2024.9.2
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Google Mail

The Google Mail integration allows you to connect your Google Mail to Home Assistant. The integration adds an action to allow you to set an email auto-response for when you go on vacation. A notify action is also added, allowing you to draft or send emails in plain text.

Prerequisites

You need to configure developer credentials to allow Home Assistant to access your Google Account. These credentials are the same as the ones for Nest and Google Sheets and YouTube. These are not the same as Device Auth credentials previously recommended for Google Calendar.

Scenario 1: You already have credentials

In this case, all you need to do is enable the API:

  1. Go the Google Developers Console Gmail API .
  2. Confirm the project and Enable the API.
  3. Continue with the steps described in the Configuration section.

Scenario 2: You do not have credentials set up yet

In this case, you need to generate a client secret first:

To generate client ID and client secret

This section explains how to generate a client ID and client secret on Google Developers Console.

  1. First, go to the Google Developers Console to enable Gmail API .
  2. Select Create project, enter a project name and select Create.
  3. Enable the Gmail API.
  4. Navigate to APIs & Services (left sidebar) > Credentials.
  5. In the left sidebar, select OAuth consent screen.
    • Select External and Create.
    • Set the App name (the name of the application asking for consent) to anything you want, e.g., Home Assistant.
  6. You then need to select a Support email.
    • From the dropdown menu, select your email address.
  7. Under Developer contact information, enter your email address (the same as above is fine).
  8. Scroll to the bottom and select Save and continue.
    • You don’t have to fill out anything else here. Adding other information to this page (like an app logo) may trigger an additional review process from Google and delay setup by days.
  9. You will then be automatically taken to the Scopes page.
    • You do not need to add any scopes here. Select Save and continue to move to the Test users page.
    • You do not need to add anything to the Test users page. Select Save and continue, which will take you to the Summary page.
    • Select Back to dashboard.
  10. Select OAuth consent screen again and under Publishing status, select Publish app.
    • Otherwise your credentials will expire every 7 days.
  11. Make sure Publishing status is set to In production.
  12. In the left sidebar, select Credentials, then select Create credentials (at the top of the screen), then select OAuth client ID.
  13. Set the Application type to Web application and give this credential set a name (like “Home Assistant Credentials”).
  14. Add https://my.home-assistant.io/redirect/oauth to Authorized redirect URIs then select Create.
    • This is not a placeholder. It is the URI that must be used.
  15. You will then be presented with a pop-up saying OAuth client created, showing Your client ID and Your client secret.
    • Make a note of these (for example, copy and paste them into a text editor), as you will need them shortly.
    • Once you have noted these strings, select OK.
    • If you need to find these credentials again at any point, then navigate to APIs & Services > Credentials, and you will see Home Assistant Credentials (or whatever you named them in the previous step) under OAuth 2.0 Client IDs.
    • To view both the Client ID and Client secret, select the pencil icon. This will take you to the settings page for these credentials, and the information will be on the right-hand side of the page.
  16. Congratulations! You are now the keeper of a client secret. Guard it in your treasure box. In most cases your new credentials will be active within a few moments. However, Google states that activation may take up to five hours in some circumstances.

Configuration

To add the Google Mail service to your Home Assistant instance, use this My button:

Manual configuration steps

If the above My button doesn’t work, you can also perform the following steps manually:

  • Browse to your Home Assistant instance.

  • Go to Settings > Devices & Services.

  • In the bottom right corner, select the Add Integration button.

  • From the list, select Google Mail.

  • Follow the instructions on screen to complete the setup.

The integration setup will next give you instructions to enter the Application Credentials (OAuth Client ID and Client Secret) and authorize Home Assistant to connect to Google Mail.

OAuth and device authorization steps

  1. Continue through the steps of selecting the account you want to authorize.

  2. NOTE: You may get a message telling you that the app has not been verified and you will need to acknowledge that in order to proceed.

  3. You can now see the details of what you are authorizing Home Assistant to access with two options at the bottom. Select Continue.

  4. The page will now display Link account to Home Assistant?, note Your instance URL. If this is not correct, refer to My Home Assistant. If everything looks good, select Link Account.

  5. You may close the window, and return back to Home Assistant where you should see a Success! message from Home Assistant.

Troubleshooting

If you have an error with your credentials you can delete them in the Application Credentials user interface.

Action google_mail.set_vacation

You can use the google_mail.set_vacation action to set vacation options.

Create event action details
Data attribute Optional Description Example
enabled yes Turn this off to end vacation responses. True
title no The subject for the email. Vacation
message yes Body of the email. I am on vacation.
plain_text no Choose to send message in plain text or HTML. True
restrict_contacts no Restrict automatic reply to contacts. True
restrict_domain no Restrict automatic reply to domain. This only affects GSuite accounts. False
start no First day of the vacation. 11-20-2022
end no Last day of the vacation. 11-26-2022

The added notify service will be named after the email address you chose on the consent screen. For example, an email address named “[email protected]” wil display as notify.example_gmail_com.

Google Mail notify action data

The following attributes can be placed inside the data key of the action for extended functionality:

Attribute Optional Description
cc yes List of recipients to be carbon copied.
bcc yes List of recipients to be back carbon copied.
from yes Default is current authenticated user. Typically only applies to GSuite accounts where the user has delegate access to a shared mailbox.
send yes Default is true. Set this to false to create a draft instead. Recipients are not required in this instance.

Examples

This is the full service call to send an email:

action: notify.example_gmail_com
data:
  message: "test"
  title: "test email"
  target:
    - "[email protected]"
  data:
    cc:
      - "[email protected]"
    bcc:
      - "[email protected]"
    from: "[email protected]"

Video tutorial

This video tutorial explains how to set up Gmail in Home Assistant and how you can create a dashboard and automations to send email and toggle your out-of-office notice.