2025.1: Backing Up into 2025!

Dwelling Assistant 2025.1! 🥂

Blissful New 12 months! The entire Dwelling Assistant challenge needs you and your family members
a incredible and wholesome 2025! ❤️ Let’s make this yr even higher than the final!

We’re all tremendous excited to kick off the brand new yr with an absolute huge
launch! 🎆

This launch brings a whole overhaul of the backup system in Dwelling Assistant,
which has been within the works for months! And I’m not simply speaking about some
consumer interface adjustments—no, we’re speaking a few full overhaul from entrance
to again!

Automated backups, encrypted Dwelling Assistant Cloud backup storage, retention
insurance policies, configuration wizards, and even the flexibility for integrations to supply
backup storage places! 🤯

However that isn’t all! We additionally had the Month of “What the Heck?!”
in December, which resulted in loads of quality-of-life enhancements raised
by the neighborhood that month!

There’s a lot to unwrap on this launch, significantly, let’s simply dive in!

Benefit from the launch!

../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.

Screenshot showing the bew backup overview page which shows you exactly when your last backup took place

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.

Screenshot showing the backup now button + dialog that allows you to trigger an off-schedule backup at any time

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 definately’re in for a
deal with! Now you can robotically retailer your newest, totally encrypted, backup in
your Dwelling Assistant Cloud account.

This function offers 5GB of storage at no further price, providing totally
encrypted off-site safety in your information! 🎁

Home Assistant Cloud is now a backup target location, that is included with the Home Assistant Cloud subscription at no additional costs

The backup may be downloaded from Dwelling Assistant itself, but additionally from the
Home Assistant Cloud account page @ Nabu Casa
in case you want it. This manner, you possibly can all the time entry your newest backup, even
in case your Dwelling Assistant {hardware} utterly fails.

Backup places 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.

Screenshot showing an potential example storage provider provided by an integration

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’ safety we changed the earlier non-obligatory password
with a compulsory encryption key.

The new backup overview page shows you exactly when your last backup took place

Once you arrange your backups for the primary time, an encryption key might be
generated for you. Be certain to retailer this key in a protected place, as you have to
it to revive your backups. To make this simpler, you possibly can obtain the important thing as
a part of an emergency equipment throughout setup—or anytime later from the backup settings
web page. Preserve it protected! 🔑

Restoring backups accessible to all set up strategies 🤗

Extra excellent news—restoring backups is now supported throughout
all set up strategies! 🎉

Beforehand, solely Dwelling Assistant OS installations may restore backups. However
with this launch, this function is now accessible for all set up strategies!
Regardless of the way you run Dwelling Assistant, even if you happen to use our containers in a Docker
surroundings, now you can restore your Dwelling Assistant backups.

This additionally means you possibly can restore backups from native storage, Dwelling Assistant
Cloud, or any future backup places added by means of integrations.

As a matter of reality, all backup options, together with every little thing we launch at this time,
might be accessible whatever the set up methodology you might be utilizing. We wish
everybody to have a strong backup technique.

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.

You can now configure a retention policy for your backups, allowing Home Assistant to clean it up automatically

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.

Screenshot of the our friendly wizard that will help you setting up your backups

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 can be one of many higher-voted ones, so it’s a good one!
Andrew Jackson wrote:

“WTH can you not add categories, labels etc when creating an automation”

Yeah, that could be a good WTH! Everytime you create a brand new automation or script, you
in all probability need to set up it immediately and never have to return to the settings.
FIXED! 🎉

If you press the d on your keyboard, it will pop up the Quickbar for devices

Once you create a brand new automation or script, and in addition when renaming it,
now you can set the outline, class, labels, and areas immediately!
🏷️ Good!

Rapidly navigate to a tool

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?”

Effectively, that could be a good query that Andreas Brett raised! There’s certainly no
such factor for units. @jpbede to the rescue! Now you can navigate to any
machine utilizing the short bar by urgent the d key in your keyboard.

If you press the d on your keyboard, it will pop up the quick bar for devices

Zoom & Pan for charts

KNXBroker raised the following WTH topic:

“WTH lets upgrade History Graphs”

You’re proper! The historical past graphs in Dwelling Assistant are fundamental however purposeful!
Nonetheless, we are able to do higher! 🚀

One of many greater objects in that WTH matter was the flexibility to zoom and pan…
Due to @MindFreeze, now you can zoom and pan in any graph
in Dwelling Assistant! 📈

Zoom any graph in Home Assistant, by holding ctrl or command and scrolling your mouse wheel!
Zoom and drag any graph in Dwelling Assistant, by holding ctrl (or command on mac)
and scrolling your mouse wheel!

Maintain the management key (or command on macOS) and scroll to zoom out and in utilizing
your mouse. You can too click on and drag to pan across the zoomed graph.

Along with this alteration, @MindFreeze enabled small micro-animation for the
historical past graphs, making them look extra alive and fewer static.

Controlling the default publicity of latest entities to Help

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! Due to @jpbede, now you can management the default publicity of
new entities to Help. Now you can toggle this on or off within the Dwelling Assistant
Voice Assistant settings.

Zoom any graph in Home Assistant, by holding ctrl or command and scroll your mouse wheel!

Extra “What the Heck?!” enhancements

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”**

Effectively, because of @jpbede, now you can press the a key in your keyboard
wherever in Dwelling Assistant to summon Help! 🎙️ Good!

“WTH doesn’t HA ask if I want to save automations?”

Whoa! That may be a good one! Due to @jpbede, Dwelling Assistant will now ask if
you need to save your automation earlier than leaving the editor if there are unsaved
adjustments. 🤖

“WTH Is in Energy Dashboard the individual devices not able to reorder”

Thanks for that one yormedia! Truthfully, this one has been raised in earlier
editions of the Month of “What the Heck?!” just a few occasions. Cause sufficient for
@karwosts to select this up and make it occur! Now you can reorder them in
the setting for categorization functions. 🔡

“WTH Can’t I filter labels within a table filter?”

Good query. When you’ve got loads of labels, scrolling by means of the record of labels
within the filter choice is usually a bit cumbersome. Due to @silamon, you possibly can
now search and filter by means of the labels within the filter choice! 🔎

WTH sentence trigger doesn’t contain any context

Nice concept! Due to @balloob, the complete dialog enter is now accessible
to condemn triggers! 🗣️ This was truly the primary WTH merchandise to be resolved in
this version! 😎

Integrations

Due to our neighborhood for preserving tempo with the brand new integrationsIntegrations join and combine Dwelling Assistant together with your units, providers, and extra. [Learn more]
and improvements to existing ones! You’re all awesome 🥰

New integrations

We welcome the following new integrations in this release:

Noteworthy enhancements to present integrations

It’s not simply new integrationsIntegrations join and combine Dwelling Assistant together with your units, providers, and extra. [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:

Dashboard background settings

A few releases ago, we made adding a background image to your dashboard easier.
This release,
@silamon takes it a step additional by including loads of settings
to customise how the background picture is displayed.

This consists of help for tiled backgrounds, transparency, measurement settings,
alignment, and permitting the background to scroll with the web page or keep fastened.

You can now fully customize the background of your dashboard, with the options to changing tiling, transparency, alignment, and size seettings

Good! Thanks, @silamon!

Media participant quantity function for Tile card

This is a super nice addition from @simon-zumbrunnen! The Tile card now
helps a media participant quantity slider function. This function permits you to
management the quantity of a media participant straight from the Tile card. 🔉
Good work Simon!

The tile card with a media player entity, having the volume feature slider enabled

Patch releases

We will even launch patch releases for Dwelling Assistant 2025.1 in January.
These patch releases solely comprise bug fixes. Our purpose is to launch a patch
launch each Friday.

2025.1.1 – January 7

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.

Discovered a bug or subject? Please report it in our issue tracker,
to get it fastened! Or, verify our assist web page for steering for extra
locations you possibly can go.

Are you extra into electronic mail? Signal-up for our Constructing the Open Dwelling E-newsletter
to get the newest information about options, issues occurring in our neighborhood and
different information about constructing an Open Dwelling; straight into your inbox.

Backward-incompatible adjustments

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:

devolo Dwelling Management

The combination with devolo Dwelling Management has been up to date to take away the choice
to set the mydevolo URL. This selection was used to combine with the devolo
Dwelling Management Cloud for improvement functions solely.
This selection is not accessible.

(@Shutgun#132821) (documentation)

FXCOM RFXtrx

The unit of measurement has been faraway from FXCOM RFXtrx counters as a result of
depend isn’t a unit 😁

(@jrieger#133108) (documentation)

HomeWizard Vitality

The unit of measurement for the “Water utilization” sensor has been up to date from
l/min to L/min. This variation standardizes the unit to enhance consistency
throughout Dwelling Assistant.

Any automations, scripts, or templates that depend on the outdated unit could have to be
adjusted. Lengthy-term statistics will stay intact, however restore points might be
created to make sure the information is up to date with the brand new unit.

(@DCSBL#132261) (documentation)

LIFX

The choices color_temp and kelvin are not legitimate arguments for LIFX
actions. Please use color_temp_kelvin as a substitute.

(@epenet#132730) (documentation)

Tesla Fleet

The included OAuth software credentials have been eliminated, as Tesla not
helps Open Supply software registrations and is transferring to a pay-per-use
mannequin.

Learn extra about this announcement on this blog post.

(@Bre77#132431) (documentation)

UniFi Community

The states of “System State” sensors have been standardized to match
Dwelling Assistant core guidelines and be translatable. This impacts the next
UniFi sensor states:

  • Linked, which now grew to become linked
  • Pending, which now grew to become pending
  • Firmware Mismatch, which now grew to become firmware_mismatch
  • Upgrading, which now grew to become upgrading
  • Provisioning, which now grew to become provisioning
  • Heartbeat Missed, which now grew to become heartbeat_missed
  • Adopting, which now grew to become adopting
  • Deleting, which now grew to become deleting
  • Inform Error, which now grew to become inform_error
  • Adoption Failed, which now grew to become adoption_failed
  • Remoted, which now grew to become remoted
  • Unknown, which now grew to become unknown

If you happen to used these states straight in your automations, scripts, or templates;
you have to to regulate these to match these adjustments.

(@bieniu#131921) (documentation)

Zabbix

The combination now makes use of the official Zabbix Python API. Due to this, the
minimal supported Zabbix model is now 5.0. This variation drops help for
Zabbix 4 and earlier than.

(@kruton#131674) (documentation)

If you’re a customized integration developer and need to find out about adjustments and
new options accessible in your integration: You’ll want to comply with our
developer blog. The next are essentially the most notable for this launch:

All adjustments

After all, there may be much more on this launch. You will discover a listing of
all adjustments made right here: Full changelog for Dwelling Assistant Core 2025.1