuator **Plugs** ZEN04 Smart Plug ZEN05 Outdoor Plug **Relays** ZEN16 Multi Relay ZEN51 Dry Contact Relay ZEN52 Double Relay ZEN53 DC Motor Controller **Lighting Switches** ZEN30 Double Switch ZEN32 Scene Controller ZEN71 On Off Switch ZEN72 Dimmer ZEN74 Toggle Dimmer ZEN76 S2 On Off Switch ZEN77 S2 Dimmer **Sensors** ZSE11 Q Sensor (4in1) ZSE18 Motion Sensor ZSE41 Open / Close XS Sensor ZSE42 Water Leak XS Sensor ZSE43 Tilt Shock XS Sensor ZSE44 Temperature Humidity XS Sensor ZSE70 Outdoor Motion Sensor ## Frequencies and firmware If you’re based in North America, all new devices will come with Z-Wave Long Range (ZWLR) as standard. If you are based elsewhere, like in Europe, Long Range won’t be enabled quite yet. The reason is that even though the Z-Wave Long Range protocol has been available for some time in North America, it was only released in Europe in April 2025, as certification took a bit longer. The nice thing about Zooz’s North American 700 series and European 800 series Z-Wave, is that ZWLR can be enabled via an over-the-air (OTA) firmware update, so hopefully everyone will be taking part in the Z-Wave Long Range revolution soon. Watch this space for a not-so-secret Home Assistant Z-Wave hardware announcement coming your way… Z-Wave Long Range opens up a whole new world of options and makes for an even more flexible smart home. Maybe you have a large backyard, or an awkwardly shaped long, but narrow home that is hard to get other protocols to cover adequately. Or perhaps you have devices that are just too far away for other protocols. A common example is wanting a way to get notified when the mailbox at the front of your driveway is opened or closed. Many of the certified devices can function outdoors or be purchased with accessories to make them waterproof. Speaking on a personal note, we had a leak in our garage a year or so ago after some bad weather. Other protocols couldn’t reach that far, and we had no way to be notified. I cannot wait for an easy way to be notified across that bigger distance, and avoid all the unpleasant clean-up. It’s great to read stories on social media or our forums where smart home devices have kicked in and saved the day, like getting that all-important notification or cutting off the water supply with something like Zooz’s valve actuator. Z-Wave, like other open standards we support, works locally, and all of the devices listed above will work locally, without the need for any extra cloud connection or apps. Remember, if you’re also looking for remote access to make sure you don’t miss any critical notifications while you’re away from home, an easy way to get this set up is to subscribe to Home Assistant Cloud. Not only will this help you monitor your smart home remotely, but you’ll also be supporting the development of Home Assistant. ## 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 the expected 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 with our Z-Wave Integration. If you have another hub integration 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 Zooz devices to the program?** A: Absolutely! We’re thrilled to foster a close relationship with the team at Zooz to work together on any upcoming releases or add in further products that are not yet listed here.

We’re making new frients this week, and they’re bringing an extensive line of Zigbee devices to our Works With Home Assistant program. Each device is tested by our team, ensuring they provide the best experience possible for Home Assistant. Frient is widely available across Europe, and are well-known for their sleek, unobtrusive designs that its customers love for their high Home Approval Factor. ## Our newest frient Based in Denmark, the frient brand was developed by Onics, (formerly Develco Products), and they have years of experience with Zigbee devices. Frient is bringing its proven technology to the Works With Home Assistant program, as well as their Danish design that easily blends into almost any home. Recent Works With partners have brought Z-Wave, Matter, and even Bluetooth devices to Home Assistant, but it’s been _a couple of years_ 😅 since Zigbee-specific devices have joined the program. Zigbee is one of the most popular open protocols that is used with Home Assistant, with hundreds of thousands of users making use of it today. It’s a proven technology that connects directly to Home Assistant, no cloud or Wi-Fi connection required. Zigbee is a mesh protocol, where some devices act as repeaters, strengthening the network as more are added. It was built from the ground up to power the smart home, and has been optimized to give devices really long (sometimes multi-year) battery life. "Joining the Works With Home Assistant program is a proud milestone for frient. It reflects our strong commitment to open, user-centric smart home experiences and ensures that our products seamlessly integrate with one of the most trusted platforms in the market. For Home Assistant users, it means more choice and flexibility — and for frient, it strengthens our position as a key player in the connected smart home space." _- Martin Langballe, International Business Development Manager at frient_ All you need to get started with Zigbee in Home Assistant is a Zigbee adapter or ‘stick’, such as the Home Assistant Connect ZBT-1 (wow, we released this in 2022, I wonder when we’re finally going to build a successor? 😉). By plugging the adapter into a USB port on your Home Assistant system, it should then discover the device and add the ZHA integration. After that is set up, you can start adding devices to your Zigbee network. We’ve even added in a cool new visualization so that you can see how your Zigbee devices interact with each other. ZHA is built with the support of the Open Home Foundation, and it even has a full-time developer (@puddly) dedicated to improving it and helping certify new Works With partner devices. Your support makes this possible, whether through a Home Assistant Cloud subscription or by purchasing official hardware. ## Devices When your energy company won’t provide your raw usage data, there’s always another way 😉 In case you didn’t know, Works With Home Assistant differs from other certification programs as products are rigorously tested in-house to ensure they work seamlessly out of the box with Home Assistant. Any company joining also commits to providing long-term support and firmware updates while being a positive force in the Home Assistant community. Works With Home Assistant is operated by the Open Home Foundation, and the support of Home Assistant Cloud subscribers funds this work. Our team has worked extensively with frient to ensure that the following items work seamlessly with Home Assistant. * frient Motion Sensor Pro * frient IO Module * frient Smart Plug Mini * frient Entry Sensor 2 Pro * frient Smart Siren UK * frient Smart Siren EU * frient Intelligent Keypad * frient Water Leak Detector * frient Smart Button * frient Intelligent Smoke Alarm * frient Air Quality Sensor * frient Smart Humidity Sensor * frient Electricity Meter Interface 2 LED This is a big portion of frient’s product line, and provides energy monitoring, device control, safety, and security sensors. The frient IO Module is the first certified Zigbee module that can be used to turn low-voltage dumb devices like electric blinds or garage doors into devices that can be controlled by Home Assistant. There are some great devices here for building a more sustainable smart home. The Electricity Meter Interface 2 LED allows you to get the data off your energy meter and record it into Home Assistant. Another win for sustainability is their use of AA and AAA batteries wherever practical, meaning you can use rechargeables instead of constantly buying and recycling coin cells. I also selfishly love to see some great UK-specific devices being brought into the program with the frient Smart Siren having both UK and EU versions. ## Best frients forever It’s great to see Zigbee get some high-quality certified Works With Home Assistant devices after a multi-year wait. Frient has put a good deal of work into this launch and are big fans of our work and the community. There are more exciting Zigbee developments to come, so stay tuned! ## 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 full 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 with the ZBT-1 and with the ZHA integration. We haven’t tested these devices with Zigbee2MQTT, so we would recommend checking their device compatibility documentation. If you have another hub, Zigbee adapter, or integration, 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 frient devices to the program?** A: Why not! We’re thrilled to foster a close relationship with the team at frient to work together on any upcoming releases or add in further products that are not yet listed here.

We’re excited to announce that AirGradient is the latest manufacturer to join the fast-growing Works With Home Assistant program! They bring their air quality monitors to the program, with both indoor and outdoor models. AirGradient is the first partner in the program focused on building advanced indoor and outdoor air quality monitors. They are also well known within our community for their powerful tech, and for their focus on open source and dedication to local air quality projects around the world. ## A breath of fresh air AirGradient is the first partner to join that operates out of Thailand, and they initially started making their air monitors to help their local community. They actively support air quality improvement projects both in Thailand itself, but also globally. AirGradient donates monitors and has partnered with a variety of different organisations and NGOs, including UNICEF. These monitors are often placed in schools, helping young people to better understand and work to protect their air quality. An Open Air Monitor in Vietnam Community is central to our work with AirGradient. Their hardware and software are open source, just like our own. Plus, they’ve taken an active role in integrating into Home Assistant, bringing their local Wi-Fi integration up to not just the gold, but the platinum tier on our integration quality scale. Like all of our _Works With_ partners, the devices work completely locally with no need for a cloud connection. What’s more, they really embrace the DIY aspect of the smart home, with their devices available fully assembled or as a build-it-yourself kit! AirGradient’s open approach even extends to the data collected by their community of users. Whilst completely optional, users can share their air quality readings with the world (which they visualize into an amazing map). This helpful air quality map grows every time a user opts to share their data, and is a fantastic open resource for climate researchers, students, or anyone concerned about air quality in their local area. If your area is a blank spot on this map, that is all the more reason to buy an AirGradient outdoor monitor. Each kit comes with a screwdriver and is designed for easy repair. Broken sensor? Swap it out. Firmware update needed? Flash it yourself. Sustainability is one of the core guiding principles of the Open Home Foundation, and we love that repairability is built in. AirGradient also donates at least 1% of annual sales to non-profits and community direct donations. In fact, they asked us to include in this blog an open invitation to our community: If you have a local project that you think would benefit from open source air quality monitors, get in touch through this link. "We're excited to join the Works With Home Assistant program because it aligns perfectly with our open-source philosophy. Home Assistant represents the same values we believe in - local control, privacy, and community-driven innovation. Together, we're proving that open systems don't just work better for users, they create better outcomes for the planet." _- Achim Haug, Founder and CEO of AirGradient_ ## Certified Devices In case you’re new to Works With Home Assistant, unlike some certification programs, it’s not just a badge. We rigorously test items in-house and provide feedback to the manufacturers to ensure that products work easily out of the box and provide a seamless experience. The Works With program is operated by the Open Home Foundation and funded by the support of Home Assistant Cloud Subscribers. AirGradient has certified the following devices with us: * AirGradient One - Indoor Air Quality Monitor * AirGradient Open Air - Outdoor Air Quality Monitor Finally, a metric to show precisely how badly you burned your dinner When we talk about sustainability in relation to the smart home, it’s easy to focus on energy management and reducing our carbon impact. However, with AirGradient, you can deep dive into the impacts of the release of CO2 and other air pollutants, better understanding what you, your family, and friends breathe in every day. With an in-house science team of atmospheric chemists and public health experts, they ensure that the monitors are accurate and each of the fully assembled monitors are tested in a dedicated test chamber. Whether you want to see if your new furniture is putting dangerous VOCs into the air, or if a smelly candle is going to aggravate any allergies, the use cases are endless. The AirGradient One also has a built-in display with both detailed data and a set of LEDs to show general air quality at a glance. Both devices measure carbon dioxide, VOCs, nitrogen oxides, particulate matter, temperature, and humidity. AirGradient also provides helpful documentation on their website that helps you understand these measurements and the impact they can have on your household. These devices can not only give you in-depth information about the air in and out of your home, but they can also unlock powerful automations. We often see these devices paired with door or window open/close sensors, air purifiers, dehumidifiers, or air conditioners to reduce particulates in the home from pets or carpets. ## Clearing the air We’re so excited to be partnered with AirGradient. Their mission is important, and their open and sustainable approach is precisely what we love to see. Partnerships like this are only possible with the support of Home Assistant Cloud subscribers. Many of us at the Open Home Foundation have picked up AirGradient monitors and are sharing our air quality data today, and we’d love for you to join us on the map! ## 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 full 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 with the local AirGradient integration and a Wi-Fi network. HA will automatically discover them after they join your network (following the device’s instructions to add it to the WiFi). If you have another setup, 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 AirGradient devices to the program?** A: Why not! We’re thrilled to foster a close relationship with the team at AirGradient to work together on any upcoming releases or add in further products that are not yet listed here.

Introducing the Home Assistant Connect ZWA-2, the ultimate way to connect Z-Wave devices to Home Assistant. Between its optimized antenna and seamless integration with Home Assistant, it should be a big upgrade for anyone using Z-Wave today. If you’re not using Z-Wave, it’s time to take a second look, as Connect ZWA-2 is a different beast. It might be just what you need to reach that tricky spot in your home… or even beyond. Connect ZWA-2 supports Z-Wave Long Range, and this modern take on the standard delivers exceptional reach along with more responsive, battery-efficient devices. Every home is different, but our testers have managed connections in places they once thought impossible. Join the smart home range revolution for **$69 or €59** (that’s the recommended MSRP, and pricing will vary by retailer). For quick details, specs, and where to buy, visit our Home Assistant Connect ZWA-2 page. It’s available for purchase today. Read on to learn what goes into the ultimate Z-Wave upgrade. ## We love open standards Open standards let you connect devices directly to Home Assistant for local, private control, and keep working for years, even if the manufacturer disappears. To make connecting these standards as seamless as possible, we like to build our own hardware. In late 2022, we launched Home Assistant Connect ZBT-1 (formerly SkyConnect), a USB adapter for Zigbee and Thread. It made both protocols much easier to get started with, and sales helped fund Home Assistant development. We knew the next standard to tackle was Z-Wave, and after another couple of hardware launches (Home Assistant Green and Voice Preview Edition), we finally had the time to do it right. ### Why Z-Wave? If you’re new to Z-Wave, its key advantage over other open standards is its use of sub-GHz radio waves, which are better at getting through thick walls and reaching across large households. While Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, Zigbee, and Thread all compete for the same crowded airspace (2.4 GHz), Z-Wave operates in its own much quieter spectrum (865-926 MHz). Z-Wave is great for range, but its new Z-Wave Long Range variant builds even further on this… _but more on that later_. As the standard is over two decades old, it’s had a lot of time to iron out any kinks, but it also has over 4,500 certified devices to choose from. Our opt-in stats show over 130,000 Home Assistant households are using Z-Wave today. Several Works with Home Assistant partners are building amazing Z-Wave products, including Zooz, Shelly, Ultraloq, Leviton, and Homeseer. You can also go to any local marketplace and pick up any working Z-Wave smart device, no matter how old, and it will still connect with Home Assistant! ## Connect ZWA-2 in-depth We’ve learned a lot about hardware since the launch of Connect ZBT-1, and we also knew we could breathe some new life into Z-Wave on Home Assistant. Making this device was the start of us leveling up the Connect platform and establishing our **second generation** , which is all about building the most performant and open design. That is why we jumped straight to _two_ for this Connect ZWA-2! ### Go big or go home To be the most performant, we knew we had to ditch the “stick” form factor. It was never ideal, as USB ports can output a lot of interference. We even shipped a USB extender with Connect ZBT-1, and urged people to use it, as it kept the device away from any noisy components. Instead of building a stick we built an _adapter_ , which includes an optimized standalone antenna and base that connects to your Home Assistant system with a USB cable. We’re not compensating for anything; a big antenna does make a big difference. For starters, you need an antenna that’s the right size for your wavelength. As Z-Wave is in the sub-GHz, this means the antenna has to be longer than your average Wi-Fi antenna (about 33 cm or a foot is the sweet spot). You need to optimize not just the antenna, but also the base of the device (also known as the _ground plane_). Our hardware experts really went deep into all the physics involved, and the results speak for themselves. Basically, by choosing the right ratio of antenna to base, the two work in harmony to maximize the range and reliability of the signal. While some Z-Wave adapters may claim they can hit the maximum transmit levels with their postage-stamp-sized antennas, that can sometimes come with a lot of interference. We’ve engineered away that problem. Connect ZWA-2 can speak loudly and clearly 🗣️, and what’s even more important, it’s a great listener 👂. ### Positioning is everything Having a big optimized antenna is great, but placement is almost as important. Its sturdy base and good-sized USB cable allow it to be placed in the right spot. No more will you have a dangling dongle hidden behind a server cabinet. We even put in an accelerometer to ensure people position the antenna upright, this ensures devices are in the sweet spot of the antenna. If you place it on its side, it will subtly blink the status light at the top. ### All the Z-Wave Inside Connect ZWA-2, we include the latest Z-Wave 800 chip, which supports all Z-Wave devices. We’re also Z-Wave certified, giving you that extra peace of mind. This, combined with Home Assistant’s industry-leading Z-Wave software, means Z-Wave has never been this good. On your certified smart devices, you might see Security 2 (S2), SmartStart, Z-Wave Plus, or Z-Wave Plus V2 — don’t worry, we support it all. One new feature we support that is getting people very excited is Z-Wave Long Range👇. ### Go long Combining Z-Wave’s natural abilities with an optimized antenna has given us some impressive range, but we took it a few steps further. We added Z-Wave Long Range to Connect ZWA-2, which might be one of the most substantial updates to Z-Wave yet. **Z-Wave Long Range** Long Range doesn’t use mesh, where devices relay messages through each other to reach the hub. Instead, each device talks straight to your hub, which brings some benefits. It runs on the same frequency as regular Z-Wave but at a higher power, and uses new technology that lets it reach farther, handle more devices, respond faster, and save battery. Right now, it is only available in North America and Europe, and the selection of compatible devices is still growing. This is just scratching the surface; for more on this impressive tech, read a full breakdown from our friends at the Z-Wave Alliance. Z-Wave Long Range is different enough that it needs its own separate network. Connect ZWA-2 can run both Z-Wave and Z-Wave Long Range **at the same time**. When you add a Long Range capable device to Home Assistant, the setup wizard lets you choose which network to use. This way, you get the best of both worlds: a strong mesh network for your older devices, and the reach of Long Range for the newest devices that include support. ### How long? See that bridge in the background? Our prototype connected to a device all the way over there. People are getting some impressive results with ZWA-2: * You might have seen our range testing in a previous blog. Since then, we’ve optimized the design and achieved a line-of-sight range of 1.5 kilometers (0.9 miles) 🤯. This was under less than ideal circumstances (raining and within a car), and we think we could go even further. * The certifying engineer said it was “the best range she had ever seen”. * Another test had it communicating via Z-Wave Long Range through several floors of concrete. * Testers with outdoor lights and internal brick walls have commented on how this is the first time they’ve had reliable connections with devices. * Interesting Long Range use cases have included smart mailboxes that notify you when _you’ve got mail_ , or contact sensors on garden gates. Every home and setup is different, so we can’t definitively say how far your devices will span. What we can say is that nothing else we’ve tested comes close to what Connect ZWA-2 can do. ### Built for Home Assistant Whenever we build new hardware, we step up our software development to match. You may have noticed a lot of love going into Z-Wave for Home Assistant. All Z-Wave users benefit from this, and when people buy Connect ZWA-2, they’re helping fund this development. Connect ZWA-2 is built for Home Assistant, and because of this, it’s super easy to get started with. We’ve built Connect ZWA-2 to support every region, no matter where you buy it from. When you plug in Connect ZWA-2, it automatically detects and sets your region using the location configured in your Home Assistant system. We’ve built handy wizards to help you set up your first Z-Wave network and to guide you in setting up new devices. A wizard also helps you quickly migrate from most Z-Wave adapters to Connect ZWA-2 in a couple of clicks. We also have the ability to update the firmware of Connect ZWA-2 right from Home Assistant, and update the firmware over-the-air (OTA) of Z-Wave devices in a single click. ### ESP inside I’ll save you the time opening it up; here is the front and back of the PCB. As always, we’ve made Connect ZWA-2 easy to open. Just pop out the rubber feet and remove the four Phillips screws, with no glue or clips to get in the way. If you do open it up, you’ll see a familiar sight, an ESP32-S3. We’re using it as a USB controller, and it’s not running ESPHome. Yes, it does have a “Wi-Fi antenna”, but we’re not using it. We’ve provided a lot of easily accessible pins/pads, open source firmware files, unlocked bootloader, and good documentation, so feel free to tinker. We’ll also provide all the files to allow you to 3D-print the outer casing. ### Blending into the home It’s no small feat to make something 33 cm (1 ft) long look so subtle in the home. We’ve modeled its design after a candle and even used the top of the antenna as a status indicator. Its quality injection-molded exterior has a premium feel and shares many design cues from our sleek-looking Voice Preview Edition. ## Join the smart home range revolution Last year, we proclaimed in a blog that “Z-Wave is not dead”, and this hardware is a testament to that belief. Even with new technologies being released every week, there’s still room to innovate with something tried and tested. We will always support technology that respects your privacy, allows you to control your devices without the cloud, all while keeping the things you already have in your home running for years to come. After 1600 words on a Z-Wave adapter, we’re obviously very proud of what we’ve built and excited to see what amazing things people will do with this labor of love. So, whether you’re a Z-Wave veteran or just interested in cool new technology, take a look at Home Assistant Connect ZWA-2 today.

Every September, we celebrate the anniversary of Home Assistant’s first PR in 2013 – for our 12th birthday, we’re going all in on community again. Last month, we asked for submissions on how Home Assistant helps you, and today we will highlight our favorites! We will also take a look at all the cool milestones over the past year in the project, thanks to contributions from you all, and the new things coming up for the community. ## It’s a communal effort When I (Missy Quarry) joined as the Community & Social Media Manager in February 2024, I was still new to how an open source project the size of Home Assistant manages its community. Over the past 18 months, I’ve seen Home Assistant community members from all walks of life — whether DIY tinkerers or people simply looking to make small improvements at home — contribute in their own ways. By sharing your stories and inspiring others, you’ve helped the project grow. For our 12th birthday, I want to celebrate these contributions, no matter the size or complexity. 😌 Before I jump into celebrating all your amazing contributions and how they shape the projects managed by the Open Home Foundation, I have a couple of birthday presents for you. 🎁 First, I’m thrilled to share our new Community website! Right now, it’s a simple hub to find community information with ease, but we expect to evolve this over the coming months (or so). You’ll find links to our official community platforms, information on events, and details on meetups, including how to get reimbursed for certain fees as a host. In the future, I’d like to include links to regional communities we’re aware of and showcase more of the kinds of stories I’ll be sharing today. _Feel like something’s missing from this new page?Let me know!_ Next, we’ve been working hard to do more of our development in the open. Last September, I redesigned the Discord server and in doing so I gated the _Developer_ category behind a role. This has made it more difficult to develop in the open with the channels hidden behind a role, so we’re switching things up. As of this week, the Developer category is now **read-only** for every member. Want to take a peek into the future of Home Assistant? Head to the #projects channel and see what contributors are talking about! Want to join in and contribute with either your feedback or skills? I’ve created an info thread for the channel that explains how to assign yourself either the Developer or Designer role and unlock the ability to chat in the threads. Let’s jump into those submitted stories now… 🤩 ## Happily ever after In my opinion, the best thing about Home Assistant is its flexibility - you can integrate such a wide range of devices into it and use their data to build a unique-to-your-home experience. And that’s exactly why I wanted to hear how you, the community, use it in your own home to benefit you. Here are my favorite stories you submitted - I hope one inspires your next project. ✨ * A coffee automation to improve Home Approval Factor. ☕️ Jordan made a morning automation to avoid having the coffee grinder grind his morning mood. * u/katschung helped their girlfriend fully accept Home Assistant by creating a dashboard with a retrogame-style floor plan. 🕹️ * Sythsaz uses Home Assistant to make sure their pupper is fed. 🐾 “ _I’ve managed to make it so my dog’s food auto emails the vet then the response to the email gets put on my calendar so I know how long a bag of food lasts as well as adding the receipts to Google Drive._ ” * Inspired by PowerDisplayESPHome, JannickBlmndl made an LED matrix that helps their household be more sustainable by being energy flexible. It displays the live energy prices from their energy provider. 📊 * Tano Spirits in Melbourne, Australia, uses Home Assistant to automate their Japanese Shochu distillery, inspired by the brewing automations at Little Island Brewing Co in Singapore. 🍻 * Several years ago, HillPhantom found that Home Assistant wasn’t quite ready for him. Over the past year, though, he’s now got Ollama set up with his Home Assistant Voice Preview Edition and has been building guides on how to make your own mmWave radar sensors in Home Assistant. 👋🏻 * Over just a few weeks, Pieter van Kampen recently integrated 190 devices that respond to voice control and more than 1200 active entities from his KNX home to create over 30 automations to help with everything from mowing the lawn to controlling shades based on the sun’s location and intensity. 🪟 * MB used Zigbee buttons to help collect data for their son’s doctor after he developed some trouble sleeping. This gave excellent insight for the doctor to start looking into causes, and they even used the system remotely while doing further evaluation. 📈 * Graham Hosking took automations to another level (before we did) with his AI Automation Suggester and Automation Inspector. It takes the load off your brain by helping come up with new, clever automations! 🤖 * Wessam Lauf fell down the rabbit hole that is Home Assistant once he got his setup running. Inspired by the Graphite theme and after some LLM vibe-coding, he wrote a template for his very own theme, Frosted Glass - now available in HACS. 🎨 * Too many of us anthropomorphize our homes, telling it to chill out when five things break the same day. Biofects took that to heart and created this Home Assistant avatar for his home (here’s a bonus, nightmare fuel first version). 🫣 ## Developers! 👏🏻 Developers! 👏🏻 Developers! 👏🏻 Our community is more than developers, it’s true. But we wouldn’t be the largest open source project on GitHub if we didn’t have a vibrant and active developer community. This ship sails largely due to their contributions, and we genuinely appreciate all of their efforts. That’s why we’re eager to interview community members when we open new roles at the foundation. We’ve employed community members like Joostlek (who designed the new Integration Quality Scale and helps onboard new integrations into Core), Timo (who is our first ever Android developer and has focused on polishing the Android app), and Maxim (a talented developer from the Music Assistant community who works on both Music Assistant and ESPHome and is one of our newest additions to the team). Their contributions have helped shape how things work around here, but it was their contributions as community members that helped pave the way for their joining the foundation. These are just a select few of the _several_ new hires at the foundation who were active community members. (Have you checked our jobs page recently to see what roles are open? 👀) With our community of contributors and working with Nabu Casa on the hardware design, we have successfully launched a few new pieces of hardware. The Home Assistant Voice Preview Edition brought in language experts from every corner of the world to help ensure our language coverage is the most robust in the industry. Thanks to contributors, we support languages like Greek, Icelandic, and more recently Irish Gaeilge! 😎 We had community contributors help make sure the Home Assistant Connect ZWA-2 was prepared for launch last month. Sincerely, we couldn’t be more grateful for your support and efforts in these spaces. Here are some fun stats from our GitHub contributors (commits on our Core repo): * Last 12 months (Sept - Aug) - 14,385 * Previous 12 months - 14,503 A SPECIAL CONGRATULATIONS to bdraco, who just last week surpassed balloob (the founder of Home Assistant) as the contributor with the most commits! The top 8 contributors of all time in home-assistant/core👏🏻 This is just a small peek into all the hard work that goes into maintaining Home Assistant - we have more repositories than just Core, and every single contribution is valued. Honorable dev mention from the submitted community stories - I couldn’t leave Joostlek’s (joke) submission out. 🤣 * Our very own Head of Developer Relations (his words), Joost Lekkerkerker, says Home Assistant helps keep him off the street. He’s just launched his new blog that talks about his vision of a smart home, and how he was inspired to not buy Tuya Wi-Fi lights after seeing my experience with some path lights. ## Our humble gratitude Community is the core of what we do and the heart of Home Assistant. We thrive because you care and contribute your valuable time to support our collective success. Whether you found our platform because you wanted more privacy from big tech, were intrigued by the number of choices implemented into a single app, or needed something to track your sustainability efforts — you support our values every day. Thanks for choosing us, and thank you for all you do to help support the foundation and the projects we maintain. A very special thanks to all our Home Assistant Cloud subscribers and anyone who has purchased our official Home Assistant hardware. These support the full-time development of Home Assistant (along with ESPHome, Music Assistant, and so much more), and are the easiest way to ensure these projects keep getting cool new features! We have more things coming down the line for you. In the near future, we plan on announcing a new merch store 👕. In the first half of next year, I’ll announce when Home Assistant Community Day 2026 will be. We’re already working with Nabu Casa on the next exciting hardware announcement (no spoilers…for now). And that’s not even touching the industry events we plan on attending, the State of the Open Home, and so much more. I’m excited to take you all on the journey we’re already working on over the next 12 months, and I’m always looking forward to another year of amazing contributions. 😌

Every September, we celebrate the anniversary of Home Assistant’s first PR in 2013 – for our 12th birthday, we’re going all in on community again. Last month, we asked for submissions on how Home Assistant helps you, and today we will highlight our favorites! We will also take a look at all the cool milestones over the past year in the project, thanks to contributions from you all, and the new things coming up for the community. ## It’s a communal effort When I (Missy Quarry) joined as the Community & Social Media Manager in February 2024, I was still new to how an open source project the size of Home Assistant manages its community. Over the past 18 months, I’ve seen Home Assistant community members from all walks of life — whether DIY tinkerers or people simply looking to make small improvements at home — contribute in their own ways. By sharing your stories and inspiring others, you’ve helped the project grow. For our 12th birthday, I want to celebrate these contributions, no matter the size or complexity. 😌 Before I jump into celebrating all your amazing contributions and how they shape the projects managed by the Open Home Foundation, I have a couple of birthday presents for you. 🎁 First, I’m thrilled to share our new Community website! Right now, it’s a simple hub to find community information with ease, but we expect to evolve this over the coming months (or so). You’ll find links to our official community platforms, information on events, and details on meetups, including how to get reimbursed for certain fees as a host. In the future, I’d like to include links to regional communities we’re aware of and showcase more of the kinds of stories I’ll be sharing today. _Feel like something’s missing from this new page?Let me know!_ Next, we’ve been working hard to do more of our development in the open. Last September, I redesigned the Discord server and in doing so I gated the _Developer_ category behind a role. This has made it more difficult to develop in the open with the channels hidden behind a role, so we’re switching things up. As of this week, the Developer category is now **read-only** for every member. Want to take a peek into the future of Home Assistant? Head to the #projects channel and see what contributors are talking about! Want to join in and contribute with either your feedback or skills? I’ve created an info thread for the channel that explains how to assign yourself either the Developer or Designer role and unlock the ability to chat in the threads. Let’s jump into those submitted stories now… 🤩 ## Happily ever after In my opinion, the best thing about Home Assistant is its flexibility - you can integrate such a wide range of devices into it and use their data to build a unique-to-your-home experience. And that’s exactly why I wanted to hear how you, the community, use it in your own home to benefit you. Here are my favorite stories you submitted - I hope one inspires your next project. ✨ * A coffee automation to improve Home Approval Factor. ☕️ Jordan made a morning automation to avoid having the coffee grinder grind his morning mood. * u/katschung helped their girlfriend fully accept Home Assistant by creating a dashboard with a retrogame-style floor plan. 🕹️ * Sythsaz uses Home Assistant to make sure their pupper is fed. 🐾 “ _I’ve managed to make it so my dog’s food auto emails the vet then the response to the email gets put on my calendar so I know how long a bag of food lasts as well as adding the receipts to Google Drive._ ” * Inspired by PowerDisplayESPHome, JannickBlmndl made an LED matrix that helps their household be more sustainable by being energy flexible. It displays the live energy prices from their energy provider. 📊 * Tano Spirits in Melbourne, Australia, uses Home Assistant to automate their Japanese Shochu distillery, inspired by the brewing automations at Little Island Brewing Co in Singapore. 🍻 * Several years ago, HillPhantom found that Home Assistant wasn’t quite ready for him. Over the past year, though, he’s now got Ollama set up with his Home Assistant Voice Preview Edition and has been building guides on how to make your own mmWave radar sensors in Home Assistant. 👋🏻 * Over just a few weeks, Pieter van Kampen recently integrated 190 devices that respond to voice control and more than 1200 active entities from his KNX home to create over 30 automations to help with everything from mowing the lawn to controlling shades based on the sun’s location and intensity. 🪟 * MB used Zigbee buttons to help collect data for their son’s doctor after he developed some trouble sleeping. This gave excellent insight for the doctor to start looking into causes, and they even used the system remotely while doing further evaluation. 📈 * Graham Hosking took automations to another level (before we did) with his AI Automation Suggester and Automation Inspector. It takes the load off your brain by helping come up with new, clever automations! 🤖 * Wessam Lauf fell down the rabbit hole that is Home Assistant once he got his setup running. Inspired by the Graphite theme and after some LLM vibe-coding, he wrote a template for his very own theme, Frosted Glass - now available in HACS. 🎨 * Too many of us anthropomorphize our homes, telling it to chill out when five things break the same day. Biofects took that to heart and created this Home Assistant avatar for his home (here’s a bonus, nightmare fuel first version). 🫣 ## Developers! 👏🏻 Developers! 👏🏻 Developers! 👏🏻 Our community is more than developers, it’s true. But we wouldn’t be the largest open source project on GitHub if we didn’t have a vibrant and active developer community. This ship sails largely due to their contributions, and we genuinely appreciate all of their efforts. That’s why we’re eager to interview community members when we open new roles at the foundation. We’ve employed community members like Joostlek (who designed the new Integration Quality Scale and helps onboard new integrations into Core), Timo (who is our first ever Android developer and has focused on polishing the Android app), and Maxim (a talented developer from the Music Assistant community who works on both Music Assistant and ESPHome and is one of our newest additions to the team). Their contributions have helped shape how things work around here, but it was their contributions as community members that helped pave the way for their joining the foundation. These are just a select few of the _several_ new hires at the foundation who were active community members. (Have you checked our jobs page recently to see what roles are open? 👀) With our community of contributors and working with Nabu Casa on the hardware design, we have successfully launched a few new pieces of hardware. The Home Assistant Voice Preview Edition brought in language experts from every corner of the world to help ensure our language coverage is the most robust in the industry. Thanks to contributors, we support languages like Greek, Icelandic, and more recently Irish Gaeilge! 😎 We had community contributors help make sure the Home Assistant Connect ZWA-2 was prepared for launch last month. Sincerely, we couldn’t be more grateful for your support and efforts in these spaces. Here are some fun stats from our GitHub contributors (commits on our Core repo): * Last 12 months (Sept - Aug) - 14,385 * Previous 12 months - 14,503 A SPECIAL CONGRATULATIONS to bdraco, who just last week surpassed balloob (the founder of Home Assistant) as the contributor with the most commits! The top 8 contributors of all time in home-assistant/core👏🏻 This is just a small peek into all the hard work that goes into maintaining Home Assistant - we have more repositories than just Core, and every single contribution is valued. Honorable dev mention from the submitted community stories - I couldn’t leave Joostlek’s (joke) submission out. 🤣 * Our very own Head of Developer Relations (his words), Joost Lekkerkerker, says Home Assistant helps keep him off the street. He’s just launched his new blog that talks about his vision of a smart home, and how he was inspired to not buy Tuya Wi-Fi lights after seeing my experience with some path lights. ## Our humble gratitude Community is the core of what we do and the heart of Home Assistant. We thrive because you care and contribute your valuable time to support our collective success. Whether you found our platform because you wanted more privacy from big tech, were intrigued by the number of choices implemented into a single app, or needed something to track your sustainability efforts — you support our values every day. Thanks for choosing us, and thank you for all you do to help support the foundation and the projects we maintain. A very special thanks to all our Home Assistant Cloud subscribers and anyone who has purchased our official Home Assistant hardware. These support the full-time development of Home Assistant (along with ESPHome, Music Assistant, and so much more), and are the easiest way to ensure these projects keep getting cool new features! We have more things coming down the line for you. In the near future, we plan on announcing a new merch store 👕. In the first half of next year, I’ll announce when Home Assistant Community Day 2026 will be. We’re already working with Nabu Casa on the next exciting hardware announcement (no spoilers…for now). And that’s not even touching the industry events we plan on attending, the State of the Open Home, and so much more. I’m excited to take you all on the journey we’re already working on over the next 12 months, and I’m always looking forward to another year of amazing contributions. 😌

Home Assistant 2025.8! 🎉 In most parts of the world, summer mode is in full effect! ☀️ Many at the Open Home Foundation and many of our contributors are enjoying a well-deserved break from work and open source. I hope that you are maybe enjoying a well-deserved break as well! 🏖️ Summer breaks or not, we are currently very busy with our next **product launch**! In case you have missed it, this upcoming Wednesday, August 13 (12:00 PM PT, 3:00 PM ET, 21:00 CEST), we will have an extra live stream to announce the next big thing in the Home Assistant Connect series! Be sure to head over to YouTube to hit the reminder button so you don’t miss it! **Z-Wave is not dead!** 🌊 Alright, on to the release! We keep moving during summer and are excited to bring you the August release of Home Assistant! Let’s start with my personal favorite of this release: The improved experience when viewing a group, for example, a group helper with lights. 💡 When viewing such a group entity, you can now control the individual members of that group directly in that dialog. Super useful! I’m pretty sure that will be used a lot in our house. But as the release title suggests, this release brings in an important foundation for new AI opportunities in Home Assistant: **AI Tasks**. Think of it as a way to delegate tasks to AI and get back the result of that task in a structured way so it can be used. Sounds vague? Dive into the release notes below! Enjoy the release! ../Frenck * AI in Home Assistant in 2025 * Streaming Text-to-Speech for Home Assistant Cloud * Integrate AI into your workflow using AI Task * Work faster with Suggest with AI buttons * Area dashboard improvements * Integrations * New integrations * Noteworthy improvements to existing integrations * Integration quality scale achievements * Now available to set up from the UI * Other noteworthy changes * Control individual members of a group * Weekdays in time trigger * Energy flow on your energy dashboard * Patch releases * 2025.8.1 - August 11 * 2025.8.2 - August 15 * 2025.8.3 - August 21 * Need help? Join the community! * Backward-incompatible changes * All changes ## AI in Home Assistant in 2025 We introduced our first AI integration in Home Assistant 2023.2 where users could let OpenAI handle their interactions with Home Assistant Voice. Since that time, AI has seen a big surge in popularity within the Home Assistant community for _all kinds_ of use cases. Funny notifications when the laundry is done, analyzing what’s happening on a camera or skipping the song when AI determines it’s a country song 😅. Though AI gets many people excited, there are still people who would prefer not to have this technology in their smart homes. We want to accommodate everyone’s choices, whether that’s to use AI or not. These features won’t appear unless you set up an AI integration and configure some specific settings. Last year, we sat down to determine how all these use cases, all complicated to achieve, could be made accessible to everyone. The first thing that came out of this was integration sub-entries, which we shipped in the last release. It allows users to configure their Ollama server or API key for OpenAI _once_ , and then create many different agents using different models or configuration underneath. In this release we’re building two new things you can optionally enable via these new sub-entries for AI integrations: _AI tasks_ and _Suggest with AI_. We’re also introducing a new integration, OpenRouter, which is a unified LLM interface giving access to over 400 extra LLM models. Big thanks to our AI community contributors: @AllenPorter, @shulyaka, @tronikos, @IvanLH, and @joostlek! ### Streaming Text-to-Speech for Home Assistant Cloud When you use Home Assistant Voice to talk to an AI, you can do a lot more than just control your home. LLMs can summarize the state of your home, and when using LLMs from Google and OpenAI, they can search the web to answer your questions with up-to-date information. This is great, but these answers can become quite long. Previously, voice responses wouldn’t begin until the AI had finished generating the entire answer, so longer replies meant a longer wait before anything was read aloud. When a user waits for Home Assistant Voice to respond, long wait times really hurt the experience. We have overhauled Home Assistant so our Text-to-Speech system can start generating the response audio before the full response is done generating. Last release we launched this for Piper, our local Text-to-Speech system. In this release we’re making this available to the voices included in Home Assistant Cloud – the best way of supporting the Home Assistant project. This improvement will especially benefit users who use local AI (which can be slow in generating responses) or users who play long announcements on their speakers. ### Integrate AI into your workflow using AI Task AI Task is a new integration that allows you to generate data using AI. After you add the “AI Task” sub-entry in your AI of choice, the entity will appear in the integration. This allows you to attach files or cameras and ask it what is happening. The output can either be given in text or formatted in a data structure of your choice. This is all accessible from the new `ai_task.generate_data` action, which can be embedded in automations, scripts, and template entities. Below is an example of a template entity that updates every five minutes and counts the number of chickens in the coop. Example inspired by this blog post. template: - triggers: - trigger: homeassistant event: start - trigger: time_pattern minutes: "/5" actions: - action: ai_task.generate_data data: task_name: Count chickens instructions: >- This is the inside of my goose coop. How many birds (chickens, geese, and ducks) are inside the coop? structure: birds: selector: number: attachments: media_content_id: media-source://camera/camera.chicken_coop media_content_type: image/jpeg response_variable: result sensor: - name: "Chickens" state: "{{ result.data.birds }}" state_class: total To help get started with AI task, we’ve prepared a blueprint to analyze camera footage: ### Work faster with Suggest with AI buttons The AI Task integration has one extra feature under its belt: default entities. You can go to **Settings** > **System** > **General** and configure what AI Task entity you want to use as the default. With a default set, you no longer have to specify an entity when generating data, making it easier to share blueprints. Setting a default also does more: When a default is configured, and only then, a new type of button will start showing up in different places in Home Assistant: This button is not visible by default and will only appear if you enable it in the “AI suggestions” settings. For this release, the button has been added to the save dialog for automations and scripts. It helps users come up with a name, description, category, and label, while taking into account your current labels and other automation/script names. Keep in mind that generating this text sends the full contents of the automation or script, along with the names of your other automations/scripts and labels, to the LLM. So, this may be a task you will want to relegate to your shiny new local LLM. ## Area dashboard improvements We’ve added a small improvement to the areas dashboard based on your feedback. You can now choose to show the first camera in an area, or its image or icon, in the area dashboard editor. It’s a simple way to make certain area cards stand out a bit more—especially handy if you want quicker visual access to specific spaces. ## 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: * **OpenRouter** , added by @joostlek Access over 400 different large language models through the OpenRouter API, providing a unified interface for AI integrations in your automations. * **Ubiquiti UISP airOS** , added by @CoMPaTech Monitor and manage airOS devices through their local API, providing performance metrics and device status information of your wireless point-to-point infrastructure. * **Uptime Kuma** , added by @tr4nt0r Monitor the uptime and status of your services and websites with Uptime Kuma, keeping track of your infrastructure health directly in Home Assistant. * **Volvo** , added by @thomasddn Connect your Volvo vehicle to Home Assistant for remote monitoring of battery status, location, and other vehicle information. 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: * **Bauknecht** , provided by Whirlpool Appliances, added by @thost96 * **Z-Box Hub** , provided by Fibaro, added by @rappenze ### Noteworthy improvements to existing integrations It is not just new integrationsIntegrations connect and integrate Home Assistant with your devices, services, and more. [Learn more] that have been added; existing integrations are also being constantly improved. Here are some of the noteworthy changes to existing integrations: * The PlayStation Network integration received major updates from @tr4nt0r and @JackJPowell, adding sensors to track your and your friends’ online status, currently playing game, and last online time. Also a binary sensor for your PS Plus subscription status, and a notification platform. PS Vita is now supported as well! * Reolink cameras got multiple enhancements from @starkillerOG: WiFi signal sensors for IP cameras, post-recording time controls, and pre-recording entities. * The AI Task and OpenAI Conversation integrations now support camera and file attachments, thanks to @balloob. * YoLink device support expanded with @matrixd2 adding support for the YS8009, YS7A12, and YS6614 devices. * @ricohageman added dew point sensors to the Awair integration. * @bieniu enhanced both GIOS and IMGW PIB integrations with new sensors, including water flow monitoring for IMGW PIB. * WiZ now supports fans, added by @arturpragacz. * SwitchBot Cloud gained fan platform support from @XiaoLing-git. * Velux windows with rain sensors can now detect precipitation, thanks to @wollew. * SmartThings added vacuum support, implemented by @jennoian. * AmberElectric now provides forecast services, added by @madpilot. * OSO Energy got holiday mode services and custom away mode functionality from @osohotwateriot. * Nord Pool gained normalized price indices service, thanks to @gjohansson-ST. * Matter continues to expand with microwave oven and temperature control device support from @lboue. * @noahhusby added play media support to Russound RIO. * Pi-hole users can now leverage API v6 functionality, enabled by @HarvsG. * Immich users can now upload files directly through a new action, implemented by @mib1185. * KNX now includes a new group monitor with improved filtering and search options, thanks to @philippwaller. ### 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: * **5 integrations reached platinum** 🏆 * AirGradient, thanks to @joostlek * inexogy, thanks to @jpbede * EHEIM Digital, thanks to @autinerd * Pegel Online, thanks to @mib1185 * Tankerkönig, thanks to @mib1185 * **3 integrations reached silver** 🥈 * Amazon Alexa Devices, thanks to @chemelli74 * Homee, thanks to @Taraman17 * Mealie, thanks to @andrew-codechimp * **2 integrations reached bronze** 🥉 * Onkyo, thanks to @arturpragacz * Ring, thanks to @sdb9696 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: * **Datadog** , done by @avedor ## Other noteworthy changes There are many more improvements in this release; here are some of the other noteworthy changes: * Home Assistant’s interface has received a refresh for better accessibility! The primary color and button colors have been updated to meet WCAG AA accessibility standards, improving contrast and readability throughout the interface. All buttons have been redesigned with distinct styles, sizes, and visual priority variants, making it much easier to distinguish between primary, secondary, and less prominent actions. This marks the beginning of a broader effort to update other UI components for improved accessibility and consistency across Home Assistant. * @mib1185 added a new device class for **absolute humidity** with support for both sensor and number 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]. Nice! * Group management was improved by @piitaya, who added the ability to reorder members within a group, making it easier to organize your device groups exactly how you want them. Thanks! * System diagnostics was extended by @balloob with the addition of a device analytics dump download feature. Awesome! * The History Stats integrationIntegrations connect and integrate Home Assistant with your devices, services, and more. Learn more] now includes a preview in the options flow, thanks to [@karwosts. This makes it easier to configure your history statistics. * The Template integrationIntegrations connect and integrate Home Assistant with your devices, services, and more. Learn more] received a massive update from [@Petro31! Here’s what’s new: * Trigger-based numeric sensors can now be set to unknown state * The cover, fan, light, lock, and vacuum platforms are now supported in the UI * Availability templates are now supported in the UI for all available platforms * Preview entity has been added to the UI for alarm control panel and select platforms * Template locks now support the opening state * The alarm control panel, fan, light, lock, switch, and vacuum platforms now support all optimistic YAML modes ### Control individual members of a group Groups are a great way to control multiple 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] at once, but sometimes you want to control individual members of a group. So, for this release, @piitaya and @MindFreeze improved the entity information dialog to show the individual members of a light and cover group, allowing you to control them directly from that dialog. Super useful! ### Weekdays in time trigger The time trigger is already very useful, but @hmmbob had a feature request that could improve it even more. He suggested adding the ability to specify weekdays in the time trigger, allowing users to create automations that only trigger at a specific time on specific days of the week. This feature has been implemented in this release, allowing you to specify the weekdays in the time trigger. This is especially useful for automations that need to run on specific days, such as weekdays or weekends. ### Energy flow on your energy dashboard The Home Assistant energy dashboard is great, but as of this release it’s even a little better! Based on the Sankey Chart custom card, @MindFreeze added a new energy flow visualization for the energy dashboard, which shows exactly where your energy is coming from and where it is going to. Really cool addition to the energy dashboard @MindFreeze! ## Patch releases We will also release patch releases for Home Assistant 2025.8 in August. These patch releases only contain bug fixes. Our goal is to release a patch release once a week, aiming for Friday. ### 2025.8.1 - August 11 * Make Tuya complex type handling explicit (@epenet - #149677) * Fix Enigma2 startup hang (@BlackBadPinguin - #149756) * Fix dialog enhancement switch for Sonos Arc Ultra (@PeteRager - #150116) * Bump ZHA to 0.0.67 (@puddly - #150132) * Bump airOS to 0.2.6 improving device class matching more devices (@CoMPaTech - #150134) * Handle HusqvarnaWSClientError (@Thomas55555 - #150145) * Fix Progettihwsw config flow (@gaspa85 - #150149) * Bump imgw_pib to version 1.5.3 (@bieniu - #150178) * Fix description of `button.press` action (@NoRi2909 - #150181) * Migrate unique_id only if monitor_id is present in Uptime Kuma (@tr4nt0r - #150197) * Silence vacuum battery deprecation for built in integrations (@MartinHjelmare - #150204) * Bump ZHA to 0.0.68 (@puddly - #150208) * Bump hass-nabucasa from 0.111.1 to 0.111.2 (@ludeeus - #150209) * Fix JSON serialization for ZHA diagnostics download (@puddly - #150210) * Ignore MQTT vacuum battery warning (@MartinHjelmare - #150211) * Handle Unifi Protect BadRequest exception during API key creation (@RaHehl - #150223) * Fix Tibber coordinator ContextVar warning (@MartinHjelmare - #150229) * Fix handing for zero volume error in Squeezebox (@peteS-UK - #150265) * Fix error on startup when no Apps or Radio plugins are installed for Squeezebox (@peteS-UK - #150267) * Volvo: fix missing charging power options (@thomasddn - #150272) * Constraint num2words to 0.5.14 (@edenhaus - #150276) * Volvo: fix distance to empty battery (@thomasddn - #150278) * Add GPT-5 support (@Shulyaka - #150281) * Volvo: Skip unsupported API fields (@thomasddn - #150285) * Remove misleading “the” from Launch Library configuration (@NoRi2909 - #150288) * Set suggested display precision on Volvo energy/fuel consumption sensors (@steinmn - #150296) * Bump airOS to 0.2.7 supporting firmware 8.7.11 (@CoMPaTech - #150298) * Update knx-frontend to 2025.8.9.63154 (@philippwaller - #150323) * Update frontend to 20250811.0 (@bramkragten - #150404) * Handle empty electricity RAW sensors in Tuya (@epenet - #150406) * Lower Z-Wave firmware check delay (@MartinHjelmare - #150411) * Fix issue with Tuya suggested unit (@epenet - #150414) ### 2025.8.2 - August 15 * Add pymodbus to package constraints (@epenet - #150420) * Fix enphase_envoy non existing via device warning at first config. (@catsmanac - #149010) * Handle non-streaming TTS case correctly (@synesthesiam - #150218) * Pi_hole - Account for auth succeeding when it shouldn’t (@HarvsG - #150413) * Bump habiticalib to version 0.4.2 (@tr4nt0r - #150417) * Fix optimistic set to false for template entities (@Petro31 - #150421) * Fix error of the Powerfox integration in combination with the new Powerfox FLOW adapter (@DavidCraftDev - #150429) * Bump python-snoo to 0.7.0 (@kevin-david - #150434) * Fix brightness command not sent when in white color mode (@wedsa5 - #150439) * Bump cookidoo-api to 0.14.0 (@miaucl - #150450) * Fix YoLink valve state when device running in class A mode (@matrixd2 - #150456) * Additional Fix error on startup when no Apps or Radio plugins are installed for Squeezebox (@peteS-UK - #150475) * Fix re-auth flow for Volvo integration (@thomasddn - #150478) * Improve Z-Wave manual config flow step description (@MartinHjelmare - #150479) * Add missing boost2 code for Miele hobs (@astrandb - #150481) * Bump airOS to 0.2.8 (@CoMPaTech - #150504) * Bump aiowebostv to 0.7.5 (@thecode - #150514) * Bump bleak-retry-connector to 4.0.1 (@bdraco - #150515) * Bump aiodhcpwatcher to 1.2.1 (@bdraco - #150519) * Bump python-snoo to 0.8.1 (@Lash-L - #150530) * Bump uv to 0.8.9 (@edenhaus - #150542) * Bump python-snoo to 0.8.2 (@Lash-L - #150569) * Change Snoo to use MQTT instead of PubNub (@Lash-L - #150570) * Make sure we update the api version in philips_js discovery (@elupus - #150604) * Bump pymiele to 0.5.3 (@astrandb - #150216) * Bump pymiele to 0.5.4 (@astrandb - #150605) * Bump airOS to 0.2.11 (@CoMPaTech - #150627) * Bump uiprotect to 7.21.1 (@bdraco - #150657) * Bump onvif-zeep-async to 4.0.3 (@bdraco - #150663) * Bump python-snoo to 0.8.3 (@Lash-L - #150670) * Fix missing labels for subdiv in workday (@gjohansson-ST - #150684) * Improve handling decode errors in rest (@gjohansson-ST - #150699) ### 2025.8.3 - August 21 * Bump to zcc-helper==3.6 (@markhannon - #150608) (zimi docs) * fix(amberelectric): add request timeouts (@JP-Ellis - #150613) (amberelectric docs) * Bump renault-api to 0.4.0 (@epenet - #150624) (renault docs) * Update hassfest package exceptions (@cdce8p - #150744) * Bump boschshcpy to 0.2.107 (@tschamm - #150754) (bosch_shc docs) * Fix for bosch_shc: ‘device_registry.async_get_or_create’ referencing a non existing ‘via_device’ (@tschamm - #150756) (bosch_shc docs) * Fix volume step error in Squeezebox media player (@peteS-UK - #150760) (squeezebox docs) * Show charging power as 0 when not charging for the Volvo integration (@thomasddn - #150797) (volvo docs) * Pin gql to 3.5.3 (@joostlek - #150800) * Bump opower to 0.15.2 (@tronikos - #150809) (opower docs) * Include device data in Withings diagnostics (@joostlek - #150816) (withings docs) * Abort Nanoleaf discovery flows with user flow (@joostlek - #150818) (nanoleaf docs) * Bump yt-dlp to 2025.08.11 (@joostlek - #150821) (media_extractor docs) * Initialize the coordinator’s data to include data.options. (@LG-ThinQ-Integration - #150839) (lg_thinq docs) * Handle Z-Wave RssiErrorReceived (@MartinHjelmare - #150846) (zwave_js docs) * Use correct unit and class for the Imeon inverter sensors (@Imeon-Energy - #150847) (imeon_inverter docs) * Bump holidays to 0.79 (@gjohansson-ST - #150857) (workday docs) (holiday docs) * Bump aiorussound to 4.8.1 (@noahhusby - #150858) (russound_rio docs) * Add missing unsupported reasons to list (@agners - #150866) (hassio docs) * Fix icloud service calls (@epenet - #150881) (icloud docs) * Bump pysmartthings to 3.2.9 (@joostlek - #150892) (smartthings docs) * Fix PWA theme color to match darker blue color scheme in 2025.8 (@balloob - #150896) (frontend docs) * Bump bleak-retry-connector to 4.0.2 (@bdraco - #150899) (bluetooth docs) * update pyatmo to v9.2.3 (@cgtobi - #150900) (netatmo docs) * Fix structured output object selector conversion for OpenAI (@balloob - #150916) (openai_conversation docs) * Matter valve Open command doesn’t support TargetLevel=0 (@kepstin - #150922) (matter docs) * Bump ESPHome minimum stable BLE version to 2025.8.0 (@bdraco - #150924) (esphome docs) * Bump imgw-pib to version 1.5.4 (@bieniu - #150930) (imgw_pib docs) * Fix update retry for Imeon inverter integration (@Imeon-Energy - #150936) (imeon_inverter docs) * Bump python-mystrom to 2.5.0 (@elsi06 - #150947) (mystrom docs) * Ask user for Z-Wave RF region if country is missing (@MartinHjelmare - #150959) (zwave_js docs) * Bump onvif-zeep-async to 4.0.4 (@bdraco - #150969) (onvif docs) * Except ujson from license check (@emontnemery - #150980) * Enable country site autodetection in Alexa Devices (@chemelli74 - #150989) (alexa_devices docs) * Update frontend to 20250811.1 (@bramkragten - #151005) (frontend docs) ## Need help? Join the community! Home Assistant has a great community of users who are all more than willing to help each other out. So, join us! Our very active Discord chat server is an excellent place to be, 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: Android Debug Bridge (ADB) Android Debug Bridge media players entities now report to be off where they previously reported to be in standby state. If you have automations or scripts that rely on the Android Debug Bridge media player reporting standby state, you will need to update them to use the new `off` state. (@emontnemery - #148130) (documentation) Apple TV Apple TV media players entities now report to be off where they previously reported to be in standby state. If you have automations or scripts that rely on the Apple TV media player reporting standby state, you will need to update them to use the new `off` state. (@emontnemery - #148132) (documentation) Cambridge Audio Cambridge Audio media players entities now report to be off where they previously reported to be in standby state. If you have automations or scripts that rely on the Cambridge Audio media player reporting standby state, you will need to update them to use the new `off` state. (@emontnemery - #148133) (documentation) Ecovacs The battery property on vacuum entities is being removed in Home Assistant. Therefore, this property is now removed from this integration and is replaced by a battery level sensor. Please review your automations, scripts or cards using the battery property and update the code to use the battery sensor instead. (@mib1185 - #149084) (@edenhaus - #149581) (documentation) Husqvarna Automower The summary field of calendar events provided by the Husqvarna Automower calendar platform has been updated to include the device name as a prefix. This change improves clarity when multiple mowers are used, but may affect automations relying on the previous summary format. (@Thomas55555 - #147405) (documentation) LOOKin LOOKin media players entities now report to be off where they previously reported to be in standby state. If you have automations or scripts that rely on the LOOKin media player reporting standby state, you will need to update them to use the new `off` state. (@emontnemery - #148134) (documentation) Matter The battery property on vacuum entities is being removed in Home Assistant. Therefore, this property is now removed from this integration and is replaced by a battery level sensor. Please review your automations, scripts or cards using the battery property and update the code to use the battery sensor instead. (@MartinHjelmare - #150061) (documentation) Mediaroom Mediaroom media players entities now report to be off where they previously reported to be in standby state. If you have automations or scripts that rely on the Mediaroom media player reporting standby state, you will need to update them to use the new `off` state. (@emontnemery - #148135) (documentation) Miele The battery property on vacuum entities is being removed in Home Assistant. Therefore, this property is now removed from this integration and is replaced by a battery level sensor. Please review your automations, scripts or cards using the battery property and update the code to use the battery sensor instead. (@astrandb - #148765) (documentation) Reolink The Reolink Wi-Fi signal strength sensor has changed from an indicator value between 0 and 4 (amount of bars) to a value in dBm between -85 dBm and -30 dBm. Note that all values in this range are possible, but roughly the old values can be converted like this: * 0 > -85 dBm * 1 > -75 dBm * 2 > -65 dBm * 3 > -55 dBm * 4 > -45 dBm (@starkillerOG - #149191) (documentation) Roborock The battery property on vacuum entities is being removed in Home Assistant. Therefore, this property is now removed from this integration and is replaced by a battery level sensor. Please review your automations, scripts or cards using the battery property and update the code to use the battery sensor instead. (@luca-angemi - #150126) (documentation) Roku Roku media players entities now report to be off where they previously reported to be in standby state. If you have automations or scripts that rely on the Roku media player reporting standby state, you will need to update them to use the new `off` state. (@emontnemery - #148137) (documentation) Snapcast Snapcast media players entities now report to be off where they previously reported to be in standby state. If you have automations or scripts that rely on the Snapcast media player reporting standby state, you will need to update them to use the new `off` state. (@emontnemery - #148138) (documentation) Sony PlayStation 4 Sony PlayStation 4 media players entities now report to be off where they previously reported to be in standby state. If you have automations or scripts that rely on the Sony PlayStation 4 media player reporting standby state, you will need to update them to use the new `off` state. (@emontnemery - #148136) (documentation) Templates Returning `None` from a template binary sensor’s state template is now interpreted as `unknown` state instead of as `off` state. If this behavior is not desired, you need to adjust your templates to return `False` explicitly. (@epenet - #128861) (documentation) Tuya The battery property on vacuum entities is being removed in Home Assistant. Therefore, this property is now removed from this integration and is replaced by a battery level sensor. Please review your automations, scripts or cards using the battery property and update the code to use the battery sensor instead. (@epenet - #150086) (documentation) UniFi Protect Support for UniFi Protect installations running on versions below 6.0.0 has been removed. This change is necessary as we are migrating the Home Assistant integration to use the new UniFi Protect Public API, which is only available in current versions. If you are running an older version of UniFi Protect, you will need to upgrade to at least version 6.0.0 in order to continue using this integration. You can read more about the 6.0 release in Ubiquiti’s official blog post: 🔗 Introducing Protect 6.0 Note on future updates: The Public API is still under active development and may change over time. As we continue to migrate more features of the integration to use the Public API, it is likely that the minimum required version of UniFi Protect will increase further in upcoming Home Assistant releases. We will make these changes step by step as the API evolves and new capabilities become available. **What do I need to do?** Upgrade your UniFi Protect installation to version 6.0.0 or later. Be prepared for possible further minimum version increases in the future. If you are already using version 6.0.0 or newer, and the user in use has sufficient permissions, the integration will attempt to automatically create a new API key. If this succeeds, no further action is required. If it fails, a reauthentication will be triggered, requiring you to re-enter your password and provide your API key manually. (@RaHehl - #149126) (documentation) Whirlpool Appliances The door state for washer/dryer machines is now reported as a binary sensor instead of being part of the main machine state sensor, which now reports only the cycle states. Users relying on this state in automations or scripts will need to update their configurations to use the new binary sensor. (@abmantis - #144078) (documentation) Z-Wave With this release, you will need to update your zwave-js-server instance. You must use zwave-js-server 3.2.1 or greater (schema 44). * If you use the Z-Wave JS add-on, you need at least version 0.20.0. * If you use the Z-Wave JS UI add-on, you need at least version 4.8.0. * If you use the Z-Wave JS UI Docker container, you need at least version 10.11.0. * If you run your own Docker container or some other installation method, you will need to update your zwave-js-server instance to at least 3.2.1. (@MartinHjelmare - #149616) (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. The following changes are the most notable for this release: * Handling open file limit in add-ons since OS 16 * The media player STANDBY state is deprecated * The result attribute has been removed from the FlowResult typed dict * Updated guidelines for helper integrations linking to other integration’s device * Vacuum battery properties are deprecated ## All changes Of course, there is a lot more in this release. You can find a list of all changes made here: Full changelog for Home Assistant Core 2025.8

Home Assistant 2025.9! 🎉 But before we dive into this release: _Did you see we launched a new product?_ 👀 We’ve introduced the Home Assistant Connect ZWA-2, the ultimate way to connect Z-Wave devices to Home Assistant. You can read all about it in our announcement blog 📰 or re-watch the product launch live stream on YouTube 📺. It was a busy month, as we also had two new Works with Home Assistant program partners joining this month as well: AirGradient and Frient! 🎉 While the above was happening this month, as if the project wasn’t already busy enough, we kept on pushing to prepare for this release; and it is an absolute **massive** one! 🤯 This month introduces a new experimental Home dashboard, which aims to become the new default dashboard for Home Assistant in a future release. A first iteration, of which we love to see your feedback and input on. As you know, we develop and iterate in the open. Give it a shot and let us know what you think! Talking about dashboards, my personal favorite card is definitely the tile card; it is just so versatile. And this release brings in a staggering amount of new features for it! Most notably, the ability to add a trend graph to the tile card! 📈 I’m the most excited about the visual changes to the automation editor this release brings: a sidebar. It is a huge and very visible change, that just makes so much sense. This release denotes the start of a whole series of improvements to the automation editor in this, and upcoming releases. As automations make a smart home feel magical, I personally can’t wait to see how this evolves. 🤖 Enjoy the release! ../Frenck * Automation editor sidebar * Introducing the Home dashboard * New tile card features * Trend chart * Media player controls * Bar gauge * Fan direction and oscillation controls * Buttons * Valve open/close and position controls * Setting the date * Integrations * New integrations * Noteworthy improvements to existing integrations * Integration quality scale achievements * Now available to set up from the UI * Farewell to the following * Other noteworthy changes * Analog clock * Storage insights * Patch releases * 2025.9.1 - September 5 * 2025.9.2 - September 12 * 2025.9.3 - September 13 * Need help? Join the community! * Backward-incompatible changes * All changes ## Automation editor sidebar On this year’s Home Assistant roadmap, we have set the goal of making automations easier to create. We have big plans, all based on tons of research, and with this release… we are shipping the first part of all this work, with the intent to gradually add more improvements over multiple releases! This release tweaks the automation editor user interface experience by introducing a sidebar! If you select an item in your automation, instead of that item expanding, it will open a new sidebar to the right with the settings for that selected item. This allows you to keep an overview of your automation on the left side of your screen, while you can tweak its behavior on the right. Of course, we have thought of smaller screens as well. On mobile, instead of the sidebar, a sheet will pop up at the bottom of the screen. This pop-up is also resizable, making it easier than ever to edit an action while reviewing your triggers. Besides the sidebar, we have made tons of other little improvements as well. Tiny layout and styling changes that you will definitely notice as they really help with the overall readability. For example, small lines and borders around grouped elements have been added, making it easier to distinguish between different parts of your automation. Oh! And drag-and-drop support is now available on mobile! 🎉 Tip One of Home Assistant’s greatest strengths is our community. We’re building the changes to our automations together, and your input will shape where it goes next. There are two ways to get involved: * Share your thoughts in our survey * Join the conversation in the automations & scripts development channel on Discord ## Introducing the Home dashboard Over the past year, we have focused on dashboards and their capabilities a lot. We’ve looked at a lot of your dashboards you’ve shared on socials, and talked to many of you about how you organize all your smart home devices and services. The goal? Making dashboards faster and easier to create, while still making them very customizable. With this release, we’re introducing a brand-new _Home dashboard_. The purpose is simple: to give you easy access to the right information at the right time. The dashboard adapts to your Home Assistant experience level: powerful enough for advanced users, yet approachable for newcomers. We’re working to have it earn its name, and hope it will eventually become your new _Home_ page. As always, it’s optional; you can always pick your own dashboard. This is the first iteration, and we’ll continue developing it in the open. When you first open the Home dashboard, it gives you a quick way to navigate to useful summaries for your light, climate, security, and media devices. You can also browse by areas, getting an overview of all the devices and services associated with that part of your home. We’re also introducing Favorites. You can pin any entity to the top, whether it’s a light, climate, or a person. We’d love to see what you choose (more on this in the future). The Home dashboard is not just about quick control. It also brings insights and information about your home. This first release includes weather and energy cards. It’s a simple start, and we have a lot of ideas to explore with you. For example, helping you create your first automation, or show discovered devices. For now, the Home dashboard is considered experimental. Configuration options are limited, and it’s guaranteed to evolve. It won’t appear automatically, and if you want to try it you’ll need to add it manually in the dashboard settings, by adding a new “Home” dashboard. Tip One of Home Assistant’s greatest strengths is our community. We’re building this dashboard together, and your input will shape where it goes next. There are two ways to get involved: * Share your thoughts in our survey * Join the conversation in the dashboard development channel on Discord ## New tile card features The tile card is the most versatile card we have in our arsenal of cards for our dashboards. One superpower of the tile card is its “features”, which are small additions where you can add quick interactions to these cards. For example, a slider to control the brightness of a light or buttons for the speed presets of a fan. Features have been extended quite a bit in this release by a dedicated group of community members. ### Trend chart This release, an absolute banger is the addition of the trend chart features for tile cards created by @MindFreeze. This feature adds a handy quick graph to the tile card, showing the history of a specific entity over time. For this initial version, the time window shown is 24 hours. ### Media player controls @timmo001, added tile card features for media player controls and volume! This makes the tile card now a viable alternative to the media player card. Awesome! ### Bar gauge A new tile card feature, made by @MindFreeze: The bar gauge! For this initial version, it works with sensors that use a percentage (`%`) for their unit of measurement. This makes the card great, for example, for a battery overview dashboard. Nice work! ### Fan direction and oscillation controls Thanks to @pcan08 we now have a tile card feature to control fan direction and oscillation! ### Buttons Thanks to @dhoeben we now have a tile card feature for buttons! He added these buttons for automation, script, and button entities. The text can be changed to display standard button text or custom text. ### Valve open/close and position controls Thanks to @timmo001 we now have a tile card feature to control the open/close and the position of valves. ### Setting the date @timmo001 continued and also added a new tile card feature to support date and datetime entities (including the input datetime helpers). It allows you to add a feature that allows for setting a date. ## 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: * **Aladdin Connect** , added by @swcloudgenie Control and monitor your Genie Aladdin Connect garage doors directly from Home Assistant. * **SEKO PoolDose** , added by @lmaertin Integrate your SEKO water treatment system of your pool or spa to monitor temperature and chemical levels. * **Sleep as Android** , added by @tr4nt0r Connects the Sleep as Android app to Home Assistant, allowing you to trigger automations based on alarm clock or sleep cycle events. * **ToGrill Bluetooth BBQ thermometers** , added by @elupus Connect your ToGrill-compatible Bluetooth grill thermometer and monitor your BBQ efforts to cook steaks to absolute perfection. ### Noteworthy improvements to existing integrations It is not just new integrationsIntegrations connect and integrate Home Assistant with your devices, services, and more. [Learn more] that have been added; existing integrations are also being constantly improved. Here are some of the noteworthy changes to existing integrations: * Husqvarna Automower got some nice additions from @Thomas55555! You can now reset cutting blade usage time and track error events with a new event entity. Perfect for keeping track of your lawn mowing robot! * The Reolink integration now includes speak and doorbell volume controls, plus a chime silent time number entity! Nice @starkillerOG! * You can now send notifications with the PlayStation Network integration! Send direct messages to your friends! Thanks, @tr4nt0r! * Network admins will love @Tomeroeni bringing individual (enable/disable) switch port control to UniFi switches! * The OpenWeatherMap integration now includes a wind gust sensor, thanks to @gjohansson-ST! * @kizovinh added support for battery status and online status sensors to the EZVIZ integration, making it easier to monitor your EZVIZ cameras. Nice! * If you own a Russound RIO device, you can now browse your device’s saved presets directly from the media browser! Thanks, @noahhusby! * @mbo18 added an absolute humidity sensor to the Awair integration. Nice! * The Teslemetry integration added charging and preconditioning actions for your Tesla vehicle. Thanks, @Bre77! * @catsmanac added IQ Meter Collar and C6 Combiner support to the Enphase Envoy integration. Good work! ### 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: * **2 integrations reached platinum** 🏆 * Network UPS Tools (NUT), thanks to @tdfountain * Uptime Kuma, thanks to @tr4nt0r * **1 integration reached bronze** 🥉 * Mastodon, thanks to @andrew-codechimp 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: * **Bayesian** , done by @HarvsG ### Farewell to the following The following integrationIntegrations connect and integrate Home Assistant with your devices, services, and more. [Learn more] is no longer available as of this release: * **Uonet+ Vulcan** has been removed. Vulcan has changed their API and their policies forbid using the API from unofficial software. ## Other noteworthy changes There are many more improvements in this release; here are some of the other noteworthy changes: * Based on feature requests from the community, all modern template entity syntax now supports setting a default entity ID directly in YAML. Thanks @Petro31 for implementing that! * @Petro31 also added support for two new entity types to the template integration. You can now create your own templated event entities and update entities. Awesome! * Home Assistant now supports `m³/min` as a volume flow rate unit. Nice addition @fetzerch! * Our voice guy @synesthesiam has been busy with some great QoL improvements this release as well. * The intent handling for the default agent (non-LLM) now supports fuzzy matching. The technique ensures voice pipelines recognize many more sentences. This improvement is available for English only, while we are looking for ways to extend this to other languages. * We now have built-in intents to control the volume of (active) media players! Like the song? Just ask Home Assistant to turn it up a notch! * After all that dancing, you might have gotten a little warm. Hence in this release, we now also have intents to control fan speeds. Nice! ### Analog clock In Home Assistant 2025.4, we introduced the clock card, which provides a digital clock display for your dashboards. For this release, @timmo001 made this card more feature-rich by adding support for displaying the clock in a customizable analog clock style. Nice! ### Storage insights Disk almost full? You might wonder where your storage space has gone… This release adds disk metrics to the storage configuration panel, letting you see usage at a glance, helping you identify what is taking up space. You can find these metrics by navigating to **Settings** > **System** > **Storage**, or by selecting the My Home Assistant button down below. ## Patch releases We will also release patch releases for Home Assistant 2025.9 in September. These patch releases only contain bug fixes. Our goal is to release a patch release once a week, aiming for Friday. ### 2025.9.1 - September 5 * Add support for migrated Hue bridge (@marcelveldt - #151411) * Add missing device trigger duration localizations (@karwosts - #151578) * Correct capitalization of “FRITZ!Box” in FRITZ!Box Tools integration (@tr4nt0r - #151637) * Fix Sonos Dialog Select type conversion (@PeteRager - #151649) * Fix WebSocket proxy for add-ons not forwarding ping/pong frame data (@felipecrs - #151654) * Fix, entities stay unavailable after timeout error, Imeon inverter integration (@Imeon-Energy - #151671) * Bump aiohue to 4.7.5 (@marcelveldt - #151684) * Update frontend to 20250903.3 (@bramkragten - #151694) * Require OhmeAdvancedSettingsCoordinator to run regardless of entities (@dan-r - #151701) * Bump ohmepy version to 1.5.2 (@dan-r - #151707) * Update Mill library 0.13.1 (@Danielhiversen - #151712) * Handle match failures in intent HTTP API (@synesthesiam - #151726) * Bump pyschlage to 2025.9.0 (@dknowles2 - #151731) * Bump bimmer_connected to 0.17.3 (@rikroe - #151756) * Fix recognition of entity names in default agent with interpunction (@arturpragacz - #151759) * Fix enable/disable entity in modbus (@janiversen - #151626) ### 2025.9.2 - September 12 * Fix XMPP not working with non-TLS servers (@Human - #150957) * Update SharkIQ authentication method (@funkybunch - #151046) * Add event entity on websocket ready in Husqvarna Automower (@Thomas55555 - #151428) * Fix Aladdin Connect state not updating (@hbludworth - #151652) * Fix support for Ecowitt soil moisture sensors (@blotus - #151685) * Fix update of the entity ID does not clean up an old restored state (@jbouwh - #151696) * Revert “Jewish Calendar add coordinator “ (@tsvi - #151780) * Remove device class for Matter NitrogenDioxideSensor (@lboue - #151782) * Improve config entry migration for edge cases in Alexa Devices (@chemelli74 - #151788) * Bump habluetooth to 5.3.1 (@bdraco - #151803) * Fix KNX BinarySensor config_store data (@farmio - #151808) * Fix KNX Light - individual color initialisation from UI config (@farmio - #151815) * Mark Tractive switches as unavailable when tacker is in the enegy saving zone (@bieniu - #151817) * Allow delay > 1 in modbus. (@janiversen - #151832) * max_temp / min_temp in modbus light could only be int, otherwise an assert was provoked. (@janiversen - #151833) * removed assert fron entity in modbus. (@janiversen - #151834) * Bump pydrawise to 2025.9.0 (@dknowles2 - #151842) * Bump aioharmony to 0.5.3 (@bdraco - #151853) * Update pysmarty2 to 0.10.3 (@martinssipenko - #151855) * fix rain sensor for Velux GPU windows (@wollew - #151857) * Bump aioecowitt to 2025.9.1 (@edenhaus - #151859) * Use `native_visibility` property instead of `visibility` for OpenWeatherMap weather entity (@bieniu - #151867) * Bump aiontfy to v0.5.5 (@tr4nt0r - #151869) * Bump aiolifx-themes to 1.0.2 to support newer LIFX devices (@Djelibeybi - #151898) * Bump aiovodafone to 1.2.1 (@chemelli74 - #151901) * Avoid cleanup/recreate of device_trackers not linked to a device for Vodafone Station (@chemelli74 - #151904) * Fix _is_valid_suggested_unit in sensor platform (@epenet - #151912) * Bump habluetooth to 5.5.1 (@bdraco - #151921) * Bump bleak-esphome to 3.3.0 (@bdraco - #151922) * Bump habluetooth to 5.6.0 (@bdraco - #151942) * Fix invalid logger in Tuya (@epenet - #151957) * Fix for squeezebox track content_type (@peteS-UK - #151963) * Fix playlist media_class_filter in search_media for squeezebox (@peteS-UK - #151973) * Bump habluetooth to 5.6.2 (@bdraco - #151985) * Bump yt-dlp to 2025.09.05 (@joostlek - #152006) * Bump `accuweather` to version 4.2.1 (@bieniu - #152029) * Fix HomeKit Controller stale values at startup (@bdraco - #152086) * Fix duplicated IP port usage in Govee Light Local (@abmantis - #152087) * Fix DoorBird being updated with wrong IP addresses during discovery (@bdraco - #152088) * Fix supported _color_modes attribute not set for on/off MQTT JSON light (@jbouwh - #152126) * Fix reauth for Alexa Devices (@chemelli74 - #152128) * Bump hass-nabucasa from 1.1.0 to 1.1.1 (@ludeeus - #152147) * Update frontend to 20250903.5 (@bramkragten - #152170) * Use position percentage for closed status in Velux (@wollew - #151679) ## 2025.9.3 - September 13 * Bump habluetooth to 5.6.4 (@bdraco - #152227) (bluetooth docs) ## Need help? Join the community! Home Assistant has a great community of users who are all more than willing to help each other out. So, join us! Our very active Discord chat server is an excellent place to be, 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: Encoding units containing the μ character The encoding for some units that contain the μ character has been changed. Users that consume state data from sensors that have changed units will be impacted (such as exported state data to InfluxDB). The units with a changed encoding are: * `μSv/h` for the `aranet` integration as a unit for radiation rate * `μS/cm` for `UnitOfConductivity.MICROSIEMENS_PER_CM` * `μV` for `UnitOfElectricPotential.MICROVOLT` * `μg/ft³` for concentration in micrograms per cubic foot * `μg/m³` for concentration in micrograms per cubic meter * `μmol/s⋅m²` for the `fyta` integration as a unit for light * `μg` for `UnitOfMass.MICROGRAMS` * `μs` for `UnitOfTime.MICROSECONDS` (@jbouwh - #144853) 1-Wire The `raw_value` attribute was previously deprecated and has now been removed. (@gjohansson-ST - #150112) (documentation) Alexa Devices The sound list has been updated to match the one used by the Alexa Mobile app. The `variant` parameter is no longer required. Check your automations to ensure the selected sound is still present. (@chemelli74 - #151317) (documentation) Husqvarna Automower BLE The integration now requires the Automower PIN when being set up. This ensures Home Assistant can communicate with more models of mowers and with higher security levels. (@alistair23 - #135440) (documentation) KNX KNX scene entities now also change their state when a scene was activated externally (from bus). Previously they only updated when activated from within Home Assistant. (@farmio - #151218) (documentation) SIA Alarm Systems SIA alarm status code CF (armed with malfunctions) is now mapped to `armed_away` instead of to `armed_custom_bypass`. (@etnoy - #132628) (documentation) SwitchBot Bluetooth The battery property on vacuum entities is being removed in Home Assistant. Therefore, this property is now removed from this integration and is replaced by a battery level sensor. Please review your automations, scripts, and dashboards using the battery property and update the code to use the battery sensor instead. (@MartinHjelmare - #150227) (documentation) Yale August The August integration now uses OAuth authentication with Yale August’s official API. This is a required one-time breaking change as the unofficial authentication method will stop working soon. This migration helps reduce unnecessary load on Yale August’s servers while ensuring continued access for all users. When you update Home Assistant, you’ll be prompted to re-authenticate your August account: 1. Select the notification or go to **Settings** → **Devices & Services** → **August** 2. Select “Reconfigure” and follow the OAuth flow to sign in 3. Once authenticated, your devices will work exactly as before We’re grateful to Yale August for officially supporting Home Assistant with dedicated API access! (@bdraco - #151080) (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. The following changes are the most notable for this release: * Standardize encoding of μ in units of measurement * The DeviceEntry.suggested_area attribute is deprecated and will be removed ## All changes Of course, there is a lot more in this release. You can find a list of all changes made here: Full changelog for Home Assistant Core 2025.9

The Home Assistant companion app for Android just keeps getting better with every release, and recently, it gained some dedicated support to help accelerate its development. Several months ago, I (Timothy Nibeaudeau, also known as @TimoPtr) joined the Open Home Foundation as our dedicated Android developer 🎉. It’s been over two years, and hundreds of thousands of installs, since we’ve published a dedicated update for our community on the development of the app, and I’d like to give you a quick update on recent improvements and what’s coming next. ## Behind the Screens In the beginning, all of Home Assistant’s official companion apps were developed by the community in their spare time, with many still being part-time projects. It’s incredible the work they put into building these apps. This gives you not just the ability to view your Home Assistant instance on the go (or around the house) and takes advantage of many of the sensors available on the device while providing rich notifications to users. Very impressive growth in installs over the years! The Android app alone has seen over 2,700 contributions! It’s a lot of work keeping up with Android versions, new capabilities of Home Assistant, and bug fixes. This app doesn’t just support Android phones and tablets but also devices they connect to, specifically Android Auto, Android Automotive, and Wear OS. ### Progress in the millions They did all this work while reaching nearly **1.5 million installs** , with over 6 million total installs over the years. There are 400,000 daily active users and 1 million monthly active users. The phone app also has a very nice **4.3-star rating** on the Play Store and **2,800 stars** on GitHub 🤩. This feedback really helps us improve. It’s been over a year and a half since the Apple companion apps gained a full-time developer with the addition of the amazing Bruno Pantaleão 😎. Around the same time as Bruno was hired, we began looking for an Android developer, and let’s say that took a little longer. My name is Timothy Nibeaudeau, and as mentioned at the start, I’m your new dedicated Android engineer. As someone who has been using Home Assistant since 2018, I’m passionate about open source and smart home technology. I’ve been working in software development for nearly a decade, developing apps for all sorts of projects from medical-grade IoT products to smart toothbrushes 🪥. I am committed to bringing my talents to the project, but I cannot do it alone. The community is what makes Home Assistant special, and together, we can achieve even more. Specifically, I’d like to thank @dshokouhi, @jpelgrom, and @JBassett for their years of work making this app what it is today! I’d also like to thank you! Your support (by subscribing to Home Assistant Cloud and buying official hardware) allows the Open Home Foundation to hire dedicated developers. Dedicated developers keep development focused, helping the community to work together in delivering the feature they’re passionate about. ## Since our last blog Like I said at the top, it’s been a long time (over two years 🫢) since we’ve published a blog highlighting the improvements made to the Android app. You’ve probably been enjoying these new features for some time, but in case you missed it, here are some of the biggest improvements made by the community over that time. * Health Connect sensors linked to your Android phone have been added, including heart rate, fitness data, and glucose levels (as always, you have complete control over what you share with your Home Assistant instance, and that data stays local). * By working with Android natively, Assist can now replace your phone’s (or Wear OS devices’) assistant. * You can now set the Home Assistant app as your device’s default launcher, which is great for wall panel setups. * We’ve updated our widgets to support some of the new features, like To-do lists. * Wear OS has had its Tile capabilities improved and a new thermostat tile was added. * There are now more Android Auto sensors, like speed and remaining range. * A simpler way to connect Wi-Fi compatible devices to your home network (such as the Home Assistant Voice Preview Edition) using Improv Wi-Fi over Bluetooth (an open standard for connecting devices to Wi-Fi using Bluetooth, built by the Open Home Foundation). * The Z-Wave device onboarding experience has been improved with the addition of a QR code scanner. * We’ve also improved the speed and stability of the app. * It’s now easier than ever for new contributors to jump in and start helping with the app (much more on that below 👇). For a full list of the app’s capabilities, check out our breakdown of the companion apps from the companion documentation. ## What’s next for our Android app In our latest update of the Android app 2025.7.1, we’ve added a couple of useful features. Including a new basic invite flow, which will be shared between Android and iOS, adding a good layer of consistency between our most-used companion apps. The idea is to make it much more seamless to add new users or set up new devices (no need to type the URL in your Android Automotive device!). We’ve also made My Links work better. If you’re unfamiliar with My Links, they’re those cool links (that anyone can make) that bring you right to an integration, blueprint, add-on, or settings page. They have always worked great on desktop, but up until recently, they were a bit clunky to use on mobile. Now you can get to the link’s destination with a single click. Android has many different screen sizes and layouts, and we’re working to better leverage them with edge-to-edge support. Our recent update has edge-to-edge working on Android native UI elements like the settings page, and we’re looking to implement them elsewhere in future updates so we can make the most of your screen real estate. ## Important changes for Android users A huge percentage of our users are on pretty new versions of Android, but we want to support as many older devices as possible. One significant change on the horizon is ending support for Android 5.0 and 5.1 (also known as Android Lollipop, released in 2014… it had a good run 🫡). Google has announced that starting in June 2025, many AndroidX libraries will require a minimum of Android 6.0 (API 23). Google has already updated Firebase Cloud Messaging to require this as well. This means we will need to stop supporting Android 5.0 and 5.1 (API 21 and 22) to keep up with new features and security updates. Less than 0.3% of installs are on Android versions below API 23 (Android 6.0), and we always work to keep older devices working, but sometimes our hand is forced. If you are using an older device, the app will not be removed, but you will not receive new updates once we make this change. We plan to make one final release for these older versions before support ends. This release is expected before the end of the summer, so you will have the latest updates available for your device before we move on. ## Let’s work together We want to make it easier for you to contribute, whether you are a seasoned developer or just getting started. This includes making the contribution journey smoother and giving people an easy place to start. We’ve even compiled a list of “first issues” to tackle for prospective developers looking to help out. We’ve started work on dedicated Android developer documentation, which will give in-depth information about the inner workings of this app. We’ve made many behind-the-scenes changes to improve the developer experience (defining best practices, linters for faster/automated feedback, and continuous integration for quicker feedback on PRs). Our focus is always on improving stability, reducing crash rates, and catching issues early. One example of this is our new fail-fast approach, which has already helped us catch and fix issues early. We want more Android native/exclusive features while also balancing the need to keep parity between the Android and iOS companion apps (the iOS app is excellent, and each app’s community is learning so much from each other). ### How you can help The companion app for Android is a community effort, and your help makes a real difference. Here is how you can get involved: * Join the beta program to test new features. * Suggest a feature and share your ideas. * Help triage issues on GitHub, Discord, or the Home Assistant forum. * Join the Android Project thread on Discord. (Head to _Channels & Roles_ and select “I want to contribute developer skills!” to assign yourself the Developer role if you can’t see the thread.) * Submit issues, review pull requests, start your first pull request, and ask questions — your feedback is valuable. * Help us translate the app. Thanks again for making all this possible. I look forward to your help making this app even more amazing!

Last year, we laid out our vision for AI in the smart home, which opened up experimentation with AI in Home Assistant. In that update, we made it easier to integrate all sorts of local and cloud AI tools, and provided ways to use them to control and automate your home. A year has passed, a lot has happened in the AI space, and our community has made sure that Home Assistant has stayed at the frontier. We beat big tech to the punch; we were the first to make AI useful in the home. We did it by giving our community complete control over how and when they use AI, making AI a powerful _tool_ to use in the home. As opposed to something that takes over your home. Our community is taking advantage of AI’s unique abilities (for instance, its image recognition or summarizing skills), while having the ability to exclude it from mission-critical things they’d prefer it not to handle. Best of all, this can all be run locally, without any data leaving your home! Moreover, if users don’t want AI in their homes, that’s their choice, and they can choose not to enable any of these features. I hope to see big tech take an approach this measured, but judging by their last couple of keynotes, I’m not holding my breath. Over the past year, we’ve added many new AI features and made them easy to use directly through Home Assistant’s user interface. We have kept up with all the developments in AI land and are using the latest standard to integrate more models and tools than ever before. We’re also continuing to benchmark local and cloud models to give users an idea of what works best. Keep reading to check out everything new, and maybe you can teach your smart home some cool new tricks. Local AI is making the home very natural to control Big thanks to our AI community contributor team: @AllenPorter, @shulyaka, @tronikos, @IvanLH, @Joostlek! ## Supercharging voice control with AI We were doing voice assistants before AI was cool. In 2023, we kicked off our Year of the Voice. Since then, we’ve worked towards our goal of building all the parts needed for a local, open, and private voice assistant. When AI became the rage, we were quick to integrate it. Today, users can chat with any large language model (LLM) that is integrated into Home Assistant, whether that’s in the cloud or run locally via a service like Ollama. Where Assist, our home-grown (non-AI) voice assistant agent, is focused on a predetermined list of mostly home control commands, AI allows you to ask more open-ended questions. Summarize what’s happening across the smart home sensors you’ve exposed to Assist, or get answers to trivia questions. You can even give your LLM a personality! Users can also leverage the power of AI to speak the way _they speak_ , as LLMs are much better at understanding the intent behind the words. By default, Assist will handle commands first. Only questions or commands it can’t understand will be sent to the AI you’ve set up. For instance, _“Turn on the kitchen light”_ can be handled by Assist, while _“It’s dark in the kitchen, can you help?”_ could be processed by an AI. This speeds up response times for simple commands and makes for a more sustainable voice assistant. Another powerful addition from the past year is context sharing between agents. So your Assist agent can share the most recent commands with your chosen AI agent. This shared context lets you say something like _“Add milk to my shopping list,”_ which Assist will act on, and to add more items, just say _“Add rice.”_ The AI agent understands that these commands are connected and can act accordingly. Here is an excellent walkthrough video of JLo's AI-powered home, showing many of these new features in action Another helpful addition keeps the conversation going; if the LLM asks you a question, your Assist hardware will listen for your reply. If you say something like “It’s dark”, it might ask whether you’d like to turn on some lights, and you could tell it to proceed. We have taken this even further than other voice assistants, as you can now have Home Assistant initiate conversations. For example, you could set up an automation that detects when the garage door is open and asks if you’d like to close it (though this can also be done without AI with a very clever Blueprint). AI pushed us to completely revamp our Text-to-Speech (TTS) system to take advantage of streaming responses from LLMs. While local AI models can be slow, we use a simple trick to make the delay almost unnoticeable. Now, both Piper (our local TTS) and Home Assistant Cloud TTS can begin generating audio as soon as the LLM produces the first few words, improving the speed of the spoken response by a factor of ten. **Prompt: “Tell me a long story about a frog”** **Setup** | **Time to start speaking** ---|--- Cloud, non-streaming | 6.62 sec Cloud, streaming | 0.51 sec (13x faster) Piper, non-streaming | 5.31 sec Piper, streaming | 0.56 sec (9.5x faster) _Ollama gemma3:4b on an RTX 3090, and Piper on an i5_ ## Great hardware to work with AI People built some really cool voice hardware, from landline telephones to little talking robots, but the fact that it was so DIY was always a barrier to entry. To make our voice assistant available to everyone, we released the Home Assistant Voice Preview Edition. This is an easy and affordable way to try Home Assistant Voice. It has some seriously powerful audio processing hardware inside its sleek package. If you were on the fence about trying out voice, it really is the best way to get started. Voice Preview Edition is not only open and powerful, but it looks and feels great too! It’s now easier than ever to set up your Assist hardware to work with LLMs with our Voice Assistants settings page, and you can even assign a different LLM to each device. The LLM can recognize the room it’s in and the devices within it, making its responses more relevant. Assist was built to be a great way to control devices in your home, but with AI, it becomes so much more. ## AI-powered suggestions Last month, Home Assistant launched a new opt-in feature to leverage the power of AI when automating with Home Assistant. The goal is to shorten the journey from a blank slate to your finished idea. When saving an automation or script, users can now leverage the new Suggest button: When clicked, it will send your automation configuration along with the titles of your existing automations and labels to AI to suggest a name, description, category, and labels for your new automation. Over the coming months, we’re going to explore what other features can benefit from AI suggestions. To opt-in to this feature, you need to take two steps. First, you need to configure an integration that provides an _AI Tasks_ entity. For local AI, you can configure Ollama, or you can also leverage cloud-based AI like Google, OpenAI, or Anthropic. Once configured, you need to go to the new AI Task preferences pane under **_System - > General_** and pick the AI Task entity to power suggestions in the UI. If you don’t configure an AI Tasks entity, the Suggest button will not be visible. ## AI Tasks gets the job done Enabling AI Tasks does more than quickly label and summarize your automations; its true superpower is making AI easy to use in templates, scripts, and automations. AI Tasks allow other code to leverage AI to generate data, including options to attach files and define how you want that data output (for instance, a JSON schema). We have all seen those incredible community creations, where a user leverages AI image recognition and analysis to detect available parking spots or count the number of chickens in the chicken coop. It’s likely that AI Tasks can now help you easily do this in Home Assistant, without the need for complex scripts, extra add-ons, or HACS integrations. Below is a template entity that counts chickens in a video feed, all via a short and simple set of instructions. template: - triggers: - trigger: homeassistant event: start - trigger: time_pattern minutes: "/5" actions: - action: ai_task.generate_data data: task_name: Count chickens instructions: >- This is the inside of my coop. How many birds (chickens, geese, and ducks) are inside the coop? structure: birds: selector: number: attachments: media_content_id: media-source://camera/camera.chicken_coop media_content_type: image/jpeg response_variable: result sensor: - name: "Chickens" state: "{{ result.data.birds }}" state_class: total This template sends a snapshot of the camera to the AI, asking it to analyze what is going on. It defines that the output should always be a number, since we want to use that information in Home Assistant. All of this is embedded in a template entity that automatically updates every 5 minutes. An AI Task could also be embedded in an automation, a script, or any other place that can execute actions. An automation triggers an AI Task to identify what caused motion on a camera. Lastly, users can set a default AI Task entity. This allows users to skip picking an entity ID when creating AI automations. It also lets you migrate everything that uses AI Tasks to the latest model with a single click. This also makes it easy to share blueprints that leverage AI Tasks, like this blueprint that analyzes a camera snapshot when motion is detected: ## MCP opens a whole new world Model Context Protocol (MCP) is a thin layer allowing LLMs to integrate _anything_. When the specification was announced, we quickly jumped on it and integrated it into Home Assistant. Effectively, these servers give Home Assistant’s Assist conversation agent access to all sorts of new tools. You could connect MCP servers that give Assist access to the latest news stories, your to-do lists, or a server that catalogues your vinyl collection, allowing you to have richer conversations (_“Okay Nabu, which Replacements albums do I have, and which aren’t on my Vinyl-to-Purchase list?”_). On the flip side, you can also turn Home Assistant into an MCP server, allowing an AI system to access information about your home. For instance, you could create a local AI that’s great at making Home Assistant automations, and it could include all your entity names or available actions. MCP keeps gaining more support, and there are some great cloud and self-hosted solutions available. ## How to pick a model There are a lot of models available, it’s hard to know where to start. Luckily, Home Assistant’s resident AI guru @AllenPorter is here to help. He has put together an incredibly useful Home LLM Leaderboard. This dataset includes his extensive tests of cloud and local LLM options, and even has tests that give small local LLMs a fighting chance (see assist-mini). Currently, the charts show the big cloud players’ most recent models ranking pretty close to each other, while recent local models that use 8GB or more of VRAM are nearly keeping up. In the past, there was a big disparity between most models, but now it’s hard to go wrong. This is especially helpful as the options for LLMs in Home Assistant have just grown exponentially with the addition of OpenRouter, a unified interface for LLMs. With OpenRouter, users can access over 400 new models in Home Assistant, and it supports AI Tasks right from day one. We really are spoiled for choice. ## The future is Open, and Open Source Home Assistant is open. We believe that you should be in control of your data, and your smart home. All of it. Local LLMs and the way we have architected Home Assistant extends this choice to the AI space, all while maintaining your privacy. Most crucially, we’ve made all of this open source. We are community-driven and work on this together with our community. The Open Home Foundation has no investors and is not beholden to anyone but our users. Our work is funded through hardware purchases and Home Assistant Cloud subscriptions, allowing us to make all the technology we build free and open.