Talking to Assist - Sentences starter pack

Home Assistant comes with built-in sentences contributed by the community for dozens of languages.

Prerequisites

• The entities you want to control with Assist must be exposed to Assist.
• When using the names of entities or areas, make sure to use them exactly as they are defined in Home Assistant, or, create an alias.

Device control

Turning entities on and off

• turn on the living room light
• turn off ceiling fan
• turn on the TV
• lock all the doors
• open the main door

Lights

• Change kitchen lights brightness to 50%
• Set bed light to green
• set bed light brightness to 50%
• set living room brightness to 50%
• set brightness to 50%
  • Uses area of voice satellite
• set kitchen lights to red
• set lights to red
  • Uses area of voice satellite
• turn on the lights in the living room

Covers

• Close the garage door
• Open kitchen window
• Which curtains are closed
• Set bedroom curtain to 50%

Scenes and scripts

• Run stealth mode script
• Activate dinner scene
• Turn kitchen dinner scene on

Media player

• next item on TV
• next track
• next track in office
• previous track
• previous track in office
• skip song on the TV
• skip track on the TV
• skip to the next song on the TV
• pause|resume
  • pauses or resumes music on voice satellite or in current area
• pause|resume “area” music
  • pauses or resumes music in area
• pause|resume “entity”
  • pauses or resumes music on media player
• unpause TV
• TV unpause
• set TV volume to 90 percent
• change the TV volume to 90
• turn TV volume down to 90 percent

Vacuum

• return rover to base
• start rover

Lists

• Add bread to my shopping list
• Add decorating christmas tree to my december chores list
  • needs a todo list name “december chores”
• add clean out garage to weekend list
  • needs a todo list named “Weekend”

Date and time

• what time is it?
• what’s the date?

Timers

Starting

• set a timer for 5 minutes
• 5 minute timer
• set a 20 minute timer for pizza
• set a timer for 1 hour and 3 minutes
  • Break it up into hours, minutes, and seconds instead of using a technical term like set a timer for 63 minutes.

Cancelling

• cancel timer
  • can’t cancel multiple timers yet
• cancel 5 minute timer
• cancel pizza timer
• cancel kitchen timer
  • Must have been set by a voice satellite in the kitchen

Adding/Removing Time

• add 5 minutes to pizza timer
• add 5 minutes to kitchen timer
• remove 1 minute from timer
• remove 1 minute from 5 minute timer

Status

• timer status
• how much time is left on pizza timer?
• how much time is left on kitchen timer?
• how much time is left on 5 minute timer?

Timers running on an S3-Box-3B, with countdown text and a loading bar!

To learn how to set this up, refer to the ESP32-S3-Box-3B tutorial.

Combining timers and device control to add a delay

Unlike regular voice timers, delayed commands cannot be canceled or modified.

• Turn off the lights in the living room in 5 minutes
• Pause TV in 10 minutes
• Open the blinds in 5 minutes

Questions

Get information about a state

• What is the amount of energy from solar production?
• what is the heat pump co2 sensor’s co2 level?
• what is the battery level of my phone?

Ask about the weather

• What is the weather
• Struggling with this one? Check the troubleshooting section.

Ask about people

(that have device tracking activated in Home Assistant)

• How many people are in the kitchen
• Who is in the garage
• Where is Anne

Aborting

• Nevermind: If you triggered the wake word by mistake and want to stop Home Assistant from listening

Troubleshooting

The list of supported sentences is constantly being updated for each language. There are so many possible sentences that they cannot be all listed here. To find out what works in your language, follow these steps.

1. If the voice assistant doesn’t understand you, you may need to rephrase your sentence a bit. Or check if the 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] or areaAn area in Home Assistant is a logical grouping of devices and entities that are meant to match areas (or rooms) in the physical world: your home. For example, the living room area groups devices and entities in your living room. name is correct for your environment.

2. Take a look at the test sentences:

   • On GitHub, in the tests folder, open the subfolder for your language.

   • Look through the test files to see the example sentences that have been tested.

   • The second part of the file name shows the intentIntent is a term used with voice assistants. The intent is what Home Assistant thinks you want it to do when it extracts a command from your voice or text utterance. [Learn more], the first part shows the domainEach integration in Home Assistant has a unique identifier: The domain. It is often shown as the first part (before the dot) of entity IDs.. For some domainsEach integration in Home Assistant has a unique identifier: The domain. It is often shown as the first part (before the dot) of entity IDs., such as covers, fans, and light, there are specific sentences. The other domainsEach integration in Home Assistant has a unique identifier: The domain. It is often shown as the first part (before the dot) of entity IDs. are covered by the generic homeassistant_.

     

   • The screenshot below shows sentences used to test the command to turn on the lights. Note that Living room here is just a place holder. It could be any areaAn area in Home Assistant is a logical grouping of devices and entities that are meant to match areas (or rooms) in the physical world: your home. For example, the living room area groups devices and entities in your living room. that you have in your home.

     

3. View the sentence definition for the tests:

   • On GitHub, in the sentences folder, open the subfolder for your language.

   • Open the file of interest.

     

     • () mean alternative elements.
     • [] mean optional elements.
     • <> mean an expansion rule. To view these rules, search for expansion_rules in the _common.yaml file.
     • The syntax is explained in detail in the template sentence syntax documentation.

4. View the sentence definition for your language.

5. View the response definition

6. If there are issues when asking for the weather forecast, check the troubleshooting section to see common errors.

More sentences

You can extend the built-in sentences or add your own to trigger any action in Home Assistant.