2024.11.3

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Home Assistant Companion Android App April 2021 Release

Daniel Shokouhi Daniel Shokouhi

Hey Everyone! It’s time for the April 2021 Android release. Last month we wrote that we would be aligning our releases closer to Home Assistant core so here we are! Another month went by and the Android app has started to see more contributors coming along. Hopefully, you will join us next month as we can always use more contributors to move forward faster.

In-App Log Viewer

This release has a new feature that will make viewing and sharing the logs MUCH easier. Some of you may recall the large number of steps needed to get Android logs when you open issues. This usually involved installing Android Studio or another app and having to plug your device into a computer to grant some special ADB permissions. This was very difficult to get set up for the average user and just wasn’t user-friendly.

We’ve added a new option to the App Configuration called “Show and Share Logs”. It will show all the logs from our app, including debug logs to help troubleshoot issues such as when the location does not update or if the app is using the correct URL. You are not only able to view this log but also share and select from it so you can copy the logs to a GitHub issue for our team to look into.

Screenshot of in-app log viewer Screenshot of In-App Log Viewer

Settings Improvements

We have had several improvements made to the overall design of the App Configuration pages to make better use of the space and add some neat features. First and foremost, every setting screen now has a new help icon taking you to the proper place in the documentation like location settings or even notifications. Just look for the new help icon at the top right-hand corner, if the page does not offer enough information.

As of this release the app now has a total of 71 sensors, given your device supports them all your number may be less. That is a lot of sensors and we don’t expect a lot of users to actually use them all. We have added 2 new features to make this page easier to navigate. You can now filter by showing only the enabled sensors to get rid of the sensors you don’t want to use, if you have all sensors enabled don’t expect to see this filter. You can also perform a search against the list of sensors to find one quickly and manage it.

Notification History now lets you search by the message that was sent to the device. Searching will bypass the filter options we have, which limits the view to the last 100 notifications. Filtering and delete options have been moved to the top right-hand corner to make better use of the space.

Screenshot of Sensor Search and Filter Screenshot of Sensor Search & Filter.

Shortcuts

Sometimes when you open the app you may already know exactly where you want to go. You may find yourself on the same view often to see your cameras or give the nursery a quick look to make sure things are ok. You may even want to quickly see the history of an entity like when the door was last opened. In this release, we have introduced Android Shortcuts which will let you get to anywhere in the Home Assistant frontend quickly, directly from your home screen. Shortcuts will look like a separate app on the home screen allowing you to make them easily accessible and even place them into a folder for better organization. You can navigate to any Lovelace view or dashboard including other pages like the Shopping List. You can also navigate to any entity directly to get more information like the history or see the graph.

There are a few different shortcut types and in the nature of Home Assistant, we have opted not to add static shortcuts because they are static! We support dynamic shortcuts which will show up under the app long-press menu. Once you create a shortcut, you will be able to drag it onto your home screen. There is also support for pinned shortcuts that can be added automatically to your home screen without needing to drag the icon, given your device and launcher support pinned shortcuts. Check out the documentation for more details including known limitations.

Screenshot of Shortcuts Screenshot of Shortcuts

Other Changes

Here is a list of the other changes you may notice:

  • Battery Temperature Sensor
  • Notification command to turn on the screen
  • BLE Transmitter has a new setting to enable/disable the transmitter so the sensor can remain enabled. This new setting will correspond to the existing notification command.
  • High Accuracy mode has a new zone-based automation feature allowing you to trigger this mode faster. See the documentation for more details.

Screenshot of High Accuracy Zoning Screenshot of High Accuracy Zoning.

  • Long-pressing an entity in Android’s Power Menu will now take you directly to the entity instead of the home page.
  • Covers that support setting the position are also supported in Android’s Power Menu.
  • Lots of fixes and improvements in all other areas of the app.

Big thank you to everyone involved. Please keep those bug reports and feature requests coming!

Changelog

2021.4: For our advanced users ❤️

Franck Nijhof Franck Nijhof

Survived April fools day? I assure you, this April release is no joke!

This release is dedicated to our more advanced user base, as it is packed with some really advanced features and enhancements our more experienced users will love. Ready to debug your automations? Yeah…

Not that advanced of a user? I’m sure there is something in here for you to look forward to as well.

Oh, by the way, have you heard the news of ESPHome joining the Home Assistant family? If not, you should definitely read the blog post announcing it!

Enjoy the release!

../Frenck

Database upgrades, please be patient

This release contains database migrations, meaning that the format of how your history is stored is changing. This migration is automatically performed after upgrading and takes a bit of time. The time it takes depends on how much history you have stored and how fast your system is.

Please be patient when upgrading to this release.

Automation debugging

Wait, why didn’t that light turn on? Why isn’t the thermostat adjusted? Why is this automation not working? What is going on here?! This is a haunted house!?!

Sounds familiar? I’m sure we all had these moments, but are you ready for this? We can now debug automations!

Screenshot showing the automation trace of a previously ran automation Screenshot showing the automation trace of a previously ran automation.

The above screenshot shows a previous run of an automation. The automation is displayed using an interactive graph, which highlights which path the automation took. Each node in the graph can be clicked to view the details on what happened with the automation during that specific step. It traces the complete run of an automation run.

If an automation didn’t run as it should, this will allow you to debug and understand why it ran the way it did.

This extremely advanced and super useful feature is thanks to the hard work of @emontnemery who build the backend for this. The beautiful graphing was made by @thomasloven, and all the frontend work by @balloob & @bramkragten. Marvelous job guys! Thanks!

Additionally, a special thanks to all the (beta) testers that helped testing this feature and those who provided trace samples that helped to squash bugs!

Got questions about this feature? Want to see it in action? Be sure to tune in to the 2021.4 release party stream later today!

Home Assistant Analytics

Now don’t be scared by the title!

Today we introduce: Home Assistant Analytics. Opt-in, privacy-aware, public and open source. Just as it all should be for our project.

@ludeeus did a fantastic job writing this new integration. You decide if you turn it on or not; however, we guarantee it’s privacy-aware. Doubt it? Review it! Everything is open source!

Not open enough for you? We are publishing the result for everybody to see:

Screenshot of the Home Assistant Analytics website Screenshot of the Home Assistant Analytics website.

Well, maybe you want to view the public result yourself:

https://analytics.home-assistant.io

So why do we do this? Well, it helps the project and all contributors to see things like: Most used integrations. This can significantly help with improving project priorities. It also helps to convince manufacturers to work with Home Assistant, add local control and privacy-focused features.

“But the updater did this already, right?” Yes, well, the updater has actually been broken. So while we had some data, it was barely usable (actually not useable at all). Instead of fixing the updater, we now have a better solution that better matches our project goals. The updater still exists; it now just does one single thing: showing if an update is available.

Want to help the project out? Please enable Home Assistant Analytics. We would be very grateful!

You can find the settings in the general configuration options, or click the My Home Assistant button below to go directly to it. (Only visible to owner users)

Screenshot of the Home Assistant Analytics options Screenshot of the Home Assistant Analytics options, you control the amount of data you share.

For more information on how this all works and what data is shared, check out our documentation.

Thanks for sharing already! ❤️

Warnings for undefined variables in Templates

This feature is really cool. While technically a small improvement, it is a change that can impact you (as in “breaking”), but also, will greatly help you!

So imaging this little template: {{ my_variable }}

Previously, if my_variable would not exist in the template or system as a variable, Home Assistant would just ignore it and skip over it.

While this can be convenient, it can become problematic when it was misspelled or referring to a variable that doesn’t exist at all. For example, if you would have mistyped it: {{ my_varaible }}, you would never know something is wrong, unless you spotted it.

As of today, Home Assistant will tell you this, using a warning in the logs!

Screenshot of undefined variable warning log Screenshot of undefined variable warning log.

This helps to find templates that behave unexpectedly because the variable you thought was there, isn’t. It is quite possible you get a bunch of warnings after upgrading to this release. Fixing those warnings, really helps to improve your setup.

So, what if a variable isn’t always there, but I still want to use it? Well, you can give it a default, for example: {{ my_variable | default }}. Or even a default value (10 in this example): {{ my_variable | default(10) }}.

Please note that these are just warnings for now. We plan to replace the warning with an error as of Home Assistant 2021.10 (in October).

Filtering automations, scripts and scenes

Categorizing automations, is definitely one of the most requested things in our history. This became clear again during last year’s month of what the heck and various issues/discussions/feature requests.

Suggestions for labels, folders, and many more have been created. However, we already have some great categorizing features in Home Assistant itself:

Devices, Areas & Entities.

Screenshot of filtering automations by the living room area Screenshot of filtering automations by living room area.

As of today, you can filter your automations, scripts and scenes by area, device or entity. For automations and scripts, it goes one step further; it magically finds those that affect the area, device or entity being filtered.

So, you can now look at the automations affecting your living room area (even if those automations itself are not in the living room area) and also filter the automation list with just the ones that touch your thermostat.

Z-Wave JS update

So before we talk about The nice new things in Z-Wave JS, there are breaking changes in this release for the Z-Wave JS integration that could affect your existing automations. Be sure to read the backward-incompatible changes section for more info.

Alright, now the fun stuff! You can now configure each Z-Wave device straight from within Home Assistant. When you view a device in the Home Assistant frontend, you can click on “CONFIGURE DEVICE” button that is shown on each device page. This allows you to manage and adjust device (node) specific configuration parameters for the selected device.

Screenshot of configuring a Z-Wave device from within Home Assistant Screenshot of configuring a Z-Wave device from within Home Assistant.

Furthermore two new, advanced, services are introduced:

Trigger-based template sensors

This release adds initial support for a pretty advanced new, helpful feature. Template sensors, that are updated based on triggers and the data that comes with it.

Whenever the trigger fires, the template sensor will re-render and it will have access to the trigger data in the templates. This feature is a great way to create data based on webhook data, or have sensors be updated based on a time schedule.

See, for example, these two template sensors that update based on a single webhook trigger using data pushed into the webhook:

# Example configuration entry
template:
  - trigger:
      - platform: webhook
        webhook_id: my-super-secret-webhook-id
    sensor:
      - name: "Webhook Temperature"
        state: "{{ trigger.json.temperature }}"
      - name: "Webhook Humidity"
        state: "{{ trigger.json.humidity }}"

You can test this trigger entity with the following CURL command:

curl --header "Content-Type: application/json" \
  --request POST \
  --data '{"temperature": 5, "humidity": 34}' \
  http://homeassistant.local:8123/api/webhook/my-super-secret-webhook-id

It is not just webhooks! Any trigger that you can use in automations, can be used to update these types of template sensors.

For this release, it only works for sensors; other platforms are not supported yet.

Please note: that these new template sensors are configured under the template: key in the configuration and is using a new configuration format and keys. For more information, see the documentation.

UI selectors for script fields

You can now use UI Selectors for you scripts field parameters. This brings the same UI capabilities that Blueprint have to scripts. This allow for creating advanced scripts that you can later easily reuse in your UI (even in UI automation).

Screenshot of scripts using selects in its fields Screenshot of scripts using selects in its fields.

For more details on these new field configuration options, see the scripts documentation

Other noteworthy changes

There is much more juice in this release; here are some of the other noteworthy changes this release:

  • The Supervisor is now also in the integrations dashboard, and provides entities for all kinds of things! These entities are disabled by default, so head over to the integration and see if there anything in there you could use. Thanks @raman325!
  • The develo Home Control (@Shutgun), Apple TV (@bdraco), August (@bdraco) and MQTT (@RadekHvizdos) integrations can now suggest areas.
  • You can now configure additional Google Cast devices by IP address via the integrations options. This is helpful in case of mDNS issues. Thanks @emontnemery!
  • @joshmcrty added support for selecting the number formatting you like on your profile! Awesome work!

Screenshot of selecting the number format you prefer in your profile Screenshot of selecting the number format you prefer.

  • @marvin-w added support for unique IDs to KNX entities. So, as a KNX user you can now tweak your entities in the frontend and group them into areas!
  • HomeKit now supports CO/CO2 device classes, thanks to @iMicknl!
  • @robertdelpeut added monthly and yearly totals to the DSMR sensor, thanks!
  • Hyperion users can now hide certain effects from the UI using integration options. Thanks, @dermotduffy!
  • Got that one message in your logs that you don’t care about? @jshufro added support for filtering log messages using regular expression!
  • The Plex integration now provides library count sensors! These are disabled by default by can be enabled if you like that. Thanks, @jjlawren.
  • The Quickbar had an update from @donkawechico! So press those C & E keys on you keyboard to see those beautiful new labels.

New Integrations

We welcome the following new integrations this release:

New Platforms

The following integration got support for a new platform:

Integrations now available to set up from the UI

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

Release 2021.4.1 - April 8

Release 2021.4.2 - April 9

Release 2021.4.3 - April 10

Release 2021.4.4 - April 13

Release 2021.4.5 - April 16

Release 2021.4.6 - April 19

If you need help…

…don’t hesitate to use our very active forums or join us for a little chat.

Experiencing issues introduced by this release? Please report them in our issue tracker. Make sure to fill in all fields of the issue template.

Read on →

Community Highlights: 15th edition

Klaas Schoute Klaas Schoute

I hope everyone survived the April 1 jokes a bit? 🐸 We are already at the 15th edition of the Home Assistant Community Highlights! Some interesting things popped up around our community, we thought was worth sharing.

Do you want to share something for the next edition? Information on how to share.

./Klaas

Blueprint of the week

It may have happened to you (at least to me), you ask something to your Google or Alexa speaker and it responds with a very low volume. Of course you want to avoid this, because now you can ask your question again 🤨

With the blueprint of andreas1 you can automatically adjust the volume of your media player at a set day and night time. Read more about it on the community forum or install this automation in your instance with a click on the my button!

Lovelace Dashboard

Perhaps we should make this a regular item, because this week also a new Lovelace dashboard. This time made by JonathanGraft. Take a look at the original post on Reddit, there you will find more photos and shared YAML code.

Banner Card

The more you put in your dashboards, the more unclear it can become. You could, for example thematize some cards, so that it stands out and can be found quickly and the banner-card from nervetattoo could just be a handy addition to that.


Small tip: if the CSS style is not quite what you want, you can still use card-mod from thomasloven to adjust everything 😉

Automated Hydroponic

This week we also came across something very impressive, edward_snowedin shared his hydroponic installation on our subreddit page. It’s a fully automated system that is controlled via Home Assistant and ESPHome.


Curious how everything is worked out in detail? You will find a lot of information here and also a list of used parts.

Got a tip for the next edition?

Have you seen (or made) something awesome, interesting, unique, amazing, inspirational, unusual or funny, using Home Assistant?

Click here to send us your Community Highlight suggestion.

Also, don’t forget to share your creations with us via Social Media:

See you next edition!

Community Highlights: 14th edition

Klaas Schoute Klaas Schoute

The 14th edition of the Home Assistant Community Highlights! Some interesting things popped up around our community, we thought was worth sharing.

Do you want to share something for the next edition? Information on how to share.

./Klaas

Blueprint of the week

This week’s blueprint is all about climate and energy saving, SmartLiving.Rocks has written a handy blueprint that can switch your climate device based on whether a window is open or not.

Read more about it on the community forum or install this automation in your instance with a click on the my button!

ESPHome Acquisition

Last week we announced that ESPHome will continue under the umbrella of Nabu Casa from now on. If you want to hear more about it, be sure to listen to the latest Home Assistant Podcast in which Paulus explains more about the future of ESPHome.

Uptime Card

For those who would like to show their uptime robot status or other types of binary sensors in a very special way, there is now a new card made by dylandoamaral which is inspired on the uptime status page of Reddit.


Keep in mind that the card is still at an early stage of development.

DIY Smart Lock

Always wanted to make your door lock smarter? Then try the DIY solution from bkbilly, with which you can make your own smart door lock with a stepper motor, 3D printed gears and ESP32, which communicates with your Home Assistant instance via ESPHome.

More information about this project can be found on the community forum.

Got a tip for the next edition?

Have you seen (or made) something awesome, interesting, unique, amazing, inspirational, unusual or funny, using Home Assistant?

Click here to send us your Community Highlight suggestion.

Also, don’t forget to share your creations with us via Social Media:

See you next edition!

Community Highlights: 13th edition

Klaas Schoute Klaas Schoute

The 13th edition of the Home Assistant Community Highlights! Some interesting things popped up around our community, we thought was worth sharing.

Do you want to share something for the next edition? Information on how to share.

./Klaas

Blueprint of the week

It has probably happened to everyone, you forget to put the wheelie bin on the street and now you have to wait weeks again before it can be emptied again. There are already various custom integrations where you can keep track of when the pick-up days are. But maybe the Blueprint from westenberg, can also help you to get a notification every time so that you don’t forget it.

It’s a kind of magic

This week we came across another really cool project from redphx that was shared on our subreddit page. A lot of inspiration for those who are still looking for which actions they want to link to their Aqara Magic Cube.

My Aqara Magic Cube setup is a bit different (pet-proof). Details in comment. from r/homeassistant

Retro Record Player

For those who would like to build a media player in a slightly different style in Lovelave, this is really a cool project. Edwin turned it into something very special in the form of an LP record player. How cool is this!? ❤️

On this website you will find all information about this project and how you can build it yourself.

HomeLab monitor dashboard

Still looking for a way how you would like to set up your own system dashboard? Maybe the photo of Akmantainman will give you some inspiration to make your own version of this.

Homelab Monitor Setup from r/homeassistant

Also look in the comments on Reddit, because many people shared their own version on this post already.

Got a tip for the next edition?

Have you seen (or made) something awesome, interesting, unique, amazing, inspirational, unusual or funny, using Home Assistant?

Click here to send us your Community Highlight suggestion.

Also, don’t forget to share your creations with us via Social Media:

See you next edition!

Nabu Casa has acquired ESPHome

Paulus Schoutsen Paulus Schoutsen
Nabu Casa heart ESPHome

Today I’m happy to announce that ESPHome is from now on under the Nabu Casa umbrella. ESPHome is the easiest way to program ESP8266 and ESP32 devices and integrate them into Home Assistant. It has become an important piece of the Home Assistant ecosystem, so much so that we want to ensure that the project can continue to flourish as a free and open source project. This week Nabu Casa came to an agreement to acquire the ESPHome project from Otto Winter, the founder of ESPHome.

Otto started ESPHome three years ago to make programming ESP devices as easy as possible. With ESPHome, users write simple YAML files in which you describe what components are attached to what pins of the ESP device. ESPHome will then make this available in Home Assistant. No extra work necessary. Super simple.

Example ESPHome configuration

The following ESPHome YAML example will program your ESP device. When you plug it in, it will make the light on pin 16 available in Home Assistant.

esphome:
  name: esp32_light
  platform: ESP32
  board: esp32dev

wifi:
  ssid: "MySSID"
  password: "supersecret"

api:

light:
  - platform: binary
    name: "Desk Lamp"
    output: light_output

output:
  - id: light_output
    platform: gpio
    pin: GPIO16
ESPHome logo

Otto’s vision was right and ESPHome has become the easiest way for people to integrate ESP devices in Home Assistant. For example, the tag reader is based on ESPHome, and many other projects are too.

As the project grew, so did Otto’s obligations in his personal life until they could no longer be combined. With the acquisition of ESPHome, Nabu Casa now owns the copyright of Otto’s code and the ESPHome organizations on GitHub, Docker, etc. Otto has shut down his Patreon account. Otto will step back from being part of the project management side of things. The project will continue as an open source project with the current ESPHome development team, @jesserockz and @glmnet. Otto will still be around and help out on development as his time allows.

We are going to bring our experience gained from the Home Assistant project and apply it to ESPHome, like focus on community and ease of use. If you have any ideas, make sure to share them in the ESPHome discord.

Update: I’ve joined the Home Assistant podcast to discuss the acquisition. Episode 83 is worth a listen.

About Nabu Casa
Nabu Casa was founded by the founders of Home Assistant. It exists to make the privacy-centered smart home accessible to everyone. Nabu Casa has no investors and is solely funded by users via Home Assistant Cloud subscriptions. With Home Assistant, Nabu Casa already works on making sure the brains of your home are the best it can be. And with ESPHome they will help you make sure that other devices are too.

Community Highlights: 12th edition

Klaas Schoute Klaas Schoute

The 12th edition of the Home Assistant Community Highlights! Some interesting things popped up around our community, we thought was worth sharing.

Do you want to share something for the next edition? Information on how to share.

./Klaas

Blueprint of the week

Do you have a number of domain names and would you like to track when an SSL certificate expires? Then you could try bkbilly’s blueprint that automatically sends you a notification when a sensor exceeds your set threshold value. Try it out!

Also, take a look at the Blueprint Exchange for more inspiration!

Birthday cake

Happy birthday to adlawton! 🥳 For his birthday, his wife baked this great Home Assistant cake and also gave him a Home Assistant Blue.

My wife decided to bake me a cake to go along with my birthday present this year. Can't wait to fire this thing up! from r/homeassistant

Hopefully, the cake tasted delicious and have fun with your Blue!

ePaper display

maxmacstn shared a really cool project on our Home Assistant subreddit page. It allows you to display sensor data from, for example, a room on an ePaper display. It works with ESPHome and you can also neatly finish this with a 3D printed case.

My DIY E-Paper Sensor Display from r/homeassistant

Hass Workstation Service

For those who would like to read their webcam status on a Windows machine, there is finally a solution! sleevezipper has written a program that you can install on windows and that can send data to your Home Assistant instance over MQTT, in the background as a service.

UI of the workstation service program on Windows

You can finally switch the lights automatically when you are in an online meeting 😉

Note: If you’re on MacOS, you can achieve the same using the Home Assistant Companion app for MacOS.

Smart pet feeder

Would you like to automate feeding your pets? Then try the project of Sokolsok, who has turned it into a very cool project with its own PCB and 3D printed design.

How the smart pet feeder looks like You can read more about this project via this website.

Got a tip for the next edition?

Have you seen (or made) something awesome, interesting, unique, amazing, inspirational, unusual or funny, using Home Assistant?

Click here to send us your Community Highlight suggestion.

Also, don’t forget to share your creations with us via Social Media:

See you next edition!

Community Highlights: 11th edition

Klaas Schoute Klaas Schoute

The 11th edition of the Home Assistant Community Highlights! Some interesting things popped up around our community, we thought was worth sharing.

From now on we will also highlight a cool blueprint that we encountered on the Blueprint exchange. Do you want to share something for the next edition? Information on how to share.

./Klaas

Blueprint of the week

Do you have an IP camera in Home Assistant instance and do you no longer want to miss who is at the door? Then you could try the camera snapshot Blueprint from vorion. You can also indicate to which device you would like to receive a notification with a photo. Try it out!

Solar weather station in birdhouse

Spring is approaching, so it’s a good time to start building a birdhouse 🐦, so why not immediately turn it into a weather station? With the manual from Martin, you can make your own weather (birdhouse) station that works with ESPHome.

Outdoor pathway light

Do you have a garden and do you want to create lighting along the paths? Maybe the garden lighting tutorial from KidA001 will give you some inspiration to get started with this.

PoE powered stack light

Looking for a creative way to display the status of your Home Assistant instance? For example: there is a new Core update, too much RAM is being used or your instance is no longer online? Plenty of options to bind to each color segment.

So let yourself be inspired with the PoE stack light from Karl and start building.

Got a tip for the next edition?

Have you seen (or made) something awesome, interesting, unique, amazing, inspirational, unusual or funny, using Home Assistant?

Click here to send us your Community Highlight suggestion.

Also, don’t forget to share your creations with us via Social Media:

See you next edition!

Home Assistant Companion Android App 2021 Q1 Releases

Daniel Shokouhi Daniel Shokouhi

Hey everyone! It has been quite some time since we last provided an update on all that is new with the Android app. You may have already noticed that we had changed our release versioning to match that of Home Assistant Core. In fact, we will be attempting to align our releases more closely to Core releases. This way we can start supporting brand new features quickly, like the recently released My Home Assistant.

Security Check

As of Home Assistant Core 2021.1.5 some security vulnerabilities were fixed and it is very critical that all users update their instances to at least this version. The app will now do a check every 24 hours to ensure that the instance is at least on the release mentioned in the security alert. This check will be updated anytime a new security alert is issued.

Location Disabled Check

Certain app features that depend on the connected WiFi network (SSID), require the location permission to not only be granted to the app, but also have it enabled on the device. Without this, the app is unable to read the connected SSID, impacting usage of the Internal URL and any WiFi based sensors. Previously, the application would continue to function and silently fail while showing bad data for the sensors. Although the application still worked, certain parts were found to be buggy as a result of the silent failure.

Starting in android-2021.1, the app was showing a prompt before a user was able to interact with the Home Assistant frontend. We received feedback that users found this pop-up to be too intrusive. Starting android-2021.2, this pop-up has been converted to a persistent Android notification with its own notification channel. This allows the user to fully control how it is displayed on the device, including turning the channel off. The new channel name for this notification is Location disabled.

Screenshot of the location disabled notification Screenshot of the location disabled notification.

High Accuracy Mode

High accuracy mode is a new feature in android-2021.2 to allow users to get much faster location updates at the cost of additional battery drain. Background location updates typically get reported every 30 seconds to a few minutes. This new feature allows the user to specify the update interval that defaults to every 5 seconds. When enabled, a persistent notification will be displayed containing some location data. This feature is an enhancement to the Background Location sensor and you can access it from the sensor settings screen. You can also control this feature via a new notification command to enable/disable it on the fly. You can learn more about this feature in the documentation.

Screenshot of the high accuracy mode notification Screenshot of the high accuracy mode notification.

New Sensors

We have several new sensors to welcome to the app, all of which are disabled by default:

  • Active Notifications - The total count of active notifications visible to the user. Attributes will include all notification data.

  • App Data Sensors - Sensors to determine how much data the app has used since the last device reboot.

  • App Importance Sensor - A sensor to determine if the app is in the foreground, background or any other importance level.

  • App Memory Sensor - A sensor to determine how much memory is used by the app.

  • App Usage sensors - Sensors to help users troubleshoot if the app is considered inactive and the current app standby bucket.

  • BLE Transmitter Sensor - A sensor to control whether or not the app is actively sending out a beacon to provide support for services like Room Assistant.

  • Sleep Sensors - Sensors based on a new API provided by Google for devices running the full version. These sensors can be used to determine if the user is sleeping or not. The sensors update when we get data from Google so don’t expect them to update as soon as you fall asleep.

Notification Enhancements

There have been several additions and improvements to notifications:

  • Controlling Bluetooth
  • Broadcast intent command has been updated to allow the user to send intent extras
  • A command to launch activities, see below for more details
  • A new command to launch the application to any dashboard or view without needing to click on anything
  • A new actionable notification type REPLY which will add a reply button to the notification and the response will be sent back in the mobile_app_notification_action event
  • A command to control whether or not the BLE transmitter sensor is enabled

Intents and Activities

We have made several enhancements to further integrate Home Assistant into the Android ecosystem. First and foremost, the Last Update Trigger sensor was updated in 2021.2 to allow users to register for any intent that they want. Intents are a way for applications to communicate with another so they can send data back and forth. In fact the app itself uses many intents provided by Android, which is why certain sensors update faster than others. This means that users can now get data from apps that have an Intent API. You will need to know the intent action string that you wish to register for. Once the intent is received the application will fire an event to Home Assistant as android.intent_received along with the intent action and any extra data provided by the intent. Personally, I am using my Mi Band 5 with the Notify for Mi Band application that sends out intents for when I have fallen asleep, my step count or even my heart rate.

A new notification command was added to allow the user to launch an activity on their android device. This command requires a new permission to be granted in order to launch activities from the background, Draw Over Other Apps. The first attempt to use this notification will take the user to the permission page so the user can grant proper access. It is important to note that if the app is not considered active then this permission page will not show up due to missing permissions. Try to test this with the app open or you can grant the permission manually in your device settings. There are lots of use cases for this feature such as being able to launch Google Maps driving mode or even setting an alarm on your device.

Unfortunately, it is not so straightforward to determine which intents and activities are supported by applications. You really need to know what to look for and there is not much in terms of documentation here from applications. Try reaching out to the developers of your favorite apps to see if they have any intents to consume. We have provided several live examples in the companion documentation. I have also started a new thread in the forums to maintain a list of all that we can find here. I will be trying to keep the first post as up to date as possible.

Other Enhancements

We have also spent time making improvements to all other areas too:

  • Support for links from My Home Assistant
  • Power menu fixes and enhancements including support for vacuum entities
  • Haptic feedback support in the frontend
  • Overriding certain URL types to launch an application or an intent from the frontend
  • 3 finger swipe down gesture to trigger the Quick Bar

3 finger swipe gesture to trigger Quick Bar 3 finger swipe gesture to trigger Quick Bar

Big thank you to everyone involved. Please keep those bug reports and feature requests coming!

Changelogs

2021.3: My Oh My

Franck Nijhof Franck Nijhof

Home Assistant Core 2021.3! And my oh My Home Assistant!

I’m super excited for this release! 13 Brand new integrations! Z-Wave JS is moving forward with an almost insane development speed; thank you all for jumping into it as well! 🎉

For me, this release is about two things. My Home Assistant and some super slick new UI features for everything related to service calls. What it is; is explained down below, but both are just a leap forward in: making things easier.

My oh my, enjoy this release!

../Frenck

My Home Assistant

Today we present you:

To be more helpful, we often want to link you to a specific page in your Home Assistant instance. However, each Home Assistant instance is hosted at a different URL. Yours might be http://homeassistant.local:8123, or something completely different.

My Home Assistant allows the documentation, forums, chat, weblogs, or any other website, to link you to specific pages in your Home Assistant instance, without knowing the URL of your instance.

The beauty of this? All the data is stored locally in your browser and My Home Assistant only redirects you to pages that provide you with information about your instance or help you start an action. Following a link from My Home Assistant will never make any changes to your instance.

Long story short! We can do a lot of helpful things with this, for example, the following buttons will bring your places on your instance:

But we can make buttons or links to a lot of screen, and even help you start a configuration for adding an integration, import a Blueprint, link to an add-on page, and a lot more!

Screen recording showing how My Home Assistant works Setting up a new integration on your instance, from the documentation using My Home Assistant.

Additionally, we have added a link/badge generator, so you can create your own links, for e.g., adding to a Blueprint on the Blueprint Exchange.

https://my.home-assistant.io/create-link/

Lastly, support for My Home Assistant with our apps is expected to be available soon! Android should be available via an update today and iOS will land soon.

New UI for service calls

This release adds a new user interface for doing service calls!

Screenshot of new call services in the Developer Tools Screenshot of the new UI in the services tab of the Developer Tools.

The UI may look familiar, as it uses the same UI parts as used by the recently introduced Blueprints. This new UI can be found in multiple places, that all have adjusted with a shiny new UI;

Not all service calls will show this slick new UI yet, as the integrations service descriptions need to be adjusted to with this. But, all common ones have been migrated already. Like doing YAML? Well, the good old YAML mode is available as well!

Suggested areas

Areas are becoming more and more useful in Home Assistant, and this release is helping out with putting them to use a bit!

Recently, it became possible to not only assign devices to areas, but entities as well. And now; Integrations can now suggest areas!

This means, if an integration knows about an area/room/location place it is in, it can suggest an area if the device isn’t in one yet. For example, the Hue integration can now suggest an area based on the Hue group it is in.

The following integration will now already suggest areas as of this release:

Fan speeds: 100%

Got an overhaul! Fans now work with speed percentages instead of the previous “low”, “mid”, “high”, “off”. This makes Home Assistant more interoperable with more fan brands and third-party assistants, like HomeKit.

Don’t worry, everything has been implemented with backward compatibility.

Screenshot of automation editor, showing the % fan speeds! Screenshot of automation editor, showing the % fan speeds!

Did you notice in the above screenshot, the automation editor is now wider? The layout has been adjusted to give you more screen real estate when creating automations.

Z-Wave JS update

Also this release the Z-Wave JS team has been very busy. Several new features have been added and many bugs squashed. Below you can read a summary.

We’ve introduced a protocol schema version in the Z-Wave JS server to allow older clients to connect and talk to a newer server. This prevents compatibility issues for the future!

Home Assistant Core 2021.3.0 will require Z-Wave JS server version 1.1.0. If you’re using the official Home Assistant add-on, the integration will automatically update the add-on if an older add-on and server version is encountered. Magic! If you’re not using the Home Assistant add-on to run the server you will need to update the server before updating Home Assistant Core.

You can now automate and change the configuration settings of your devices with the zwave_js.set_config_parameter service and create automations using the new zwave_js.refresh_value service, to update a device that doesn’t automatically refresh itself.

But there is more!

  • Garage doors (barrier) and similar covers can now be controlled.
  • Some heating valves and similar devices that can be set to multiple different values will now show up as number entities.

Flexible & variable automation triggers

We now support the use of variables and (limited) templates in automation triggers! This can be really useful, for example, when making Blueprints for MQTT based automations!

automation:
  trigger_variables:
    room: "living_room"
    node: "ac"
    value: "on"
  trigger:
    - platform: mqtt
      topic: "{{ room ~ '/switch/' ~ node}}"
      payload: "{{ 'state:' ~ value }}"

As shortly mentioned, the template syntax for trigger templates and variables are more limited; read more about this in the limited templates documentation.

Oversettelser i Supervisor panelet

Unless you are in the nordics, that title does not mean much, it’s Norwegian and translates to “Translations in the Supervisor panel”. Yes! We have now added translations in the Supervisor panel. 🎉

If you want to help translate that into your native language, join the frontend team on Localize.

But we did not stop there! Now add-ons can provide translation files for configuration options and network descriptions that are shown in the frontend.

Not enough? You want more? Okay then!

  • The communication between the frontend and the backend now relies on WebSockets, which allows the Supervisor to notify the frontend about changes.
  • For add-on authors, you can now use YAML instead of JSON for your add-ons configuration files.
  • New update dialog that will ask you to take a snapshot before you upgrade core/add-ons.
  • Better hardware support to cover more devices.
  • Passwords and secrets in add-on configurations are checked against known breaches with https://haveibeenpwned.com/

Screenshot of the new update dialog that asks for creating a snapshot Screenshot of the new update dialog that asks for creating a snapshot.

Other noteworthy changes

There is much more juice in this release; here are some of the other noteworthy changes this release:

  • Shelly now supports battery-operated devices, thanks to @thecode!
  • You can now use the color homeassistant as a color_name in your light service calls, just because we can 😎
  • @emontnemery, added support for using alias to virtually any step in scripts/automations. This is really helpful when debugging and documents your sequences as well, as it annotates each step.
  • @emontnemery didn’t stop there, he also added support for enabling/disabling integration configuration entries! So you can, e.g., temporarily disable a whole integration.

Screenshot of disabling an integration entry Screenshot of disabling an integration entry.

  • Thanks to @Nixon506E, you can now set a transition time when activate Hue scenes.
  • In the States tab of the Developer Tools, there is now a small copy to clipboard button with each entity. Thanks, @KTibow!
  • @postlund added support for repeat, shuffle and volume stepping to the media player integration of the Apple TV integration.
  • @larena1 reduced the amount of rendering history charts cause, so that will speed things up! Thanks!
  • We now have a select selector! Great for adding dropdown choices to Blueprints, thanks @EPMatt!
  • @raman325 extended the Universal Media Player with a lot of new capabilities.
  • When adding a new integration, the UI will now show discovered devices for that integration as well! Thanks, @bramkragten!
  • We updated CodeMirror to the latest version, which provided the YAML code editors in our UI. It should now be better, faster and has improved support for mobile devices.

New Integrations

We welcome the following new integrations this release:

New Platforms

The following integration got support for a new platform:

Integrations now available to set up from the UI

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

Release 2021.3.1 - March 5

Release 2021.3.2 - March 5

Release 2021.3.3 - March 8

Release 2021.3.4 - March 12

If you need help…

…don’t hesitate to use our very active forums or join us for a little chat.

Experiencing issues introduced by this release? Please report them in our issue tracker. Make sure to fill in all fields of the issue template.

Read on →