In February 2022, Russia invaded Ukraine. The countries have been at war ever since. Ukrainian citizens can at any moment be caught in crossfire or be deliberately targeted by the Russian army. Ukraine introduced the Ukraine Alarm service to help citizens be notified when fighting is happening nearby.

Today we’re doing a special release of Home Assistant to make the new Ukraine Alarm integration available to everyone. It was contributed by Paul Annekov. This integration will track the alerts for the users’ region and represent it as safety binary sensors. These sensors can be used in automations so it’s possible to notify the people in your home that there is danger.

Use this My button to add Ukraine Alarm to your Home Assistant:

Бережіть себе,
Paulus

(English screenshots below the Ukranian screenshots)

Home Assistant Core 2022.5!

And, as often said: “All things seem possible in May!”. Well, possibilities
we have for you this last month of spring.

The most visible thing this release is the next iteration of the settings menu,
of which the result, to me personally, makes tons of sense. It took me a bit
to get used to, but honestly I like it! 🤩

Meanwhile, at Nabu Casa, they released annual subscriptions for Home Assistant
Cloud worldwide (except for Canada, the UK, and the EU, they will follow soon with
local currency support).

I’m also very excited to present you with a whole lot of new powerful
automations and scripts features! Some for the UI, but there are some real
game changers in there that our YAML community will love! 🤖

Enjoy the release!

../Frenck

Hey Everyone! Today we are announcing our new program called the Home Assistant Creator Network! We are super excited to
start talking closely with creators to ensure everyone has the best information possible. We are looking to invest in our
community and support the effort being put into keeping our users informed. This is a way for Home Assistant to reward these
creators that are positively engaging with our users.

First Members of the Creator Network!

What is the Creator Network?

The creator network will be a group of creators that are active and engaged with our community with consistent content that
builds the archive for Home Assistant. These creators are creating content for YouTube, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, etc.
with the goal of helping people use Home Assistant. This can be through tutorials, unbiased product reviews, creating cool stuff and more.

We are looking forward to growing this network to be a group of creators that work together with each other and the Home Assistant Developers.
One of the biggest ways we are doing that is monthly calls with the network to discuss releases and upcoming changes.

Visit the Home Assistant Creators Network for more information and how to apply.

The US smart home company Insteon abruptly went dark and turned off its cloud. While Insteon products talk locally, the app and voice assistant integrations do not. Without this, users are not able to control and configure their hub and automations don’t run.

If you’re one of the impacted Insteon users, this post is for you.

The good news is that Home Assistant is able to talk to your Insteon devices via the Insteon hub or modem. You will be able to pair new devices and set up links as you’re used to.

The other good news is that Home Assistant works 100% local. There is no cloud necessary for any part of it to function and no one can remotely shut it down.

Overview of supported Insteon modems & hubs

There are many different ways to run Home Assistant. The easiest and best way is to buy a dedicated device to run Home Assistant. Alternatively, if you have a server at home and are familiar with the technology, you can try our virtual machine or Docker container installations.

Once you have Home Assistant up and running, see the documentation for the Insteon integration on how to set it up. It works with the 2413U USB and 2412S RS242 flavors of PLM and the 2448A7 USB stick. It has also been tested to work with the 2242 and 2245 Hubs.

Tom Harris leads the development of the Insteon integration in Home Assistant and he is putting the final touches on a new Insteon page for the Home Assistant interface. This page makes it easier to manage your Insteon network, just like you would have done via the Insteon application. It’s expected to be available in 1-2 weeks.

Screenshot of the upcoming Insteon page

Home Assistant is an open and friendly community which is happy to help new users. Join us on Discord chat or on our forums if you get stuck.

If you’re looking to connect with other Insteon users, we recommend the /r/Insteon community on Reddit.

To stay up to date on the latest releases of Home Assistant, follow us in Twitter, Facebook or subscribe to our newsletter.

Another screenshot of the upcoming Insteon page

Home Assistant is a home automation platform with a focus on privacy and local control. It can function fully without an internet connection. Home Assistant is easy in day-to-day use, and we’ve been spending a lot of time streamlining this experience.

Due to the global chip shortage and supply chain issues, it’s currently very difficult to get a device that runs Home Assistant. We’re fixing that by creating Home Assistant Yellow, a device with Home Assistant pre-installed. Bad news: Home Assistant Yellow is not ready yet and won’t be shipping until later this year.

There is currently a big wave of people interested in running Home Assistant (thanks Insteon) and so I thought it would be a good time to list the best options as of April 2022 to get a device that runs Home Assistant.

Home Assistant comes in different flavors. As a new user, you want to use our operating system. It is what powers Home Assistant Yellow and turns the device into a user-friendly home automation hub that is easy to maintain.

The best device that runs Home Assistant that is in stock is the ODROID-N2+ Home Assistant Bundle from Ameridroid. This bundle contains the ODROID-N2+ which is what also powers our Home Assistant Blue. It comes with Home Assistant pre-installed so it’s ready to go. It’s in stock today.

The ODROID-N2+ can also be bought from other stores or directly from the manufacturer, Hardkernel. These configurations will not come with Home Assistant pre-installed and require following the Home Assistant installation guide.

If you don’t want to start using Home Assistant right now, we recommend our Home Assistant Yellow. It is our own take on the best hardware to run Home Assistant. It supports Zigbee, will support Matter and with its M.2 slot, it’s future proof.

By far the most popular way that people run Home Assistant is on a Raspberry Pi 4. Due to supply chain issues there is a huge shortage of Raspberry Pis and every time they are in stock they sell out quickly. Your best bet to get one is to use rpilocator.com, a website that tracks Raspberry Pi stock across all approved resellers.

If you follow them on Twitter, you can enable a notification whenever they tweet a new stock alert by clicking the bell icon on their profile. Note about Adafruit: you will need to configure two-factor authentication on your account before you can purchase a Raspberry Pi (it’s to keep bots out).

We get commissions for purchases made through some links in this post.

👋 I’m not sure where to start with this release; It’s April, and I can
assure you: This release is no joke. Seriously, it is packed with features
and incredible new things 🤯.

The release focuses on adding features to the user interface by bringing
in user experiences and features that were previously only available to users
using YAML configuration and making them now accessible for all! It is a
great step forward in streamlining all the user experiences.

I could not fit more in these release notes, but there is more to tell!
Zack and Paulus promised to add a couple of great (and exclusive)
announcements to the newsletter! The newsletter has, by the way,
been renamed: Building the Open Home. Be sure to check it out!

I want to invite you to read the (long) release notes below. I’m sure there is
a lot in there you will like and love ❤️.

Let me know what you think the killer feature of this release is?

Enjoy the release!

../Frenck

We started to update how Home Assistant does content trust using Codenotary CAS.

With content trust, we can ensure that your system only runs containers/software as released by the original author. The author, in this case, can be the Home Assistant project, but also, for example, an add-on developer. This is an important security aspect, as it protects your instance from running possibly malicious software. Content trust verifies that the software you download, install or upgrade is exactly the same as it was released by its creator and ensures nobody messed with it along the way.

Codenotary CAS is built around a decentralized, cryptographically coherent and verifiable database technology called immudb. It is used to store all these trusted content signatures.

With immudb we will be able to host parts of the trusted content signatures data ourselves (we don’t do this yet). It could even be made available as a Home Assistant add-on that users can install locally. Important to know is that CAS does not upload any user data for verification, it’s all done locally, just the way we like it.
When you install or update part of your system that is signed, it checks the CAS database to ensure that the image has not been revoked (similar to SSL with the CRL) and verifies that the download content, which we deliver over multiple public endpoints, is the same as the update that your system just has downloaded.

While rolling out the new system we ran into some issues which caused users unable to install updates for ~12 hours on March 11; for which we want to apologize. Thanks to the help from Codenotary engineers we were able to get it fixed in a quick and orderly fashion.

Pascal

Did you know that today – March 2nd – in 1949, the first automatic street
light was lit in New Milford, Connecticut, USA? Seventy-three years later, we
automate our entire homes 😎

Home Assistant Core 2022.3! And this release has a different and fresh “tune”
to it! Yes, pun intended as this release brings tons of improvements
involving media.

And what is so cool about it? It is not just about browsing media,
it is even more about using it! Using media allows us to make the automations
in our home more “personal”.

For example, having our favorite radio station playing when we get home
or broadcasting announcements and sound bites to our speakers to notify
us of stuff happening in and around our home. (I really need to install that
camera at the front door now 😅.)

What are you using media for?

Enjoy the release!

../Frenck

• The Home Assistant Newsletter
• Media Selector and the new “Play media” action
• More media sources!
• Upload your media straight from the browser
• UI Upgrades
• Triggered!
• Entity ID autocompletion
• Other noteworthy changes
• New Integrations
• Integrations now available to set up from the UI
• Release 2022.3.1 – March 3
• Release 2022.3.2 – March 6
• Release 2022.3.3 – March 7
• Release 2022.3.4 – March 11
• Release 2022.3.5 – March 15
• Release 2022.3.6 – March 21
• Release 2022.3.7 – March 23
• Release 2022.3.8 – March 29
• Need help? Join the community!
• Breaking Changes
• Updates for custom integration developers
• Farewell to the following
• All changes

The Home Assistant Newsletter

We realize you might like email more than watching this blog, our Twitter,
or notifications in our Discord chat to stay on top of the latest Home Assistant news.

In that case, you might like to sign-up for our newsletter instead! We’ll
send you a new email once a month when a new release drops with the release’s highlights
and interesting things we found in our community.

Our newsletter is free of any analytics and tracking. The
sign-up is below, and we have enabled double opt-in to ensure no emails
are sent if users don’t want them.

Sign up for the Home Assistant newsletter

Media Selector and the new “Play media” action

This release brings a new media selector and a “Play media” action.
These make it super easy to use media in your automations and scripts.

Choose the “Play media” action when creating an automation, select the media
player you’d like to play something on, and next… just browse and pick the
media that you want it to play! Done! 🚀

Have you ever wanted to play your front door camera stream on your television
when the doorbell rings? Well, this is now very possible with this update.
Check out this video on how to set that up in only 1.5 minutes. 🤯

More media sources!

Of course, the above-shown “Play media” action and selector is incredible. But,
you’d need some media to select! We already supported local media
and things like Spotify, but wouldn’t it be cool if we had more!?

So, this release will bring in a bunch of new media sources.

Your Cameras! Your Lovelace Dashboards! You can just pick one of your cameras
or Lovelace dashboards and “Play” them on a supported device
(like a Google Nest Hub or television). But also text to speech!

But that’s not it; we also have new integrations adding new media sources.
This release adds the DLNA Digital Media Server and Radio Browser
integrations that allow the use of their sources with your media players.

You can browse and listen to thirty thousand radio stations from all
around the world. But what is even cooler is that with the new “Play media”
action in automations, you can just select your favorite radio station to be
playing when, for example, you arrive home!

Adding the Radio Browser to your Home Assistant instance is as easy as clicking
the My Home Assistant button below. No other setup prerequisites, logins, or API
keys are need.

Upload your media straight from the browser

Getting your media files (pictures, images, soundbites, music) into your
local media folder required you to use the
Samba add-on (or something
similar).

Can we improve this experience? Sure we can!

This release adds initial support for local media management straight from the
Home Assistant frontend, allowing you to upload and remove files directly.

UI Upgrades

We have been working hard on upgrading the Home Assistant frontend to use
Material Web Components (MWC) everywhere, saying goodbye to our old
(and deprecated) paper style.

This allows our frontend to be up-to-date with the latest features and the
latest style. As you’ll notice, these elements have a different look from the
older style, so don’t be alarmed if your inputs look slightly different.

Updating to MWC gives us many new opportunities for the future and makes
Home Assistant more accessible, for example, when using a screen reader.

The screenshot above shows the new MWC styling on the left and the previous
paper styling from an older Home Assistant version on the right. The styling
change mainly impacts input fields look and feel.

Triggered!

When working an automation, triggers now show live in the UI when they are
triggering, allowing you to validate you set it up correctly.

In this little animation below, the remote is pressed a couple of times.
The automation editor will show the “TRIGGERED” bar.

Each time the trigger triggers it will be indicated in the UI.

Additionally, you can now also trigger each individual action in your automation
to test if the action you are creating runs as expected:

Entity ID autocompletion

Our YAML configuration and Jinja templates used in, for example, automations,
scripts, and frontend dashboards can be a really powerful customization
tool. You can definitely appreciate this feature if you use our code editor
in the frontend at times.

Thanks to @kubawolanin, we now have entity ID autocompletion when using
the built-in code editor in the Home Assistant frontend 😎.

Just start typing an entity ID, and the code editor will try to suggest an
entity ID and show the selected entity’s current state.

Theme: Waves by Tim Cowell.

This works when you are configuring your Lovelace cards,
creating advanced template conditions in your Automations,
and even if you are testing out your Jinja-template in the
template developer tools.

Click the My button below to test it out on your Home Assistant instance:

Other noteworthy changes

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

• ESPHome added support for locks! Thanks, @kbickar
• The HomeKit Controller integration has improved support for the Ecobee
  thermostats. Thanks, @Jc2k!
• When playing media in the media browser, the media player bar in the bottom
  will now have a volume control, thanks @balloob!
• Thanks to @kubawolanin, you can now filter and search the
  Home Assistant logs!
• When selecting a date in the frontend, a beautiful new date picker is shown.
  Thanks, @bramkragten!
• The IKEA TRÅDFRI integration has been worked on by @ggravlingen and
  @martinhjelmare. Lots of stability issues have been resolved, battery
  sensors for blinds have been added, and also support for the air purifier
  has been extended with sensors for air quality and filter time left.
• @rfleming71 added button entities to the OctoPrint integration, allowing
  you to control to resume, pause or stop a 3D print.
• The following integrations have added an option to set a unique_id in their
  YAML configuration; If set, you can customize those entities in the UI.
  • InfluxDB Sensor, thanks @Sanderhuisman
  • Filter, thanks @dgomes
• @starkillerOG has been chewing on NETGEAR, adding traffic sensors,
  a reboot button, but also switch to allow/block devices. Awesome!
• Don’t be alarmed now, but @jbouwh added support for Sirens to MQTT!
• @rubenverhoef also dove into MQTT and added additional command templates
  for MQTT lights.
• The Renault integration added HVAC, door, and lock sensors, thanks @epenet
• @bdraco added support to HomeKit for controlling the fan and oscillating
  of fans in climate entities. Nice!
• The GitHub integration became much more efficient and now has many more
  sensors available! Thanks @ludeeus and @timmo001, that is just amazing!
• @kbickar hasn’t been sleeping much as he modernized the SleepIQ integration,
  adding a bunch of new entities in the process.
• If you have a Samsung Smart TV, @epenet added support for showing your
  installed TV apps as media sources!
• Thanks to @chemelli74, you can now control the valves of those brand new
  Shelly TRVs!

New Integrations

We welcome the following new integrations this release:

• DLNA Digital Media Server, added by @chishm
• Fivem, added by @Sander0542
• Moehlenhoff Alpha2, added by @j-a-n
• Pure Energie, added by @klaasnicolaas
• Radio Browser, added by @frenck
• WiZ, added by @sbidy and @bdraco
• Z-Wave.Me Z-Way, added by @PoltoS

Integrations now available to set up from the UI

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

• International Space Station (ISS), done by @DurgNomis-drol
• MJPEG IP Camera, done by @frenck
• SleepIQ, done by @kbickar

Release 2022.3.1 – March 3

• Bump soco to 0.26.4 (@jjlawren – #67498) (sonos docs)
• Check if UPnP is enabled on Fritz device (@chemelli74 – #67512) (fritz docs)
• Fix MQTT config flow with advanced parameters (@jbouwh – #67556) (mqtt docs)
• Highlight in logs it is a custom component when setup fails (@balloob – #67559)
• Bump pyobihai (@ejpenney – #67571) (obihai docs)
• Fix data type for growatt lastdataupdate (#67511) (@muppet3000 – #67582) (growatt_server docs)
• Add guards for HomeKit version/names that break apple watches (@bdraco – #67585) (homekit docs)

Release 2022.3.2 – March 6

• Add unique_id to Fritz diagnostics (@chemelli74 – #67384) (fritz docs)
• Suppress roku power off timeout errors (@ctalkington – #67414) (roku docs)
• rfxtrx: bump to 0.28 (@elupus – #67530) (rfxtrx docs)
• Remove use of deprecated xiaomi_miio classes (@rytilahti – #67590) (xiaomi_miio docs)
• Downgrade Renault warning (@epenet – #67601) (renault docs)
• Handle elkm1 login case with username and insecure login (@bdraco – #67602) (elkm1 docs)
• Fix sql false warning (@gjohansson-ST – #67614) (sql docs)
• Allign logic for Fritz sensors and binary_sensors (@chemelli74 – #67623) (fritz docs)
• Improve logging for Fritz switches creation (@chemelli74 – #67640) (fritz docs)
• Fix Fan template loosing percentage/preset (@frenck – #67648) (template docs)
• Fix reload of media player groups (@emontnemery – #67653) (group docs)
• Bump pydroid-ipcam to 1.3.1 (@MartinHjelmare – #67655) (android_ip_webcam docs)
• Ensure elkm1 can be manually configured when discovered instance is not used (@bdraco – #67712) (elkm1 docs)
• Add missing disconnect in elkm1 config flow validation (@bdraco – #67716) (elkm1 docs)
• Update aiolifx dependency to resolve log flood (@Djelibeybi – #67721) (lifx docs)
• Fix regression with homekit_controller + Aqara motion/vibration sensors (@Jc2k – #67740) (homekit_controller docs)

Release 2022.3.3 – March 7

• Fix false positive MQTT climate deprecation warnings for defaults (@jbouwh – #67661) (mqtt docs)
• Fix timezone for growatt lastdataupdate (@muppet3000 – #67684) (growatt_server docs)
• Fix temperature stepping in Sensibo (@gjohansson-ST – #67737) (sensibo docs)
• Prevent polling from recreating an entity after removal (@bdraco – #67750)
• Fix internet access switch for old discovery (@chemelli74 – #67777) (fritz docs)
• Fix profile name update for Shelly Valve (@chemelli74 – #67778) (shelly docs)
• Handle fan_modes being set to None in homekit (@bdraco – #67790) (homekit docs)
• Catch Elgato connection errors (@frenck – #67799) (elgato docs)
• Update frontend to 20220301.1 (@bramkragten – #67812) (frontend docs)
• Bump python-miio version to 0.5.11 (@rytilahti – #67824) (xiaomi_miio docs)
• Prevent scene from restoring unavailable states (@bdraco – #67836) (scene docs)

Release 2022.3.4 – March 11

• Fix discord embed class initialization (@cheng2wei – #67831) (discord docs)
• Support playing local “file” media on Kodi (@rigrig – #67832) (kodi docs)
• Bump zwave-js-server-python to 0.35.2 (@raman325 – #67839) (zwave_js docs)
• Add missing callback decorator to sun (@bdraco – #67840) (sun docs)
• Fix shelly duo scene restore (@thecode – #67871) (shelly docs)
• Make sure blueprint cache is flushed on script reload (@elupus – #67899) (script docs)
• Update radios to 0.1.1 (@frenck – #67902) (radio_browser docs)
• Correct local import of paho-mqtt (@emontnemery – #67944) (mqtt docs)
• Rollback pyinsteon (@teharris1 – #67956) (insteon docs)
• Bump pysabnzbd to 1.1.1 (@Shutgun – #67971) (sabnzbd docs)
• Bump pymediaroom (@dgomes – #68016) (mediaroom docs)

Release 2022.3.5 – March 15

• Fix WebSocketTimeoutException in SamsungTV (@epenet – #68114) (samsungtv docs)
• 20220301.2 (@zsarnett – #68130) (frontend docs)
• Filter IPv6 addresses from doorbird discovery (@bdraco – #68031) (doorbird docs)
• Fix turning amcrest camera on and off (@flacjacket – #68050) (amcrest docs)
• Fix Shelly EM/3EM invalid energy value after reboot (@thecode – #68052) (shelly docs)
• Default somfy_mylink shade’s _attr_is_closed to None (@cthornton – #68053) (somfy_mylink docs)
• Bump amcrest version to 1.9.7 (@flacjacket – #68055) (amcrest docs)
• Bump pyisy to 3.0.5 (@bdraco – #68069) (isy994 docs)
• Update home_connect to 0.7.0 (@BraveChicken1 – #68089) (home_connect docs)
• Fix MQTT false positive deprecation warnings (@jbouwh – #68117) (mqtt docs)

Release 2022.3.6 – March 21

• Fix TypeError in SamsungTV (@epenet – #68235) (samsungtv docs)
• Fix lyric climate (@nprez83 – #67018) (lyric docs)
• Fix finding matrix room that is already joined (@antlarr – #67967) (matrix docs)
• Respect disable_new_entities for new device_tracker entities (@mib1185 – #68148) (device_tracker docs)
• Add missing await [velbus] (@cdce8p – #68153) (velbus docs)
• Fix point by adding authlib constraint (@cdce8p – #68176) (point docs)
• Update opensensemap-api to 0.2.0 (@frenck – #68193) (opensensemap docs)
• Bump renault-api to 0.1.10 (@epenet – #68260) (renault docs)
• Hue integration: update errors that should be supressed (@marcelveldt – #68337) (hue docs)
• Filter IPv6 addreses from enphase_envoy discovery (@bdraco – #68362) (enphase_envoy docs)
• Handle Hue discovery errors (@balloob – #68392) (hue docs)
• Fix tplink color temp conversion (@bdraco – #68484) (tplink docs)

Release 2022.3.7 – March 23

• Fix targeting all or none entities in service calls (@emontnemery – #68513)
• Add support for general API exception in Sense integration (@kbickar – #68517) (sense docs) (emulated_kasa docs)
• Add cooldown timer before Sonos resubscriptions (@jjlawren – #68521) (sonos docs)
• Hue handle HTTP errors (@balloob – #68396) (hue docs)
• Simplify Hue error handling a bit (@marcelveldt – #68529) (hue docs)
• Filter IPv6 addresses from AppleTV zeroconf discovery (@bdraco – #68530) (apple_tv docs)
• Bump aiohue to 4.4.0 (@marcelveldt – #68556) (hue docs)
• Bump aiohue to version 4.4.1 (@marcelveldt – #68579) (hue docs)
• Bump py-synologydsm-api to 1.0.7 (@mib1185 – #68584) (synology_dsm docs)

Release 2022.3.8 – March 29

• Revert “Take Abode camera snapshot before fetching latest image” (@kevdliu – #68626) (abode docs)
• Fix screenlogic to get the macaddress from discovery (@bdraco – #68687) (screenlogic docs)
• Ensure solaredge can still be setup with an ignored entry (@bdraco – #68688) (solaredge docs)
• Add option to connect to elkm1 non-secure when secure is discovered (@bdraco – #68735) (elkm1 docs)
• Increase zwave_js add-on start attempts before timeout (@MartinHjelmare – #68736) (zwave_js docs)
• Fix ignoring elkm1 discovery (@bdraco – #68750) (elkm1 docs)
• Update sense library to 0.10.4 (@kbickar – #68816) (sense docs) (emulated_kasa docs) (dependency)
• Pin click to fix typer issue (@epenet – #68808)
• Cleanup package constraints (@epenet – #68833)

Need help? Join the community!

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

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

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

Are you more into email? Sign-up for our newsletter to get
the latest news about features and things happening in our community straight
into your inbox.

Hey Everyone! It’s time for the next Android release and we are really excited to get this one out. Lots of changes for all versions of the app, including Wear OS and Quest devices.

Breaking Changes

We have a pretty big release this month with a lot of changes going on. Some of these changes are noticeable as soon as you update the app, so let’s cover those first.

Local Push Notifications

The first major change that we want to cover is for Local Push Notifications. Before this release, all notifications were routed via Google. Now notifications can be delivered directly from your Home Assistant server if you have remote access set up. These notifications do not count towards the rate limit and are shown on the device immediately, every time.

So what’s the breaking change? The app needs to establish and maintain a constant connection to your Home Assistant server with WebSockets. In order to do this, we have to create a persistent notification and this can be upsetting to some users.

A persistent notification lets Android know the app has important ongoing tasks where we do not want the background process stopped. The purpose of this notification is identical to our Sensor Worker, which allows the app to continue sending sensor updates while in the background. Just like Sensor Worker, our WebSockets notification also has its own notification channel to allow you to customize the appearance. You are free to minimize (or silence) this notification to hide the icon from appearing in your status bar.

You may also decide to turn off the channel. While there is nothing preventing you from turning it off, if you run into connection issues you will be asked to turn the channel back on.

The persistent notification will contain an actionable button taking you directly to the settings page. From here you can adjust the persistent connection behavior and modify the notification channel. The persistent notification will only be present when an active connection to your server is being maintained.

If you are on the minimal version of the app will have the default persistent connection set to “Always” as this is the only way the app can receive notifications from your server. If not, you will have the default setting “Never”, where the app will continue to receive notifications from Firebase. If you are on the minimal version you will need to be on Home Assistant Core 2022.2 or later in order to use this feature.

We have seen varying reports from users who either do not notice much of a change in terms of battery usage while others have noticed a big difference. Please feel free to adjust the settings based on your usage and desire for the feature. Some of us developers have opted to keep the option set to “Always” and do not notice much of a change in battery usage. Personally, I keep mine on “Always” and I have not had to change my daily charging habits to enjoy this feature, your experience may be different.

A big thank you to JBassett for kicking off this feature and working hard to solve all the reported beta issues! Thank you to jpelgrom, SkechyWolf and dshokouhi for helping out in finalizing the user experience.

Sensor Changes

The remaining breaking changes in this release are related to 2 sensors offered by all versions of the app.

• Do Not Disturb Sensor – No longer available on devices running Android 5 or lower. This sensor, which was previously offered to all supported Android versions, has been updated to use the official Android API instead of the undocumented one. The Android API is only available on devices running Android 6+. Older devices will no longer see this sensor in the Manage Sensors screen.
• Last Used App Sensor – This sensor previously reported its state as the application label. We realized that this is not always unique, multiple apps can have the exact same name. The state has changed to report the package id which is guaranteed to be unique. The application name is now available as an attribute.

In-App Changelog

This next feature of the release is also going to be immediately noticeable upon updating as all users will be presented with a changelog once they open the app after an update. This changelog will only be shown after the app has received an update. Some users may only see this once a month while others may see it weekly based on the beta release schedule. The changelog is also accessible under Companion App.

The changelog prompt will be maintained by contributors of the app as we do not think it will be user friendly to show GitHub commit messages. This allows us to highlight the above breaking changes to all users so they no longer have surprises going forward. Thank you to dshokouhi for adding this feature.

Wear OS Updates

The Wear OS app continues to grow with more features each release and this month we have some welcomed additions!

• Breaking Change: The Wear OS app has a breaking change this release to hide non-primary entities from the home screen. The entities will still be accessible if you add them as a favorite and also under the “All entities” screen. This change was done to match the behavior of the autogenerated dashboard of the Home Assistant frontend, thank you jpelgrom.
• A new tile was added by leroyboerefijn that allows you to render any template in the tile. You will need to use the phone app to setup the template tile as the Wear OS keyboard is missing some important keys that are required for templates. You can also set the refresh interval for the tile in settings as well.

• Multi-Factor Authentication is now supported when logging into the watch, thank you jpelgrom
• Areas were added to allow you to view entities by the selected area, thank you jpelgrom
• The shortcuts tile got an enhancement to show the entity friendly name around the icon. If you do not change your entity icons to custom ones you will want to enable this feature. Look in the settings screen to enable this feature, thank you leroyboerefijn.
• A new “Sign in on phone” button was added to the Wear OS login screen so you no longer have to enter those long passwords on a small screen. Thank you jpelgrom

• button, cover, fan and input_button domains have been added to the Wear OS app by jpelgrom

Other Changes

• A new In Use sensor for Quest devices was added by SkechyWolf. This new sensor turns on only when the headset is worn by the user. It is a bit more precise than using the interactive sensor, which was previously mentioned for this use case.
• Device controls were updated to add support for button and input_button domains. The climate domain was enhanced for supported HVAC modes and proper temperature increments. The More Info pop-up, when a tile is long pressed, is now more reliable. Thanks for these improvements jpelgrom.
• dshokouhi and jpelgrom worked together to remove additional Google Service dependencies from the minimal version
• A new settings page was added by dshokouhi to allow users to easily find Notification Channel settings for the app
• The Manage Widgets page was updated by dshokouhi and jpelgrom to have a new design based on Jetpack Compose. It is also now possible to add widgets from the settings page to your home screen, if the device supports it.

• A notification command to update sensors was added by dshokouhi
• The Manage Shortcuts and Manage Tiles pages had design updates based on Jetpack Compose by dshokouhi
• Notification commands for command_activity and command_broadcast_intent were updated for more types of intent extras by moritzgloeckl
• The WiFi state sensor now receives instant updates on devices that did not have instant updates before, thank you dshokouhi
• JBassett has now made it possible to update the Google Play Store listing directly from GitHub
• Downloading is now supported in the Home Assistant Frontend, thank you jpelgrom
• button and input_button domain support was added to quick settings by jpelgrom

Special thank you to all other contributors who have helped in bug fixing and other various under the hood improvements to the code base. Thank you NotWoods, joostlek and chriss158. As always please remember to add your feature requests and bugs to GitHub.

Changelog

• 2022.2.0 – https://github.com/home-assistant/android/releases/tag/2022.2.0
• 2022.2.1 – https://github.com/home-assistant/android/releases/tag/2022.2.1

If you are using HomeMatic/homematicIP smart home products with Home Assistant, the future will now be even brighter.

The team around RaspberryMatic has been hard working during the last months to make their alternative “HomeMatic CCU“ operating system a full fledged Home Assistant add-on with no compromises. Because of the much more advanced functionality of this third-party add-on compared to our own “HomeMatic CCU” add-on, this is now the recommended add-on to use your Home Assistant also as a HomeMatic CCU smart home central. The old “HomeMatic CCU” add-on from the official repository has now been deprecated.

To make migration as smooth as possible, our latest add-on release gained a final functionality: create and exporting backups. Go to the WebUI and click on “Create Backup” to generate a .sbk system backup file. Stop our “HomeMatic CCU” add-on, install the “RaspberryMatic CCU add-on” and import the backup file to have all your HomeMatic/homematicIP devices available right away. A big shout-out to Jens Maus specifically to make all this happen!

In addition, starting from Home Assistant OS 7.3 onwards HAOS supports dual HomeMatic+homematicIP communication when using the HmIP-RFUSB RF USB stick with the “RaspberryMatic CCU” add-on. This change will, however, also introduce a device rename for older installations still using the old HomeMatic CCU add-on: With a HmIP-RFUSB, you will need to manually update the “hmip” device setting to /dev/raw-uart after the OS 7.3 upgrade. Or even better: migrate to the RaspberryMatic CCU add-on right away to gain the full cloud-free smart home central functionality like the vendor-provided “CCU3”.

Last, not least, work has just been started to completely rework the HomeMatic/homematicIP device integration layer within Home Assistant itself. While still in an early development phase this complete re-design will come with great new features and a way easier setup and a more complete device integration of all your HomeMatic/homematicIP devices.

So the future of using HomeMatic/homematicIP devices in Home Assistant was never brighter, be part of it!