Every September, we celebrate the anniversary of Home Assistant’s first PR in 2013 – for our 12th birthday, we’re going all in on community again. Last month, we asked for submissions on how Home Assistant helps you, and today we will highlight our favorites! We will also take a look at all the cool milestones over the past year in the project, thanks to contributions from you all, and the new things coming up for the community.

It’s a communal effort

When I (Missy Quarry) joined as the Community & Social Media Manager in February 2024, I was still new to how an open source project the size of Home Assistant manages its community. Over the past 18 months, I’ve seen Home Assistant community members from all walks of life — whether DIY tinkerers or people simply looking to make small improvements at home — contribute in their own ways. By sharing your stories and inspiring others, you’ve helped the project grow.  For our 12th birthday, I want to celebrate these contributions, no matter the size or complexity. 😌

Before I jump into celebrating all your amazing contributions and how they shape the projects managed by the Open Home Foundation, I have a couple of birthday presents for you. 🎁

First, I’m thrilled to share our new Community website! Right now, it’s a simple hub to find community information with ease, but we expect to evolve this over the coming months (or so). You’ll find links to our official community platforms, information on events, and details on meetups, including how to get reimbursed for certain fees as a host. In the future, I’d like to include links to regional communities we’re aware of and showcase more of the kinds of stories I’ll be sharing today.

Feel like something’s missing from this new page? Let me know!

Next, we’ve been working hard to do more of our development in the open. Last September, I redesigned the Discord server and in doing so I gated the Developer category behind a role. This has made it more difficult to develop in the open with the channels hidden behind a role, so we’re switching things up.

As of this week, the Developer category is now read-only for every member. Want to take a peek into the future of Home Assistant? Head to the #projects channel and see what contributors are talking about! Want to join in and contribute with either your feedback or skills? I’ve created an info thread for the channel that explains how to assign yourself either the Developer or Designer role and unlock the ability to chat in the threads.

Let’s jump into those submitted stories now… 🤩

Happily ever after

In my opinion, the best thing about Home Assistant is its flexibility - you can integrate such a wide range of devices into it and use their data to build a unique-to-your-home experience. And that’s exactly why I wanted to hear how you, the community, use it in your own home to benefit you. Here are my favorite stories you submitted - I hope one inspires your next project. ✨

• A coffee automation to improve Home Approval Factor. ☕️ Jordan made a morning automation to avoid having the coffee grinder grind his morning mood.

• u/katschung helped their girlfriend fully accept Home Assistant by creating a dashboard with a retrogame-style floor plan. 🕹️

• Sythsaz uses Home Assistant to make sure their pupper is fed. 🐾 “I’ve managed to make it so my dog’s food auto emails the vet then the response to the email gets put on my calendar so I know how long a bag of food lasts as well as adding the receipts to Google Drive.”

• Inspired by PowerDisplayESPHome, JannickBlmndl made an LED matrix that helps their household be more sustainable by being energy flexible. It displays the live energy prices from their energy provider. 📊

• Tano Spirits in Melbourne, Australia, uses Home Assistant to automate their Japanese Shochu distillery, inspired by the brewing automations at Little Island Brewing Co in Singapore. 🍻

• Several years ago, HillPhantom found that Home Assistant wasn’t quite ready for him. Over the past year, though, he’s now got Ollama set up with his Home Assistant Voice Preview Edition and has been building guides on how to make your own mmWave radar sensors in Home Assistant. 👋🏻

• Over just a few weeks, Pieter van Kampen recently integrated 190 devices that respond to voice control and more than 1200 active entities from his KNX home to create over 30 automations to help with everything from mowing the lawn to controlling shades based on the sun’s location and intensity. 🪟

• MB used Zigbee buttons to help collect data for their son’s doctor after he developed some trouble sleeping. This gave excellent insight for the doctor to start looking into causes, and they even used the system remotely while doing further evaluation. 📈

• Graham Hosking took automations to another level (before we did) with his AI Automation Suggester and Automation Inspector. It takes the load off your brain by helping come up with new, clever automations! 🤖

• Wessam Lauf fell down the rabbit hole that is Home Assistant once he got his setup running. Inspired by the Graphite theme and after some LLM vibe-coding, he wrote a template for his very own theme, Frosted Glass - now available in HACS. 🎨

• Too many of us anthropomorphize our homes, telling it to chill out when five things break the same day. Biofects took that to heart and created this Home Assistant avatar for his home (here’s a bonus, nightmare fuel first version). 🫣

Developers! 👏🏻 Developers! 👏🏻 Developers! 👏🏻

Our community is more than developers, it’s true. But we wouldn’t be the largest open source project on GitHub if we didn’t have a vibrant and active developer community. This ship sails largely due to their contributions, and we genuinely appreciate all of their efforts.

That’s why we’re eager to interview community members when we open new roles at the foundation. We’ve employed community members like Joostlek (who designed the new Integration Quality Scale and helps onboard new integrations into Core), Timo (who is our first ever Android developer and has focused on polishing the Android app), and Maxim (a talented developer from the Music Assistant community who works on both Music Assistant and ESPHome and is one of our newest additions to the team). Their contributions have helped shape how things work around here, but it was their contributions as community members that helped pave the way for their joining the foundation. These are just a select few of the several new hires at the foundation who were active community members.

(Have you checked our jobs page recently to see what roles are open? 👀)

With our community of contributors and working with Nabu Casa on the hardware design, we have successfully launched a few new pieces of hardware. The Home Assistant Voice Preview Edition brought in language experts from every corner of the world to help ensure our language coverage is the most robust in the industry. Thanks to contributors, we support languages like Greek, Icelandic, and more recently Irish Gaeilge! 😎 We had community contributors help make sure the Home Assistant Connect ZWA-2 was prepared for launch last month. Sincerely, we couldn’t be more grateful for your support and efforts in these spaces.

Here are some fun stats from our GitHub contributors (commits on our Core repo):

• Last 12 months (Sept - Aug) - 14,385
• Previous 12 months - 14,503

A SPECIAL CONGRATULATIONS to bdraco, who just last week surpassed balloob (the founder of Home Assistant) as the contributor with the most commits!

The top 8 contributors of all time in home-assistant/core👏🏻

This is just a small peek into all the hard work that goes into maintaining Home Assistant - we have more repositories than just Core, and every single contribution is valued.

Honorable dev mention from the submitted community stories - I couldn’t leave Joostlek’s (joke) submission out. 🤣

• Our very own Head of Developer Relations (his words), Joost Lekkerkerker, says Home Assistant helps keep him off the street. He’s just launched his new blog that talks about his vision of a smart home, and how he was inspired to not buy Tuya Wi-Fi lights after seeing my experience with some path lights.

Our humble gratitude

Community is the core of what we do and the heart of Home Assistant. We thrive because you care and contribute your valuable time to support our collective success. Whether you found our platform because you wanted more privacy from big tech, were intrigued by the number of choices implemented into a single app, or needed something to track your sustainability efforts — you support our values every day. Thanks for choosing us, and thank you for all you do to help support the foundation and the projects we maintain.

A very special thanks to all our Home Assistant Cloud subscribers and anyone who has purchased our official Home Assistant hardware. These support the full-time development of Home Assistant (along with ESPHome, Music Assistant, and so much more), and are the easiest way to ensure these projects keep getting cool new features!

We have more things coming down the line for you. In the near future, we plan on announcing a new merch store 👕. In the first half of next year, I’ll announce when Home Assistant Community Day 2026 will be. We’re already working with Nabu Casa on the next exciting hardware announcement (no spoilers…for now). And that’s not even touching the industry events we plan on attending, the State of the Open Home, and so much more. I’m excited to take you all on the journey we’re already working on over the next 12 months, and I’m always looking forward to another year of amazing contributions. 😌

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.