2026.6.4
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Notifications

The Notify integrationIntegrations connect and integrate Home Assistant with your devices, services, and more. [Learn more] makes it possible to send notifications to a wide variety of platforms. To use it, you have to set up at least one notification target (notifier). Check the integrations list for one that fits your use case.

If you want to send notifications to the Home Assistant web interface, you may use the Persistent Notification integration. It is available as an automatically configured notifier. See its documentation for more details.

Note

Building block integration

This notifications is a building block integration that cannot be added to your Home Assistant directly but is used and provided by other integrations.

A building block integration differs from the typical integration that connects to a device or service. Instead, other integrations that do integrate a device or service into Home Assistant use this notifications building block to provide entities, services, and other functionality that you can use in your automations or dashboards.

If one of your integrations features this building block, this page documents the functionality the notifications building block offers.

The state of a notify entity

The state of a notify entity is the date and time when a message was last sent.

Screenshot showing the state of a notify entity in the developer tools Screenshot showing the state of a notify entity in the developer tools.

In addition, the entity can have the following states:

  • Unavailable: The entity is currently unavailable.
  • Unknown: The state is not yet known.

List of actions

The Notifications integrationIntegrations connect and integrate Home Assistant with your devices, services, and more. [Learn more] provides the following actions. Each link below opens a dedicated page with examples, parameters, and a step-by-step UI walkthrough.

For an overview of every action across all integrations, see the actions reference.

Companion app notifications

A common notification integration is via the Home Assistant Companion app for Android or iOS. If your phone is available as a notify entity, use the Send a notification message action and select that phone as the target. Some older setups may still provide a phone-specific action such as notify.mobile_app_your_phone_name. Refer to the Companion app documentation for many customization options.

With any of these integrations, the Message field in the automation editor is the main text that will be sent. Other fields are optional, and some integrations support additional Data or Target information to customize the action. For more details, refer to their integration documentation.

Be aware that the notify.notify action is shorthand for the first notify action the system can find. It might not work as intended. Choose a specific action to make sure your message goes to the right place.

Notifications can also be sent using Notify groups. These allow you to send notifications to multiple devices with a single call, or to update which device is notified by only changing it in a single place.

Notifications automation examples

Notifications are most useful when Home Assistant sends them at the right moment, such as when something needs your attention or when you want a message to stay visible in the interface. The examples below show two common ways to use notification actions in automations.

Tip

You don’t need to edit YAML to use these examples. Copy a YAML snippet from this page, open the automation editor in Home Assistant, and press Ctrl+V (or Cmd+V on Mac). Home Assistant automatically converts the pasted YAML into the visual editor format, whether it’s a full automation, a single trigger, a condition, or an action.

Automation: send a notification when the garage door stays open

This automation sends a message to your phone when the garage door has been open for 10 minutes.

  • Trigger: State
    • Entity: Garage door (binary_sensor.garage_door)
    • To: On
    • For: 00:10:00
  • Action: Send a notification message
    • Target: My Device (notify.my_device)
    • Message: The garage door has been open for 10 minutes.
YAML example for a garage door notification
AutomationAutomations in Home Assistant allow you to automatically respond to things that happen in and around your home. [Learn more] 
alias: "Notify when the garage door stays open"
triggers:
  - trigger: state
    entity_id: binary_sensor.garage_door
    to: "on"
    for: "00:10:00"
actions:
  - action: notify.send_message
    target:
      entity_id: notify.my_device
    data:
      message: >
        The garage door has been open for 10 minutes.

Automation: show a persistent notification when a leak is detected

This automation shows a notification in the Home Assistant interface when a leak sensor detects moisture.

  • Trigger: State
    • Entity: Kitchen leak sensor (binary_sensor.kitchen_leak)
    • To: On
  • Action: Send a persistent notification
    • Title: Water leak detected
    • Message: The kitchen leak sensor detected moisture.
YAML example for a leak notification
AutomationAutomations in Home Assistant allow you to automatically respond to things that happen in and around your home. [Learn more] 
alias: "Show a kitchen leak notification"
triggers:
  - trigger: state
    entity_id: binary_sensor.kitchen_leak
    to: "on"
actions:
  - action: notify.persistent_notification
    data:
      title: "Water leak detected"
      message: "The kitchen leak sensor detected moisture."

Testing a notification action

After you set up a notifier, test its action from the developer tools.

  1. Go to Settings > Developer tools > Actions.
  2. From the Action dropdown menu, choose the action you want to test, such as Send a notification message or Send a persistent notification.
  3. If you are testing notify.send_message, select one or more targets using Entity, Device, Area, Floor, or Label.
  4. In Message, enter the notification text.
  5. Select Perform action.