Home Assistant

2023.12: Welcome home!

Franck Nijhof Comments

Home Assistant Core 2023.12! šŸŽ„

The last release of 2023 is here, and we are going out with a bang! šŸŽ‰

2023 has been the Year of the Voice, and please stay tuned, as we will host a final 5th chapter live stream on our YouTube channel on 13 December 2023, at 12:00 PST / 21:00 CET! But that is not the end of the voice journeyā€¦ Be sure to tune in!

This release has some nice quality-of-life improvements, making it feel like Christmas already! The thermostat card has been redesigned to match the gorgeous new entity dialog introduced, a new feature for the ever-improving tile card, re-importing blueprints, and much more!

Iā€™m most excited about the new login page that this release brings. It is beautiful, modern, and literally welcomes you into your own home! šŸ” Home is where Home Assistant is, right? šŸ˜ƒ

This is it for 2023! What a year it has been! I just got one last thing to say this year:

Thank you for using Home Assistant! ā¤ļø

Happy holidays & enjoy the release!

../Frenck

Donā€™t forget to join our release party live stream on YouTube 6 December 2023, at 12:00 PST / 21:00 CET!

A beautiful new login page

This feature has been disabled in Home Assistant 2023.12.3.
Read more about it here.

The login page of Home Assistant has been redesigned to be more modern and match the recent redesign of the Home Assistant onboarding.

When Home Assistant detects you are accessing it via your local home network, it means you are in your trusted home environment; you will be greeted by this beautiful new login page, which resembles how most platforms, like Windows, macOS, Netflix, and others, handle this: by showing your user profiles.

Screenshot of the new Home Assistant login screen that allows you to click on your profile picture to log in.

It is also much smarter! It works seamlessly with trusted networks, and when home, we automatically remember your login. So, no more forgetting to check the ā€œkeep me logged inā€ checkbox. šŸ‘Š

Of course, when logging in from outside your home network, we canā€™t do this as that would give away privacy-sensitive information about your system and who is in it. So, when you are outside of your home network, the login page will ask for your username and password, just like before.

Screenshot showing the new login screen, when accessing from the external network. It will still prompt for a username & password, protecting your privacy.

Oh! And you can now change the language straight from the login page! šŸŒ

New design for the thermostat card

Home Assistant 2023.9 introduced a gorgeous new entity dialog for thermostat entities. As a result of that, many have been asking for a similar design for the thermostat card. Well, here it is!

Screenshot showing two thermostat cards that showcase their stunning new looks.

There is nothing you have to do to use this new card. Once you upgrade to this release, the thermostat card will automatically use this gorgeous new design.

We took it one step further and added support for features. Features are additional functionality that you can add to a card, previously only available for the tile card. This release adds support for features to the thermostat card as well!

Screenshot that shows the new features available when configuring a thermostat card.

For the thermostat card, it allows you to add HVAC mode buttons and presets. By default, these features are hidden, giving it the cleanest look possible.

Oh! The same design has been applied to the (de)humidifer card, of course, including its respective tile features šŸ˜Ž.

Screenshot showing the same styling has been applied to the humidifier card.

Numeric input feature for tile cards

The tile card is very powerful, and @JosephAbbey is even extending it this release by adding a new ā€œnumeric inputā€ feature.

The numeric input feature works with all number entities and number helpers. It allows you to control the number entity from the tile card directly and provides the choice to use it as a slider or as an input with up/down buttons.

Screenshot showing two tile cards, one showing the button variant, the other displaying a slider.

Options for the default dashboard

The default dashboard now has options that will allow you to change its behavior. You can now configure the default dashboard to hide certain areas, hide entities that donā€™t belong to an area, and the option to hide the energy summary card.

Screenshot that shows the new options available for the generated default dashboard.

When selecting Areas, you can choose to hide the areas but also change the display order of the areas by dragging them around.

A first step in making the dashboards configurable, but above all, it gives you more control over the default dashboard, especially when you have just started with using Home Assistant.

When adding a new dashboard, we added a dialog similar to the ones we show when you create new automations or scripts. It gives you the option to start with an empty manual dashboard or create a new default dashboard.

Screenshot that shows the new dialog you get presented when creating a new dashboard.

History dashboard showing long-term statistics

The history dashboard did get some love from @karwosts this release; he added a big improvement to all the graphs shown there.

Previously, the graphs would only show the state history, limited to a few days, until the data is removed. This is not always very useful, for example, when you want to look back further in time.

@karwosts came up with a solution for this, and the history dashboard now combines the state history with the recorded long-term statistics to provide insights into the past.

Screenshot showing a history graph over a longer period of time.

The right and darker part of the graph line is provided by the state history (like before), and the long-term statistics provide the left and lighter part of the graph line (and is thus downsampled hourly data).

If you have manually modified the days to keep before purging recorder on your system, consider removing that customization. With the long-term statistics and new feature, you most likely donā€™t need it anymore, resulting in a smaller database and, thus, faster and smaller backups.

More to-do!

The first iteration for support for to-do lists was added in the last release, and there has been continued work on this feature in this release.

First of all, there are two new services available. A much-requested service to list all items on a to-do list and a helpful service to remove all completed items from a to-do list.

It is nice to see integrations adding support for the to-do list feature. For example, the CalDAV integration now supports adding to-do items to your CalDAV server, and with Picnic and OurGroceries you can now manage your shopping list. In the case of Picnic, it will even look up the product you add in their store to your shopping list and add the product to your shopping cart.

Also, when viewing a to-do list from the Home Assistant interface, you can copy/paste or bookmark the URL, which will always bring you back to the same oneā€”a small but very helpful improvement.

Re-import blueprints

This release adds the ability to re-import the blueprint from the source from which you originally imported it. The newly downloaded blueprint will overwrite the existing blueprint, providing a simple ā€œupdateā€ feature for blueprints.

If you use Blueprints, for example, the ones created by our incredible community, you might have noticed that when you import a blueprint, it will not update when the author updates it. The only option you had was to manually adjust the YAML of the blueprint to make it match the latest version published by the author. To make this last bit easier, we added this re-import ability.

Screenshot showing that the overflow menu of a blueprint now provides the option to re-import an blueprint.

A helpful feature that will make it easier to keep your blueprints in sync with the latest version published by the blueprint author.

Other noteworthy changes

There are many more improvements in this release; here are some of the other noteworthy changes this release:

  • We have a brand new trigger selector for you to use in your Blueprints and scripts. Thanks, @piitaya!
  • That is not all for selectors, @schelv added support for Kelvin to the color temperature selector. Nice!
  • If you use the IKEA IDƅSEN desk, you will now have a height sensor! Thanks @abmantis!
  • The ESPHome integration had many performance improvements, making it faster and more reliable. Thanks @bdraco!
  • @Lash-L added support for displaying maps from your Roborock vacuums! Awesome!
  • Services with a response now support handling responses when multiple entities are targeted. Nice! Thanks @eifinger!
  • @iMicknl added local API support for the Somfy TaHoma to the Overkiz integration! Also, thanks Somfy! Itā€™s nice to see a manufacturer adding local API support!
  • The ViCare received tons of love from @CFenner; keep up the good work!
  • The media browser now has support for toggling between grid and list view. Thanks @karwosts!
  • @emontnemery worked hard to improve all error messages originating from manual YAML configuration. The messages should now be more detailed, readable, and correctly pinpoint which file and file line the error is located at. Awesome!
  • @karwosts created a UI when you want to add selectors to your script field! Very nicely done!
  • Errors shown by Home Assistant can now be translated! While many places still need to adopt this, it is a big and user-friendly step forward! Outstanding job @jbouwh!

New integrations

We welcome the following new integrations in this release:

Integrations now available to set up from the UI

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

Release 2023.12.1 - December 8

Release 2023.12.2 - December 13

Release 2023.12.3 - December 14

Release 2023.12.4 - December 27

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 donā€™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 Building the Open Home Newsletter to get the latest news about features, things happening in our community and other news about building an Open Home; straight into your inbox.

Backward-incompatible changes

If you are a custom integration developer and want to learn about breaking changes and new features available for your integration: Be sure to follow our developer blog. The following are the most notable for this release:

Farewell to the following

The following integrations are also no longer available as of this release:

  • MyQ has been removed. Read all about it in our blog post.
  • eQ-3 Bluetooth Smart Thermostats have been removed. The integration has been in a non-functional state for a long time.

All changes

Of course, there is a lot more in this release. You can find a list of all changes made here: Full changelog for Home Assistant Core 2023.12