Yes, it’s June 2023 and the new version of Home Assistant will be released on the first Wednesday of this month. You can already use the new functionalities in the beta version, so let’s see what’s new in version 2023.6 of Home Assistant!
Visit the Release Party this upcoming Wednesday here.
The latest beta release notes can be read here.
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As you might know, Home Assistant releases a new version every month on the first Wednesday of that month. The beta version is released a week before so that you can already see what’s new. Next to that, you can help test Home Assistant 2023.6 if you join the beta channel. To join the beta channel, go to Settings > System > Updates. Click on the three dots in the upper right corner and select Join Beta channel. You can always revert back to the official release by leaving the beta channel again. If you find issues in the beta release, you can report them on the GitHub pages of Home Assistant. Links to those pages are in the beta release notes. The link to the latest beta release notes is in the description below.
Connect your network storage to Home Assistant 2023.6
The first new functionality was eagerly awaited. You can now connect your network storage to Home Assistant so that you can add your NAS to your media folder and back up Home Assistant data to your network storage. If you go to Settings->System->Storage, you can add various network storage folders. You can use SAMBA or NFS as the protocol.
If you choose for Backup, the default backup location will automagically change to this folder. You can change this default location by going to Settings->System->Backups and clicking on the three dots. Select Change Default Backup Location to choose the location that you prefer.
If you choose Media, your network location will be added to the Local Media folder. To check this, go to Media and select Local Media. You will see your media folder here and when you click it, it will show all the media on your network storage.
If you choose the option share, you can create a shared folder that some add-ons can use to retrieve config files. For example, if you create a shared folder and give it the name MosquittoConfig, you can point to that folder in the Mosquitto Addon. This way, the addon will retrieve extra config files from that share.
Improved Light Entity Dialogs
The light entity dialog has gotten some new options. If you open it, you’ll see the time when the state was last updated. By clicking on it, you switch between the exact time and how long it was ago when the entity state was changed. You can now also add favorite colors to the light entity. If you click on the color, the light will change to that color. If you long-press the color, you can change the color and…. drag and drop your favorite colors… It’s also possible to add and delete favorite colors.
Integration Pages in Home Assistant 2023.6
The next change is especially for those people that love the fact that Home Assistant changes its UI frequently… They did it again, this time the Integration pages of Home Assistant 2023.6 have changed and will make some tutorials from the past no longer 100% valid. Wonderful…
But, the integration pages look a lot more consistent now. You still see all the integrations on this page. If an integration is a cloud-based integration, you will see a blue cloud icon on the integration card. If an integration is a custom integration, for example, a HACS integration, you will see an orange package icon on the integration card. And if it’s cloud-based and custom, you’ll see the combined icons.
You can now open services, devices, and entities for each integration straight from the integration card. Next to that, there’s a new cog wheel that takes you to the Integration configuration page. Here you’ll find the configure option, a link to documentation, and a link to the Known issues. You can also enable debug logging and enable and disable specific devices on this page.
In the bottom right corner, you’ll find a button to add a device for the integration as well.
When an integration cannot be set up, you will see a message on the integration card and by clicking on the cog wheel, you will see what device causes the error.
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Copy and Paste support in Automation and script editors
The automation and script editors now have the possibility to copy, cut, and paste triggers, conditions, and actions.
If you want to use a code snippet from an existing automation in a new automation, then click on the three dots next to a trigger, condition, or action and select copy. Then, create a new automation and click on Add Trigger, add Condition or Add Action and select Paste. Your code will now be pasted. This might save you some time when you are creating automations or scripts.
Which automations use which blueprints?
It’s now possible to see which automations use which blueprints. When you go to Settings->Automations & Scenes and click the Blueprints tab, you see the list of blueprints in your system. Now click on the three dots next to the desired blueprint and select “show automations using this blueprint”. You will now see a list of all the automations that use this blueprint.
Next to that, it’s not possible anymore to delete a blueprint when the blueprint is still being used by automations.
New YouTube integration in Home Assistant 2023.6
And now, the most important (cough) addition in this release… (drumroll). The Youtube integration. I will create a separate tutorial about how to set up the YouTube integration because it’s a bit too much for this What’s New video, but after you’ve set it up, it looks like this. You get two new sensors, one that shows the latest published video and one that shows the subscriber count. I tried to show the thumbnail as an image on my dashboard, but I couldn’t get that to work yet. If one of you knows how to achieve that, then please let me know in the comments! I could only show the thumbnail as an icon for the entity using the Mushroom template card.
Roborock in Home Assistant 2023.6
The Roborock integration was introduced in the last release and now exposes more sensors like the cleaning time and time left to clean the filter, sensors, and brushes.
Show only valid options for target devices
Another thing that is cool is that you now only see options and settings that are actually available to selected target devices and entities in the UI. For instance, when you select the action light.turn_on in an automation for a lightbulb that doesn’t support color, you won’t see the color selector anymore. And when you select a color lightbulb, you will see a lot more options. This makes the UI much cleaner!
Entity ID in States field in the Developer Tools
Then, there is one thing fixed that I found really annoying in the past and that is that the entity_id is now used instead of the entity name in the state field in the developer tools. It was always a pain to get the state of an entity and not be able to copy the entity id straight from that field to use it in templates. This is now possible and makes creating template sensors a little bit easier for you who like to create your own custom sensors.
Other changes
These were the biggest things that caught my eye, but there are more changes in this release. You can find a link to the full list of changes in the description of this video, but here’s a summary of the things that are implemented as well:
- A new integration for Google Generative AI Conversation is added so that you can have a conversation with Google Generative AI in Home Assistant. This conversation agent is unable to control your house, but it can query information that has been provided by Home Assistant. To use this, you have to join the PaLM API and MakerSuite waitlist first. I filled in the forms and am still waiting to get access. As soon as I have access I might create a separate tutorial about this.
- This release uses Python 3.11 which is the language that Home Assistant is written in. This means that Home Assistant 2023.6 got a lot faster and consumes fewer resources at runtime. This might also mean that some of your HACS integrations might break, but the developers of those integrations will fix that in the upcoming days or weeks.
HACS Updates
Speaking of which, some people ask at every release why their HACS integrations break and why they are not tested. Well, HACS is not part of the core of Home Assistant 2023.6 and doesn’t get tested because of that. The developers of integrations in HACS have to test it themselves and fix the issues. When you install HACS, you get a message that it is not officially supported and that you may have problems. So be aware that with each release, your HACS integrations may stop working for a while.
- There have been some changes to Z-Wave. I do not use Z-Wave myself, but if you do, check out this list.
- New entities have been added for date, time, and date_time. This is not something you can use yourself, but integrations can now make use of them and expose them so you can use them as controls for those integrations.
- There are even more changes like that Matter supports tilt covers, a remote control entity for Samsung TVs, a media player entity for the Android TV Remote integration, and other stuff which can be found in the full list link in the description of this video.
Conclusion
Please be aware that this video is made based on the beta release of Home Assistant 2023.6, so some functionalities might not make the final release that will be released on the first Wednesday of June 2023.
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