Sunset

The Sunset trigger fires the moment the sun sets below the horizon at your location. Home Assistant calculates the exact time for every day of the year from your home location, so the trigger stays accurate as sunset shifts through the seasons.

Use it to turn on lights, close blinds, or arm an evening routine the moment the day ends.

Using this trigger from the user interface

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

To use this trigger in an automation:

1. Go to Settings > Automations & scenes.
2. Open an existing automation, or select Create automation > Create new automation.
3. In the When section, select Add trigger.
4. From the search box, search for and select Sunset.
5. Optionally, set an offset to fire before or after sunset:
   • Under Offset, enter how far from sunset to fire, such as 30 minutes.
   • Under Offset type, select Before or After.
6. Select Save.

Options in the UI

Using this trigger 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 trigger as sun.sunset. A basic example looks like this:

trigger: sun.sunset

This fires every day, the moment the sun sets below the horizon. To fire a fixed amount of time before or after sunset, add the offset and offset_type options:

trigger: sun.sunset
options:
  offset:
    minutes: 30
  offset_type: before

This fires 30 minutes before sunset every day.

Options in YAML

Good to know

• This trigger does not use a target. It applies to the sun at your configured home location.
• To fire a fixed amount of time before or after sunset, set the Offset and Offset type options. For light-based timing that adapts to the seasons, use Sun elevation crossed threshold instead.
• To react to the last light after sunset, use Dusk. To react when the sun comes up, use Sunrise.

Try it yourself

Ready to test this? Go to Settings > Automations & scenes, create a new automation, and add this trigger. Save the automation, then change the state of the targeted entity to watch the trigger fire on your actual entitiesAn 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].

For this trigger, there is no target entity to change. To test it, wait for the next sunset, or temporarily switch to a trigger you can control while you build the rest of the automation.

More examples

Real scenarios where this trigger fires in automations and scripts. Copy any example and adapt it to your setup.

Automation: turn on the porch light at sunset

When the sun sets, turn on the porch light so the entrance stays lit through the evening.

• Trigger: Sunset
• Action: Turn on light
  • Target: Porch light

alias: "Turn on porch light at sunset"
triggers:
  - trigger: sun.sunset
actions:
  - action: light.turn_on
    target:
      entity_id: light.porch

Still stuck?

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

Related triggers

These triggers work well alongside this one:

• Sunrise: Triggers when the sun rises.

• Dusk: Triggers at dusk, when civil, nautical, or astronomical twilight ends.

• Sun elevation crossed threshold: Triggers when the sun’s elevation crosses a threshold you set.