Hi! Home Assistant’s December release, version 2024.12, introduces some exciting new features! A long-awaited feature for the scene editor has finally been implemented, changes have been made to the voice assistant in Home Assistant, Music Assistant has become an official integration and much more. Let’s dive into what’s new!
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Before we dive in, I want to note that this video is based on the beta version of Home Assistant 2024.12. While the final release might include a few minor changes, it typically remains quite similar. The official release of version 2024.12 is set for the first Wednesday in December, so you’ll be able to install it then.
Scene Editor
Scenes are an excellent way to create the perfect ambiance in your home. They let you save the state of your devices at a specific moment and restore that setup later using a button on your dashboard, an automation, or even a voice command.
One common frustration with editing scenes in Home Assistant has been that opening the scene editor would immediately activate and apply the scene. This wasn’t ideal—especially if you were tinkering late at night and accidentally triggered a scene that turned on all the lights, waking everyone up.
This has changed! The scene editor now has two modes: the Review mode and the edit mode.
The review mode is the default setting, displaying the scene as it is currently configured without applying it. You can adjust the scene’s details and remove devices or entities. When you switch to edit mode, the scene is activated, allowing you to make adjustments to the setup. This way, scenes will not automatically be activated anymore upon opening the scene editor.
Voice
A few months ago, the option to use Large Language Models (LLMs), such as ChatGPT, to control your home was introduced. It’s a cool feature, but since it often involves costs or can be slow, it’s not suitable for everyone. While it was already possible to combine LLMs with Assist, this release introduces a setting that prioritizes Assist over the LLM. This means your voice command is processed locally first, and only if it fails, the LLM is used. This saves both money and time!
Additionally, processing voice commands has become significantly faster. In some cases, it previously took up to 15 seconds for a command to be executed. Now, in certain scenarios, this has been reduced to under 1 second!
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Integration Quality Scales
This is a bit of a technical explanation, but it essentially means that every integration created for Home Assistant is assigned a quality scale based on how well it meets the quality standards for code and documentation.
Integrations
Of course, new integrations have been implemented again in this release. You can find them in this list.
The Music Assistant integration ensures that the Music Assistant Players are displayed as Home Assistant Media Player Entities. You still need the Home Assistant add-on as the server. Also, the HACS Nordpool integration has now become official!
I also noticed that Reolink has added some new advanced options.
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.
Backward-incompatible Changes
As with every release, some changes may not be backward-compatible with previous versions of Home Assistant. Make sure to review the compatibility list carefully before upgrading to avoid any surprises.
You can find links to the release notes and a complete list of changes in the video description.
That concludes this overview of the Home Assistant 2025.12 December release. I hope you found it helpful! If you enjoy my content, consider supporting the channel with a small monthly contribution—it truly makes a difference. I’m deeply thankful to everyone who has already contributed; your support is what makes this possible.
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