2024.12.5

2022.8: You can fix it!

Franck Nijhof Franck Nijhof Comments

Home Assistant Core 2022.8! 🏖

While many of you enjoy a well-deserved vacation around this time, it seems like it didn’t slow down the development/contributions made to Home Assistant. What a beautifully packed release this is again!

I’m super stoked about the added Bluetooth support, opening up a whole new world of devices to Home Assistant. I’m even more excited about the new repairs and supported brands features. Those are going to help out A LOT 😃.

Do you know what is really great about this release? All the major features and changes announced in this release are a step forward to our current goal: Streamlining experiences.

Enjoy the release!

../Frenck

Missed our release party live stream on YouTube? Don’t worry! You can watch the recording of it right here!

Introducing Repairs: You can fix it!

A completely new feature we hope you are going to love: Repairs! 👷‍♂️

The repairs dashboard can be found in the settings menu and is a place where Home Assistant can notify you of issues that you can (and should) fix!

From detected current issues on your system to future issues, e.g., caused by the use of a feature that will be removed, and anything in between. The problems reported by the repair dashboard are actionable and resolvable by you.

Screenshot showing the repairs dashboard, with some reported and repairable issues

These repairable issues reported can be anything and are specifically tailored to your Home Assistant instance. Clicking on an issue will show you more information about it and tell you what you need to do to fix it.

Sometimes, this needs manual intervention by, for example, updating your YAML configuration; Other times, it will automatically fix an issue for you after it asks you to confirm it or after asking you to make a choice.

Screenshot showing details shown by a repairable issue, providing information on how to resolve it.

This release can detect about 25 issues now, and additionally, if a Home Assistant Alert is found that matches your system, it will also show up in the repairs dashboard.

There are many use cases for the new repairs feature, and you can expect it to be extended a lot, with more issue detections, in the near future.

First-class Bluetooth support

Today, we proudly announce that Home Assistant now has first-class Bluetooth support! 🥇

A brand new Bluetooth integration has been added, which provides absolutely amazing Bluetooth support to Home Assistant, including automatic discovery of new devices and the ability to push device updates.

Integrations that implement device support can easily be built on top of these features, meaning we now have a solid base in Home Assistant to unlock support for many Bluetooth devices out there!

The screenshot below shows that the Bluetooth integration is set up, and it discovered a new device. In this case, it discovered a Mi Flora Flower care sensor device.

Screenshot showing the integration page, with an active Bluetooth integration and a Mi Flora plant sensor device being discovered

A good example is the SwitchBot integration. It has been updated to support the new Bluetooth integration, and because of that, is now a push-based integration providing a much more stable experience.

This release adds five integrations built on this: SensorPush, Govee, INKBIRD, Moat, and Xiaomi BLE. The latter also provides support for the reasonably popular Mi Flora plant sensors.

Suppose you are using the Home Assistant OS on a Raspberry Pi 3 or 4, or are using a supported Bluetooth adapter. In that case, the Bluetooth integration will work out of the box for new installations and is automatically discovered on existing setups.

Shout out to @bdraco for creating this fantastic new addition, @Ernst79 for providing implementation feedback, and his excellent work on the ble_monitor custom integration, which was an inspiration for the Bluetooth integration. Lastly, a shout out to @Jc2k for implementing the Xiaomi BLE integration that greatly helped with testing. Thanks guys! 🙏

HomeKit Bluetooth support

To continue the story on Bluetooth, the HomeKit Controller now also supports Bluetooth and leverages the above-mentioned new Bluetooth integration 🎉

In case you didn’t know, the HomeKit Controller integration allows you to connect to HomeKit-capable devices and integrate them directly into Home Assistant. Allowing you to monitor and control these devices, they support push-based updates and, above all: Are entirely local!

You don’t need to own or have an Apple phone or computer to use this!

Supporting HomeKit Bluetooth-capable devices is fantastic! It makes a lot of devices out there compatible with Home Assistant that have no other way of integrating. There are lots of door locks, wall plugs, and other smart devices that you can use now.

Thanks for the work on this @Jc2k and @bdraco!

Finding the integration supporting your device

Some integrations work with multiple different brands. This can happen because, for example, those devices share a communication protocol, are white-labeled and sold under numerous brand names, or may carry different brand names depending on where in the world they are sold.

For example, if you have a Luxaflex cover, you can actually use it using the Hunter Douglas PowerView integration. And this is not the only example; there are many more! The problem is, how would one know that?

To make setting up things in Home Assistant easier, integrations can now support multiple brands! So, if you now add an integration in Home Assistant and search for Luxaflex, you will find one!

Screenshot demonstrating the supported brands; it is now possible to search for a brand that is supported by another integration

When you add a new integration that is supported by another integration, Home Assistant will tell you which integration provides the support and guide you to set up that integration.

Better map colors

Maps shown in Home Assistant have had a slight makeover and now use a new color palette. These new colors provide much greater contrast and significantly improve their readability.

Especially if you are using the dark mode in the user interface of Home Assistant, you will notice a big difference.

Screenshot demonstrating the new map colors in both light and dark mode

Thanks to @KTibow for getting the ball rolling on this one, @matthiasdebaat for providing UX feedback, and @bramkragten for making this change.

Other noteworthy changes

There is much more juice in this release; here are some of the other noteworthy changes this release:

  • “Z-Wave JS” is now shown and known as “Z-Wave” in Home Assistant.
  • The “System Health” setting menu item, has been moved to the “Repairs” dashboard, in the overflow menu (three dots in the top right).
  • In the background, a project has been started to standardize the names of entities and devices. This work is in progress and will take a long time to complete, as each possible entity has to be adjusted. But it will streamline experiences!
  • You can now change the shown unit of measurement of number entities that provide a temperature. Thanks, @emontnemery!
  • @frenck updated the events developer tools to use YAML instead of JSON and added syntax highlighting.
  • The LIFX integration got a significant overhaul, making it much more reliable. Thanks for the work on this in the past releases @bdraco and @Djelibeybi!
  • The UniFi Network now has update entities, allowing you to update the firmware of UniFi devices directly from Home Assistant. Great addition @J3173!
  • The Material Design Icons have been updated to v7.0.96, giving you 100 brand new icons to use 🤩 Thanks, @goyney!
  • SwitchBot now supports Hygrometers (thanks @murtas) and door/contact sensors (thanks @bdraco)!
  • @Noltari added update entities to the QNAP QSW integration! Nice!
  • @frenck added multifactor authentication support for Verisure. So now you can add more security to your Verisure alarm system.
  • HomeWizard Energy added support for Watermeters! Thanks, @DCSBL!
  • Yolink now supports garage doors, nice @matrixd2!
  • @simeon-simsoft for bidirectional Wallbox chargers, thank you!
  • You can now view your current network connection details in the Network settings screen. Thanks, @zsarnett!
  • Lutron Caséta now supports the Lutron RA3 Sunnata Keypads. Thanks, @danaues!
  • @mkmer added a battery level sensor to Aladdin Connect, thank you!
  • The Sensibo integration now supports the AirQ sensor. Thanks, @gjohansson-ST!

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 2022.8.1 - August 4

Release 2022.8.2 - August 7

Release 2022.8.3 - August 9

Release 2022.8.4 - August 12

Release 2022.8.5 - August 15

Release 2022.8.6 - August 17

Release 2022.8.7 - August 25

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 don’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

Below is a listing of the breaking change for this release, per subject or integration. Click on one of those to read more about the breaking change for that specific item.

Advantage Air

Each AC will have its own device, different from the one previously created. Any automations or scripts that target the device will need to be corrected.

(@Bre77 - #75395) (documentation)

The previsouly deprecated service advantage_air.set_myzone has been removed. Use the available MyZone select entity instead.

(@Bre77 - #75160) (documentation)

Calendar

Calendar description attributes are no longer written into the recorder database.

(@allenporter - #75375) (documentation)

HERE Travel Time

The single HERE Travel Time sensor with attributes is split up into separate sensors for Duration, Duration in Traffic, Route, Distance, Origin, Destination.

If you used the entity attributes in your automation or scripts, you will need to adapt them to this change.

(@eifinger - #72405) (documentation)

HomeKit Controller

The ecobee Fan mode number entity has been removed as HomeKit Controller now implements fan mode on the climate entity which replaces this functionality.

(@bdraco - #74440) (documentation)

LIFX

Each LIFX device now has its own integration entry. The existing entry will be migrated to separate entries automatically as each device is discovered, and will automatically be removed once all devices are found.

Migrating to an integration entry per device allows Home Assistant to take care of discovery IP updates and retries, dramatically improving the integration’s reliability.

LIFX can now be configured manually by IP address. DHCP, HomeKit, and native discovery are supported for updating IP addresses to ensure we never lose track of a device.

Advanced YAML configuration is deprecated and will be removed in a future release. Advanced YAML configuration is no longer necessary as the integration now fully utilizes Network Configuration, and can also function without working discovery.

(@bdraco - #74316) (documentation)

Logger

Timestamps in the Home Assistant log file now include millisecond-level resolution.

Scripts or external log system that rely on this will need to be updated to handle the extra decimal places.

(@puddly - #74518) (documentation)

Material Design Icons

In the latest Material Design Icons update, several icons have been renamed or removed. Removed and renamed icons will continue to work for the next two releases.

Please make sure you update any use of the following MDI icons:

Removed:

  • mdi:android-messages - Use mdi:message-text instead.
  • mdi:book-variant-multiple - Use mdi:bookmark-box-multiple instead.
  • mdi:desktop-mac - Use mdi:monitor instead.
  • mdi:desktop-mac-dashboard - Use mdi:monitor-dashboard instead.
  • mdi:discord
  • mdi:google-home
  • tablet-android - Use mdi:tablet instead.

Renamed:

  • mdi:diving-scuba to mdi:diving-scuba-mask
  • mdi:email-send to mdi:email-arrow-right
  • mdi:email-send-outline to mdi:email-arrow-right-outline
  • mdi:email-receive to mdi:email-arrow-left
  • mdi:email-receive-outline to mdi:email-arrow-left-outline
  • mdi:format-textdirection-r-to-l to mdi:format-pilcrow-arrow-left
  • mdi:format-textdirection-l-to-r to mdi:format-pilcrow-arrow-right
  • mdi:globe-light to mdi:globe-light-outline
  • mdi:google-controller to mdi:controller
  • mdi:google-controller-off to mdi:controller-off
  • mdi:lecturn to mdi:lectern
  • mdi:mosque to mdi:mosque-outline
  • mdi:receipt to mdi:receipt-text
  • mdi:receipt-outline to mdi:receipt-text-outline
  • mdi:silo to mdi:silo-outline
  • mdi:text-to-speech to mdi:microphone-message
  • mdi:text-to-speech-off to mdi:microphone-message-off
  • mdi:timeline-help to mdi:timeline-question
  • mdi:timeline-help-outline to mdi:timeline-question-outline
  • mdi:vector-point to mdi:vector-point-select

(@goyney - #13175)

Sonos

The previously deprecated sonos.join and sonos.unjoin services have been removed in favor of the standard media_player.join and media_player.unjoin services.

(@jjlawren - #74476) (documentation)

SwitchBot

The Bluetooth integration must be enabled before switchbot can be used. Bluetooth is automatically discovered in most cases, but can be manually added from the integrations page if it is not.

The Time between updates (seconds) and How long to scan for advertisement data options have been removed as they are no longer needed since the integration is now push instead of polling.

(@bdraco - #75645) (documentation)

Z-Wave

Carbon Monoxide binary sensors have changed their device class from gas to co.

(@EnochPrime - #75649) (documentation)

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:

  • XBee
  • SoChain
  • Google Play Music Desktop Player (GPMDP)

All three were previously disabled due to incompatibilities and have now been removed.

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 2022.8