Last year, we laid out our vision for AI in the smart home, which opened up experimentation with AI in Home Assistant. In that update, we made it easier to integrate all sorts of local and cloud AI tools, and provided ways to use them to control and automate your home. A year has passed, a lot has happened in the AI space, and our community has made sure that Home Assistant has stayed at the frontier.

We beat big tech to the punch; we were the first to make AI useful in the home. We did it by giving our community complete control over how and when they use AI, making AI a powerful tool to use in the home. As opposed to something that takes over your home. Our community is taking advantage of AI’s unique abilities (for instance, its image recognition or summarizing skills), while having the ability to exclude it from mission-critical things they’d prefer it not to handle. Best of all, this can all be run locally, without any data leaving your home!

Moreover, if users don’t want AI in their homes, that’s their choice, and they can choose not to enable any of these features. I hope to see big tech take an approach this measured, but judging by their last couple of keynotes, I’m not holding my breath.

Over the past year, we’ve added many new AI features and made them easy to use directly through Home Assistant’s user interface. We have kept up with all the developments in AI land and are using the latest standard to integrate more models and tools than ever before. We’re also continuing to benchmark local and cloud models to give users an idea of what works best. Keep reading to check out everything new, and maybe you can teach your smart home some cool new tricks.

Local AI is making the home very natural to control

Big thanks to our AI community contributor team:
@AllenPorter, @shulyaka, @tronikos, @IvanLH, @Joostlek!

Home Assistant 2025.9! 🎉

But before we dive into this release: Did you see we launched a new product? 👀

We’ve introduced the Home Assistant Connect ZWA-2, the ultimate way to connect Z-Wave devices to Home Assistant. You can read all about it in our announcement blog 📰 or re-watch the product launch live stream on YouTube 📺.

It was a busy month, as we also had two new Works with Home Assistant program partners joining this month as well: AirGradient and Frient! 🎉

While the above was happening this month, as if the project wasn’t already busy enough, we kept on pushing to prepare for this release; and it is an absolute massive one! 🤯

This month introduces a new experimental Home dashboard, which aims to become the new default dashboard for Home Assistant in a future release. A first iteration, of which we love to see your feedback and input on. As you know, we develop and iterate in the open. Give it a shot and let us know what you think!

Talking about dashboards, my personal favorite card is definitely the tile card; it is just so versatile. And this release brings in a staggering amount of new features for it! Most notably, the ability to add a trend graph to the tile card! 📈

I’m the most excited about the visual changes to the automation editor this release brings: a sidebar. It is a huge and very visible change, that just makes so much sense. This release denotes the start of a whole series of improvements to the automation editor in this, and upcoming releases. As automations make a smart home feel magical, I personally can’t wait to see how this evolves. 🤖

Enjoy the release!

../Frenck

We’re making new frients this week, and they’re bringing an extensive line of Zigbee devices to our Works With Home Assistant program. Each device is tested by our team, ensuring they provide the best experience possible for Home Assistant. Frient is widely available across Europe, and are well-known for their sleek, unobtrusive designs that its customers love for their high Home Approval Factor.

We’re excited to announce that AirGradient is the latest manufacturer to join the fast-growing Works With Home Assistant program! They bring their air quality monitors to the program, with both indoor and outdoor models.

AirGradient is the first partner in the program focused on building advanced indoor and outdoor air quality monitors. They are also well known within our community for their powerful tech, and for their focus on open source and dedication to local air quality projects around the world.

Introducing the Home Assistant Connect ZWA-2, the ultimate way to connect Z-Wave devices to Home Assistant. Between its optimized antenna and seamless integration with Home Assistant, it should be a big upgrade for anyone using Z-Wave today.

If you’re not using Z-Wave, it’s time to take a second look, as Connect ZWA-2 is a different beast. It might be just what you need to reach that tricky spot in your home… or even beyond. Connect ZWA-2 supports Z-Wave Long Range, and this modern take on the standard delivers exceptional reach along with more responsive, battery-efficient devices. Every home is different, but our testers have managed connections in places they once thought impossible.

Join the smart home range revolution for $69 or €59 (that’s the recommended MSRP, and pricing will vary by retailer). For quick details, specs, and where to buy, visit our Home Assistant Connect ZWA-2 page. It’s available for purchase today. Read on to learn what goes into the ultimate Z-Wave upgrade.

Home Assistant 2025.8! 🎉

In most parts of the world, summer mode is in full effect! ☀️ Many at the Open Home Foundation and many of our contributors are enjoying a well-deserved break from work and open source. I hope that you are maybe enjoying a well-deserved break as well! 🏖️

Summer breaks or not, we are currently very busy with our next product launch! In case you have missed it, this upcoming Wednesday, August 13 (12:00 PM PT, 3:00 PM ET, 21:00 CEST), we will have an extra live stream to announce the next big thing in the Home Assistant Connect series! Be sure to head over to YouTube to hit the reminder button so you don’t miss it! Z-Wave is not dead! 🌊

Alright, on to the release! We keep moving during summer and are excited to bring you the August release of Home Assistant!

Let’s start with my personal favorite of this release: The improved experience when viewing a group, for example, a group helper with lights. 💡 When viewing such a group entity, you can now control the individual members of that group directly in that dialog. Super useful! I’m pretty sure that will be used a lot in our house.

But as the release title suggests, this release brings in an important foundation for new AI opportunities in Home Assistant: AI Tasks. Think of it as a way to delegate tasks to AI and get back the result of that task in a structured way so it can be used. Sounds vague? Dive into the release notes below!

Enjoy the release!

../Frenck

We’re excited to welcome Shelly to the Works with Home Assistant program! Shelly is very well-established in both our ecosystem and the smart home world, so it’s great to formally certify a selection of their Z-Wave devices.

Their retrofit smart switches and relays are amazing for turning all sorts of dumb devices, like light fixtures or ceiling fans, into devices you can easily control in smart new ways. Also, being Works with certified means they have been thoroughly tested, ensuring they give the best possible experience with Home Assistant.

The variety of complex settings and functionality, like energy monitoring, makes them popular with our community doing advanced smart retrofits, like connecting an old garage door or motorized shutters. These are perfect for keeping non-smart devices out of the landfill and working for years to come.

The Home Assistant companion app for Android just keeps getting better with every release, and recently, it gained some dedicated support to help accelerate its development. Several months ago, I (Timothy Nibeaudeau, also known as @TimoPtr) joined the Open Home Foundation as our dedicated Android developer 🎉.

It’s been over two years, and hundreds of thousands of installs, since we’ve published a dedicated update for our community on the development of the app, and I’d like to give you a quick update on recent improvements and what’s coming next.

Our Works with Home Assistant program is expanding once again, and this time we’re excited to announce Zooz is joining us! We have tested many new devices of all different types, ensuring they provide the best experience possible with Home Assistant. As well as classic staples for the smart home, they also bring some very cool flood protection devices to help safeguard your home.

These will be the first certified Z-Wave devices added to the program in some time, and are just part of the exciting future the Home Assistant community and Zooz see for this smart home protocol.

We’re thrilled to welcome Nuki to the Works with Home Assistant program! Nuki creates some slick-looking smart locks that you can fit to most doors (or even on top of existing locks). They are constantly pioneering new and exciting features, while also using the open standards we support. Nuki is today bringing three different lock types to the program, all certified by our team to provide the best experience possible with Home Assistant.