Hello every one, here I am again with a new What’s New in Home Assistant video! This time, I’ll show you what’s new in the January 2025 release, version 2025.1. The biggest change is the addition of automated backups, but there’s much more to show. Let’s get started quickly!
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Ed
Before we begin, I need to tell you that this video is based on the beta release of Home Assistant 2025.1. This means the final release might differ slightly from the beta, but generally, the differences are minimal. By the way, the final release is always published on the first Wednesday of the month.
Better backups!
Until now, you’ve always been able to create backups in Home Assistant, but they had to be started manually, which meant you risked not having a backup if something unexpectedly went wrong with your Home Assistant installation. Previously, I used the Google Drive Backup Add-on for automated backups and even created a tutorial for it. You can still use that add-on, but now backups can also be automated without it. This is especially great for users who don’t use Home Assistant OS and can’t access add-ons in the Home Assistant menu.
Starting from Home Assistant 2025.1, backups can be automated. When setting up backups for the first time, you’ll be guided through a smooth onboarding process, and your first backup will be created. Depending on the number of add-ons, the amount of data, and where the backups are stored, this process may take some time. Afterward, backups are automatically created and stored every night at 4:45 AM by default. Typically, the last three backups are retained.
When you click the automatic backups link, you’ll see an overview of all your backups and have the option to download them for restoration later. Of course, you can still create manual backups if needed.
For automating your system backups, you can also adjust the settings. You can change the schedule, decide how many backups to keep by default, and choose whether to include your history, media, and share folder in the backup. Additionally, you can specify which add-ons you want to back up.
If you’re using Home Assistant Cloud, you can also upload your latest backup there and download it later when needed. If you’ve defined a network storage location, your backups can be saved there as well.
All backups are encrypted, and you’ll need an encryption key to restore them. You can download this key as part of an emergency kit. Make sure to store it securely, as you won’t be able to restore your backup without it. This also means that if someone somehow gains access to your backup, they won’t be able to do anything with it without your encryption key.
It might seem like you’re dependent on Home Assistant Cloud to store backups in the cloud, but the backup system is designed to be flexible. This allows other integrations to use it, meaning you’ll likely be able to store backups on different cloud services in the future. These integrations aren’t available yet, but they could allow you to save backups directly to Google Drive, for example, through the core system.
Dashboard background settings
It was already possible to change the background of your dashboard, but from now on, many settings have been added to show how the background is displayed.
Media Player volume feature for Tile Card
The Tile card now has a media player slider option so you can easily control the volume using the tile card.
Month of “What the Heck?!”
Last month was also the “What the Heck?!” month, during which several developers added highly requested features to Home Assistant.
The first new feature allows you to add an area, description, categories, and labels directly to automations and scripts when you save them.
Previously, you could quickly navigate to an entity by pressing the “E” key. Now, you can also quickly navigate to a device by pressing the “D” key.
You can now zoom in and out on the history graph in the history card. You can zoom in if you hold down the control or command key on your keyboard while selecting part of the graph with your mouse.
If you want your voice assistant to work quickly, it’s important not to expose too many entities to it. With this release, you can now disable the automatic exposure of new entities to Assist by default. This helps keep your voice assistant running smoothly—very convenient!
Speaking of Assist, you can now press the “A” key to bring up the Assist dialog instantly.
You can now rearrange the order of individual devices in the energy dashboard. This is useful if you monitor your devices individually.
When working on an automation, you’ll now receive a warning if you click on a menu item, preventing you from accidentally losing all your changes. Nice one!
Another handy feature is the ability to search by labels in your filters, especially useful if you’ve defined many labels.
Finally, you can now use a sentence trigger in automations, allowing you to trigger an automation with a specific phrase when using Assist! For example, you can have various actions triggered when you say, “Good Night, Home Assistant.”
These are undoubtedly not all the “What the Heck?!” additions. I’m curious to see what will make it into the final release!
New Integrations
Of course, new integrations have been implemented again in this release. You can find them in this list. These integrations have also been removed.
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. One of the nice things that has been added is that you can now use CONTROL-F to search in data tables like the entities for example.
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.
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I’ll see you soon in my next video!
Bye Bye!