Home Assistant 2025.1! 🥂
Happy New Year! The whole Home Assistant project wishes you and your loved ones
a fantastic and healthy 2025! ❤️ Let’s make this year even better than the last!
We are all super excited to kick off the new year with an absolute massive
release! 🎆
This release brings a complete overhaul of the backup system in Home Assistant,
which has been in the works for months! And I’m not just talking about some
user interface changes—no, we are talking about a complete overhaul from front
to back!
Automated backups, encrypted Home Assistant Cloud backup storage, retention
policies, configuration wizards, and even the ability for integrations to offer
backup storage locations! 🤯
But that is not all! We also had the Month of “What the Heck?!”
in December, which resulted in a lot of quality-of-life improvements raised
by the community that month!
There is so much to unwrap in this release, seriously, let’s just dive in!
Enjoy the release!
../Frenck
Overhaul of the backup system
Let’s talk about backups. Let’s be honest: they’re one of the most important yet
often overlooked tasks. But when disaster strikes, like a hardware failure,
having a reliable backup can save the day. Wouldn’t you love to be back up and
running after disaster strikes?
While Home Assistant’s previous backup system has proven to be solid
and reliable over the years, it didn’t exactly make following best
practices—like regular backups, encryption, and off-site
storage—easy. Many of you had to rely on custom add-ons, automations,
or blueprints for backups to fill the gaps.
That changes with this release! 🎉
We’ve completely reworked the Home Assistant backup experience to help you set
up a solid backup strategy, using best practices in just a few clicks;
giving you peace of mind when it comes to your backups.
No worries, if you are using any custom solution for backups, they will continue
to work today. Even with everything new, we’ve made sure to keep everything
backward compatible.
So, without further ado, let’s dive into the new backup system!
Automated backups 🤖
Yes, you read that right—Home Assistant now supports automated backups!
Using a schedule, backups will be created on a regular basis without you having
to lift a finger. This ensures you always have a recent backup available,
without having to worry about it.
When you navigate to your backups in the settings menu, you will be
greeted with a new overview page that shows you exactly when your last backup
took place and when the next one is scheduled. Instant peace of mind!
Automated backups are taking place at 4:45 AM. So, while everyone in your home
is sleeping, Home Assistant makes sure your data is safe and sound. Backing up
at this early hour also means Home Assistant is done with its internal database
maintenance, ensuring your backup is as compact as possible.
If something ever goes wrong during the automated scheduled backup process,
Home Assistant will notify you through the repair center, ensuring you are
aware of it and can take action.
Triggering an off-schedule automated backup 👆
Automated backups on a schedule are great, but sometimes, you might want to
trigger a backup right now! Maybe you are about to make big changes or
upgrade a whole bunch of things during an evening of tinkering.
No worries! You can now trigger an off-schedule automated backup from the backup
page at any time. This will immediately create a backup with the same
configuration as your scheduled automated backups.
The ability to trigger an on-demand automated backup is excellent, as it covers
all your backup settings in a single click. However, the ability to create
manual backups also still exists. This allows you to create a very specific
backup with the exact contents you want to have in it.
Home Assistant Cloud backups 😎
Are you a Home Assistant Cloud by Nabu Casa subscriber? Then you’re in for a
treat! You can now automatically store your latest, fully encrypted, backup in
your Home Assistant Cloud account.
This feature provides 5GB of storage at no extra cost, offering fully
encrypted off-site protection for your data! 🎁
The backup can be downloaded from Home Assistant itself, but also from the
Home Assistant Cloud account page @ Nabu Casa
in case you need it. This way, you can always access your latest backup, even
in case your Home Assistant hardware completely fails.
Backup locations are extendable by design 🧩
So, automated backups can be stored on your local disk and in Home Assistant
Cloud, but what if you want to store your backups somewhere else?
Choice is an important aspect of Home Assistant; we want to make everything as
flexible as possible without vendor lock-in. Therefore, the backup system
is designed to be extendable.
This means integrations can offer new storage locations—such as NAS devices,
Google Drive, Backblaze B2, or other storage providers—in the future.
Currently, this feature is brand new ✨, so no integrations offer additional
locations yet. However, we expect to see a few more integrations that provide
backup locations in the next release.
This extensibility ensures you can store your backups where you want them,
giving you the flexibility and choice to choose the storage solution you
prefer and trust.
Encrypted backups by default 🔒
With the addition of Home Assistant Cloud as an off-site backup location, and
the potential for integrations to offer even more (off-site) backup locations,
security has become more important than ever. Your backups not only contain the
access credentials to your smart home devices but also the history of your home,
and no one should be able to access information that sensitive! Ever!
That is why all backups are now AES-128 encrypted by default. To prioritize
your backups’ security we replaced the previous optional password
with a mandatory encryption key.
When you set up your backups for the first time, an encryption key will be
generated for you. Make sure to store this key in a safe place, as you will need
it to restore your backups. To make this easier, you can download the key as
part of an emergency kit during setup—or anytime later from the backup settings
page. Keep it safe! 🔑
Restoring backups available to all installation methods 🤗
More good news—restoring backups is now supported across
all installation methods! 🎉
Previously, only Home Assistant OS installations could restore backups. But
with this release, this feature is now available for all installation methods!
No matter how you run Home Assistant, even if you use our containers in a Docker
environment, you can now restore your Home Assistant backups.
This also means you can restore backups from local storage, Home Assistant
Cloud, or any future backup locations added through integrations.
As a matter of fact, all backup features, including everything we release today,
will be available regardless of the installation method you are using. We want
everyone to have a solid backup strategy.
Backup retention 🗑
Our previous backup system made solid backups, which was good, but if you didn’t
clean them up manually, eventually, you’d annoyingly run out of disk space. 😬
So! Backup retention is now a thing! You can now configure how many backups you
want to keep, and Home Assistant will handle the rest.
This cleanup will happen automatically after each backup. If you create a backup
manually for whatever reason, those will remain untouched, giving you full
control over special cases and workflows.
Setting up backups for the first time 🚀
Getting started with the new backup system is quick and easy!
The first time you open the backup settings after upgrading, you will be greeted
by a setup wizard that will guide you through setting up your backups
step-by-step.
The wizard will help you set up your encryption key, configure your backup
frequency, and set up your backup retention policy. And when it is ready, it
will immediately kick off your first backup!
All set! One less thing to worry about 🎉
3…2…1… Backups 🎊
We are super excited about this new backup system! As we enter the new year,
we encourage you to get serious about your backups.
A good New Year’s resolution, maybe? 😉
So, stop what you are doing right now and set up your backups! Go ahead and set
up that 3-2-1 backup strategy. Not sure what that is?
You can read all about it in our 3…2…1… Backup blog post.
Month of “What the Heck?!”
December’s Month of “What the Heck?!”
was an absolute blast! 🎉
A big thank you to everyone who contributed by sharing their “What the Heck?!”
moments and ideas for improving Home Assistant. Your input is incredibly
valuable and helps shape our roadmap and priorities moving forward.
Quite a bunch of shared “What the Heck?!” moments have been addressed in this
release already 🚀 —and we’re not stopping there! Expect to see even more
improvements inspired by your feedback in upcoming releases.
Setting categories and labels when creating automations and scripts
For the first WTH item that has been resolved, we have @jpbede to thank!
And this one is also one of the higher-voted ones, so it is a good one!
Andrew Jackson wrote:
“WTH can you not add categories, labels etc when creating an automation”
Yeah, that is a good WTH! Whenever you create a new automation or script, you
probably want to organize it right away and not have to go back to the settings.
FIXED! 🎉
When you create a new automation or script, and also when renaming it,
you can now set the description, category, labels, and areas right away!
🏷️ Nice!
Quickly navigate to a device
You might be aware that you can bring up our quick navigation bar anywhere in
Home Assistant by pressing the c key on your keyboard to navigate various
places and the e key to search and navigate to any entity. However…
“WTH is there no quick bar for devices?”
Well, that is a good question that Andreas Brett raised! There is indeed no
such thing for devices. @jpbede to the rescue! You can now navigate to any
device using the quick bar by pressing the d key on your keyboard.
Zoom & Pan for charts
KNXBroker raised the following WTH topic:
“WTH lets upgrade History Graphs”
You are right! The history graphs in Home Assistant are basic but functional!
Nevertheless, we can do better! 🚀
One of the bigger items in that WTH topic was the ability to zoom and pan…
Thanks to @MindFreeze, you can now zoom and pan in any graph
in Home Assistant! 📈
Zoom and drag any graph in Home Assistant, by holding ctrl (or command on mac)
and scrolling your mouse wheel!
Hold the control key (or command on macOS) and scroll to zoom in and out using
your mouse. You can also click and drag to pan around the zoomed graph.
In addition to this change, @MindFreeze enabled small micro-animation for the
history graphs, making them look more alive and less static.
Controlling the default exposure of new entities to Assist
mathd made the following point in a Month of “What the Heck?!” topic:
“WTH Are all new entities exposed to Assist by default?”
We hear you! Thanks to @jpbede, you can now control the default exposure of
new entities to Assist. You can now toggle this on or off in the Home Assistant
Voice Assistant settings.
More “What the Heck?!” improvements
Many smaller improvements originate from the Month of “What the Heck?!” in this
release. Here are some of the other noteworthy ones:
“WTH there is no hotkey for Assist”**
Well, thanks to @jpbede, you can now press the a key on your keyboard
anywhere in Home Assistant to summon Assist! 🎙️ Nice!
“WTH doesn’t HA ask if I want to save automations?”
Whoa! That is a good one! Thanks to @jpbede, Home Assistant will now ask if
you want to save your automation before leaving the editor if there are unsaved
changes. 🤖
“WTH Is in Energy Dashboard the individual devices not able to reorder”
Thanks for that one yormedia! Honestly, this one has been raised in previous
editions of the Month of “What the Heck?!” a few times. Reason enough for
@karwosts to pick this up and make it happen! You can now reorder them in
the setting for categorization purposes. 🔡
“WTH Can’t I filter labels within a table filter?”
Good question. If you have a lot of labels, scrolling through the list of labels
in the filter option can be a bit cumbersome. Thanks to @silamon, you can
now search and filter through the labels in the filter option! 🔎
WTH sentence trigger doesn’t contain any context
Great idea! Thanks to @balloob, the full conversation input is now available
to sentence triggers! 🗣️ This was actually the first WTH item to be resolved in
this edition! 😎
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:
Cookidoo, added by @miauclInteract with your shopping lists of Cookidoo the official Thermomix recipe platform.
EHEIM Digital, added by @autinerdControl your EHEIM Digital aquarium devices with Home Assistant.
Ituran, added by @shmuelzonRetrieve and use information from your Ituran-equipped vehicle.
Ohme, added by @dan-rGet sensor information from your Ohme smart EV charger.
Peblar, added by @frenckControl and monitor the charging sessions of your Peblar EV Charger.
Powerfox, added by @klaasnicolaasGather data from your Poweropti devices reading electricity, water, gas, and heat.
Slide Local, added by @dontinelliIntegrate your Slide cover device directly with Home Assistant using a local API.
Watergate, added by @adam-the-heroIntegrate your Watergate Sonic Local with Home Assistant.
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:
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:
Farewell to the following
The following integrationsIntegrations connect and integrate Home Assistant with your devices, services, and more. [Learn more] are also no longer available as
of this release:
DTE Energy Bridge has been removed after being deprecated. The integration
was no longer functional.
Simulated has been previously deprecated and is now removed.
Stookalert has been removed. The upstream data is no longer updated.
The Stookwijzer integration is a good alternative to get the same information.
Other noteworthy changes
There are many more improvements in this release; here are some of the other
noteworthy changes:
When viewing data tables and using ctrl+f in your browser to search, the
search input will now be focused automatically. As native browser searches
will not work on data tables. Thanks @jpbede!
@marcinbauer85 adjusted the “Add card” dialog, to automatically focus on the
search field when you add a card, so you can start typing to search
right away! Nice touch!
Images uploaded through Home Assistant (for example, as background or as a
user profile picture) are now browsable in the media browser.
Thanks @karwosts!
The unit of measurement is now shown next to the numeric slider in the
more-info dialog of number entities. Thanks, @abmantis!
Home Assistant now supports mWh as a unit of measurement for energy sensors
and mW for electrical potential power sensors. Thanks @agners!
@wendevlin added settings and category overflow actions to the automation
and script editor (the three-dotted menu in the top right corner), making
it easier to access those straight from the editor. Nice!
The logbook card supports picking a target for things it should show
events for. You can now pick based on entities, devices, areas, floors,
and labels! Thanks, @silamon!
Dashboard background settings
A few releases ago, we made adding a background image to your dashboard easier.
This release, @silamon takes it a step further by adding a lot of settings
to customize how the background image is displayed.
This includes support for tiled backgrounds, transparency, size settings,
alignment, and allowing the background to scroll with the page or stay fixed.
Nice! Thanks, @silamon!
Media player volume feature for Tile card
This is a super nice addition from @simon-zumbrunnen! The Tile card now
supports a media player volume slider feature. This feature allows you to
control the volume of a media player directly from the Tile card. 🔉
Nice work Simon!
Need help? Join the community!
Home Assistant has a great community of users who are all more than willing
to help each other out. So, join us!
Our very active Discord chat server is an excellent place to be
at, and don’t forget to join our amazing forums.
Found a bug or issue? Please report it in our issue tracker,
to get it fixed! Or, check our help page for guidance for more
places you can go.
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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:
Denon HEOS
Grouping a HEOS media player will now raise an exception if one of the members
is not a valid HEOS player. Previously unknown or invalid members would be
silently dropped.
(@andrewsayre – #132213) (documentation)
devolo Home Control
The integration with devolo Home Control has been updated to remove the option
to set the mydevolo URL. This option was used to integrate with the devolo
Home Control Cloud for development purposes only.
This option is no longer available.
(@Shutgun – #132821) (documentation)
FXCOM RFXtrx
The unit of measurement has been removed from FXCOM RFXtrx counters because
count is not a unit 😁
(@jrieger – #133108) (documentation)
HomeWizard Energy
The unit of measurement for the “Water usage” sensor has been updated from
l/min to L/min. This change standardizes the unit to improve consistency
across Home Assistant.
Any automations, scripts, or templates that rely on the old unit may need to be
adjusted. Long-term statistics will remain intact, but repair issues will be
created to ensure the data is updated with the new unit.
(@DCSBL – #132261) (documentation)
LIFX
The options color_temp and kelvin are no longer valid arguments for LIFX
actions. Please use color_temp_kelvin instead.
(@epenet – #132730) (documentation)
Tesla Fleet
The included OAuth application credentials have been removed, as Tesla no longer
supports Open Source application registrations and is moving to a pay-per-use
model.
Read more about this announcement in this blog post.
(@Bre77 – #132431) (documentation)
UniFi Network
The states of “Device State” sensors have been standardized to match
Home Assistant core rules and be translatable. This affects the following
UniFi sensor states:
Connected, which now became connected
Pending, which now became pending
Firmware Mismatch, which now became firmware_mismatch
Upgrading, which now became upgrading
Provisioning, which now became provisioning
Heartbeat Missed, which now became heartbeat_missed
Adopting, which now became adopting
Deleting, which now became deleting
Inform Error, which now became inform_error
Adoption Failed, which now became adoption_failed
Isolated, which now became isolated
Unknown, which now became unknown
If you used those states directly in your automations, scripts, or templates;
you will need to adjust those to match these changes.
(@bieniu – #131921) (documentation)
Zabbix
The integration now uses the official Zabbix Python API. Because of this, the
minimum supported Zabbix version is now 5.0. This change drops support for
Zabbix 4 and before.
(@kruton – #131674) (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 are the most notable for this release:
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 2025.1