Hi!

The October version of Home Assistant, version 2024.10, includes some cool new features like Heading Cards, repairs for long-term statistics, an improved YAML syntax for automations, and more. Let’s quickly take a look at what’s new!

---

⭐⭐⭐ NOTE: ⭐⭐⭐

This article accompanies a YouTube video. I wrote it for people who would rather read than watch a video. To keep doing this, I want to ask you to check out the video, leave a comment under the video, give the video a thumbs up, and subscribe to my YouTube channel. This means that the video is offered more often to new visitors so that they also stay informed of the latest Home Assistant tutorials.

Thank you for your support!

Ed

Click here to watch the video

Before I begin, I have to tell you that this video is based on the beta version of Home Assistant 2024.10. So, it’s possible that the final version may have a few small changes, but generally, that’s not much of an issue. Version 2024.10 will be released on the first Wednesday of October, and that’s when you’ll be able to install this version.

New Heading Card

There is still a lot of work being done to make setting up your dashboard even easier. This time, a new heading card has been added, allowing you to add titles or subtitles to your dashboard. As you can see in this example, I’ve added the title ‘Office.’ Below that, I’ve added a few subtitles. Above the lights section, I’ve added a subtitle ‘Lights,’ and as you can see, I’ve also added a counter to this heading that shows how many lights are on in my office. This counter becomes invisible when no lights are on in my office. Additionally, I’ve placed a subtitle ‘Climate’ above the climate section, and here too, I’ve added an entity to the heading, which is the temperature of the office. Above my media player, I’ve also created a heading that shows the status of the media player. In this case, it says ‘Playing.’ If you want to know how I created this player, check out this video where I explain it. The link is in the video description. And above my window covers, I’ve made a heading called ‘Windows.’

Now, if we look at the heading I’ve placed above the lights section, you’ll see that this heading is of the subtitle type. The name is ‘Lights,’ and the icon is ‘mdi:lamps’ I can also add an interaction to it, but in my case, I haven’t done that here.

I can also display entities in the heading. As you can see, I’ve added the entity ‘Number Lights On in Office.’ If I edit that entity, I can adjust the appearance. I’m using the icon ‘mdi:lightbulb-group’ in Amber color, and I want to show both the state and the icon.

By default, state content shows the state, but I can also change it to other values like ‘Last changed,’ ‘Last updated,’ and the attributes of the entity. If you want to know how to display the number of lights on and which lights are on in a room, check out this video, which is part of my YAML and Jinja course. I explain exactly how you can create this yourself. You can also find the link in the description of this video.

For Interactions, I’ve added an action that turns off all the lights in my office. So, when I click on the counter, all the lights turn off. For visibility, I’ve set it to show the counter only if at least one light is on in the office.

It’s great that the Home Assistant team has added the Heading Card. With this card, I can make my dashboard even more visually appealing. I still have a lot of work to do to get everything adjusted…

Repairs for Long Term Statistics

If entities have changed their unit of measurement in the past, this caused an error in the Long Term Statistics. These errors were not previously reported in the repairs option of Home Assistant, but from this version on, these errors will be displayed. So, you might see a lot of repairs when you upgrade to this version. Fortunately, you can fix these errors immediately via the repairs option or start rebuilding your long-term statistics from scratch.

Improved YAML syntax for automations

This seems like a big change for people who create Blueprints like me, but fortunately, it’s not that bad because the old setup will still work. A few releases ago, the YAML key ‘service’ was changed to ‘action.’ Now, the ‘trigger’ key has been changed to ‘triggers.’ The ‘condition’ key is now changed to ‘conditions,’ and the ‘action’ key is now changed to ‘actions.’ The ‘platform’ key of a trigger definition is now ‘trigger.’ Automations managed by the automation editor will automatically be migrated to the new syntax when saving an automation.

So, all blueprints should still work, but for those of you who create blueprints, please update your blueprints to the latest YAML syntax.

Faster upgrades when using custom integrations

Well, this is a bit of a technical story, but it comes down to the fact that upgrading custom integrations has become much faster. It was already much faster after the last release, but apparently, it could be even faster!

Matter

The development of Matter in Home Assistant is also progressing. Button entities and valve entities have now been added, along with support for operation states, Smoke & CO sensors, and Matter 1.3 power/energy sensors.

YAML Editor Improvements

Many people find the downside of YAML is that you have to be mindful of the indentation of lines in the code. Sometimes it’s hard to see which blocks of code belong together. A new feature has been added to Home Assistant that makes it easier to distinguish these blocks. A vertical line is now shown at each indentation level, making it clearer which code belongs together.

Integrations

Of course, new integrations have been implemented again in this release. You can find them in this list. I was particularly interested in the Google Photos integration, but unfortunately, you cannot view your existing Google Photos library with it. You can only upload photos to Google Photos and view these uploaded photos in Home Assistant. I find that a bit disappointing.

Other Noteworthy changes

These were not all the changes for this release. There are more changes worth mentioning. You can find them in this list. The most important one I see here is the ability to add conditions to trigger-based templates. So now you can also add conditions to these templates to precisely determine when they are triggered. Nice!

Backward-incompatible Changes

As always, with every release, some changes will no longer work in previous versions of Home Assistant. So always check this list carefully before you upgrade to avoid any surprises.

You can find the links to the release notes and all the changes in the description of this video.

So, this was a summary of the October 2024.10 release of Home Assistant. I hope you found it helpful. If you find my videos valuable, consider becoming a sponsor for a small amount each month so I can continue this channel. These people have already supported me, and I am immensely grateful for that. Without you, I can’t do this work. Thank you all!

And don’t forget to give this video a thumbs up and subscribe to my channel if you haven’t done so yet. I’ll see you soon in my next video!

Bye Bye!