Clean area

The Clean area with vacuum cleaner action sends your vacuum to clean one or more mapped Home Assistant areas.

Use it when only part of the home needs attention, like the kitchen after dinner or the hallway after muddy shoes, without sending the robot through every room.

Using this action from the user interface

If you prefer building automations and scripts visually, Home Assistant walks you through this action step by step. You pick what to target, tweak a few options, and save. No YAML knowledge required.

To use this action from an automation or script:

1. Go to Settings > Automations & scenes.
2. Open or create an automation.
3. Add an action and search for Vacuum: Clean area with vacuum cleaner.
4. Select your vacuum entity.
5. In Areas, choose one or more mapped Home Assistant areas.
6. Save the automation.

Using this action in YAML

If you work directly in YAML, or you want to know exactly what Home Assistant does under the hood, this section has the technical reference. It lists the field names you use in YAML, their types, and which ones are required.

action: vacuum.clean_area
target:
  entity_id: vacuum.cleaner
cleaning_area_id:
  - living_room
  - kitchen

This sends vacuum.cleaner to clean the living_room and kitchen areas.

Options in YAML

YAML sometimes provides additional options for more complex use cases that are not available through the UI.

Targets of the action

This action requires a target. The target is the object of the action. You can point the action at a single entityAn entity represents a sensor, actor, or function in Home Assistant. Entities are used to monitor physical properties or to control other entities. An entity is usually part of a device or a service. [Learn more], a device, an area, a floor, or a label, and Home Assistant will run the action on every matching vacuum entity behind that target.

• Entity: one specific vacuum entity, such as vacuum.living_room.
• Device: every vacuum entity that belongs to a device.
• Area: every vacuum entity in a room or area.
• Floor: every vacuum entity on a floor.
• Label: every vacuum entity that shares a label.

You can also select different target types in one action. For example, you can add a specific entity and an area as targets in the same action to run the action on both of them at once.

Good to know

• You must first map vacuum segments to Home Assistant areas in the entity settings.
• If mapping or area selection does not appear, your vacuum does not support this feature.

Try it yourself

Ready to test this? Open Developer tools > Actions, search for this action, fill in the fields, and select Perform action. You see what happens on your actual entitiesAn entity represents a sensor, actor, or function in Home Assistant. Entities are used to monitor physical properties or to control other entities. An entity is usually part of a device or a service. [Learn more] without writing a line of YAML.

More examples

Real scenarios where this action shows up in automations and scripts. Copy any example and adapt it to your setup.

Automation: clean the kitchen and dining room after dinner

After dinner, this automation checks whether anyone is still in the kitchen. If the room is empty, it sends the vacuum only to the areas that usually need attention.

• Trigger: Time: 20:30
• Condition: Kitchen presence sensor is off
• Action: Clean area
• Target: Main vacuum
• Area: Kitchen, dining room

alias: "After dinner vacuum cleanup"
triggers:
  - trigger: time
    at: "20:30:00"
conditions:
  - condition: state
    entity_id: binary_sensor.kitchen_occupancy
    state: "off"
actions:
  - action: vacuum.clean_area
    target:
      entity_id: vacuum.main_floor
    cleaning_area_id:
      - kitchen
      - dining_room

Still stuck?

The Home Assistant community is quick to help: join Discord for real-time chat, post on the community forum with the action you’re calling and what you expected to happen, or share on our subreddit /r/homeassistant.