It is evening twilight

The It is evening twilight condition passes during the gradually darkening period after sunset, while the sun is below the horizon but the sky is not yet completely dark. You can match any evening twilight, or narrow it to a specific phase: civil, nautical, or astronomical. Home Assistant works this out from your home location.

Use it to run an automation in that post-sunset window, like switching to evening lighting or closing the blinds as the sky fades.

Using this condition from the user interface

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

To use this condition in an automation:

1. Go to Settings > Automations & scenes.
2. Open an existing automation, or select Create automation > Create new automation.
3. In the And if section, select Add condition.
4. From the search box, search for and select Sun: It is evening twilight.
5. Under Twilight type, select Any, Civil, Nautical, or Astronomical.
6. Select Save.

Options in the UI

Using this condition 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.

In YAML, refer to this condition as sun.is_evening_twilight. A basic example looks like this:

condition: sun.is_evening_twilight

This passes during any evening twilight. To match a specific phase, add the type option:

condition: sun.is_evening_twilight
options:
  type: civil

Options in YAML

Good to know

• This condition does not use a target. It checks the sun at your configured home location.
• Evening twilight is the sinking side of the day. The matching period before sunrise is It is morning twilight.
• The phases are stacked: civil comes first right after sunset, then nautical, then astronomical, and finally It is night. Any covers all three.
• The length of twilight changes through the year and with your latitude. Near the poles, a phase can fail to occur on some days, and the condition does not pass then.

Try it yourself

Ready to test this? Go to Settings > Automations & scenes, open an automation, and add this condition. Trigger the automation with and without the condition met, and watch whether it continues or stops.

More examples

Real scenarios where this condition gates an automation. Copy any example and adapt it to your setup.

Automation: switch to evening lighting at dusk

When the living room is occupied during civil evening twilight, switch the lights to a warm evening scene.

• Trigger: Living room occupancy detected
• Condition: It is evening twilight (Civil)
• Action: Activate the evening lighting scene

alias: "Evening lighting at dusk"
triggers:
  - trigger: state
    entity_id: binary_sensor.living_room_occupancy
    to: "on"
conditions:
  - condition: sun.is_evening_twilight
    options:
      type: civil
actions:
  - action: scene.turn_on
    target:
      entity_id: scene.living_room_evening

Still stuck?

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

Related conditions

These conditions work well alongside this one:

• It is morning twilight: Tests if it is morning twilight, optionally of a specific type.

• Sun is set: Tests if the sun is set.

• It is night: Tests if it is night.