Home Assistant 2023.12 is around the corner or it is already released depending on which time you are reading this. Nevertheless, here are the most important things that have been delivered.
Table of Contents
New login screen
There is a New login screen, which is now similar looking to the ones in the Operating Systems (You know Windows, Linux, Mac OS) where you have to click on the icon or thumbnail with the username you wish to log in and then the password field will be revealed.
The most interesting part here is that there is a check if the login attempt is coming from your local network and if it is not then the usernames are not shown and the login screen will look more or less like before.
That means, you will see the new login screen only when you try to login from your home network which is a really cool security measure, especially if your Home Assistant is freely accessible over the Internet.
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New thermostat card (before Home Assistant 2023.12 more info was looking nicer than my dashboard, why?)
Back in September a new look for more info entity dialog for thermostat were introduced and this new design was very good, the problem was that the thermostat card was not updated.
So, the situation was that the entity dialog looked much better than the thermostat card itself.
If you wanted to see the cool new look you had to dig into the more info menus. Not anymore in Home Assistant 2023.12 this is now fixed and the thermostat card is finally looking as beautiful as the entity dialog as they share the same design now. If you already have the old thermostat card on your dashboard you will get the new look auto magically as soon as you update to 2023.12.
Home Assistant crew have listened to the people feedback and desire again as this was a very popular request. I personally am using Node-RED for the climate control in my home, but with this new thermostat card update I’m thinking more and more about switching.
What about you? Let me know in the comments are you using the thermostat card in your Home Assistant setup to control your home climate or something else.
History Graphs
Next, By default Home Assistant will store the state history for 10 days and the data for the older days are starting to purge automatically, so at the end you always have history for the last 10 days. From Home Assistant 2023.12 and onwards long term statistics that Home Assistant had were combined with the History graphs into one, so that you can now query older than 10 days stats.
If you look closer to the history graphs now you will see where the state history data ends and where the long term statistic start, because there are some different colors and also the graphs have some different curves that is because the long term statistic is using average values.
Nevertheless, these are just details that are not so important, but the best part is that everything is super fast and actually usable even on slower machines. How cool is that?
Tile Cards now support Numbers
In Home Assistant 2023.12 and onwards Tile Cards now support numbers. This is working for helpers and number entities and will allow controlling the number entity from the tile card directly. It also provides a choice to use it as a slider or as an input with up/down buttons.
Options for the default dashboard
Before this last release, by default on a brand new installation the Home Assistant automatically added different cards on the dashboard depending of the devices that you have.
You could live that way long time, but if you wanted to do some changes for example to rearrange, remove or add something custom you had to press on a few buttons and to take the manual control of that dashboard.
After that you were free to change your dashboard as you wish, with one condition you were not allowed to go back to the automatic dashboard control anymore.
Now in Home Assistant 2023.12 the dashboard have some new options that allows you re-arrange hide or remove areas from your dashboard even if you didn’t took the manual control, so you can have something like the best from both words. Namely: an automatic default dashboard that will place for you every new device you add as a card and at the same time possibility to order, hide, remove or customize these cards.
Also If you now go to Settings > Dashboard > Add Dashboard menu you will see a new dialog from where you can choose what kind of new dashboard do you want the Default Dashboard which is the automatic dashboard, or you can start from scratch with full manual control.
On top some new strategies are about to be added in this same Add Dashboard menu. These strategies will use different cards and different showing approaches and there will be a list from where you can choose your Dashboard strategy. Sounds really nice, don’t you think?
To-Do
Next, the Home Assistant release from the last month introduced new to-do lists and now in this 2023.12 release there are some to-do lists enhancements like these two new to-do services: the first can list all items in a to-do list and it is accepting filters and the second can be used to remove completed to-do list items. These services can be used in Home Assistant scripts and automations.
- List all items on a to-do list (
todo.get_items). - Remove completed items from a to-do list (
todo.remove_completed_items).
Also, when you look at your to-do list in Home Assistant, you can now copy the link or save it somewhere and then to come back to the same list anytime.
The list can also have due dates and descriptions now, but for now you have to add those details manually using services. They’re working on making it easier to do that directly from the UI, but we will see that maybe in some of the next releases.
Few more things can now be connected to your to-do list like, the CalDAV integration that can put stuff on your to-do list, as well as Picnic and OurGroceries integrations which can help you manage your shopping list. With Picnic, it even finds the stuff you add and puts it in your online Picnic cart. Unfortunately this Picnic store is only available in the Netherlands as far as I know.
Re-import Blueprints
If you use Blueprints made by others, when you bring one in, it doesn’t automatically get updated if the original changes. Before, you had to change the code yourself to match the new version.
Now, in this Home Assistant 2023.12 update, if you try to import a Blueprint that you already have a new dialog will ask you do you wish to overwrite the existing blueprint.
On top, if you go to your Blueprints, you’ll see a re-import button in the overflow menu. Clicking it will get the newest version from where you got the Blueprint initially and it will replace the old one in your Home Assistant.
Other Noteworthy Changes
As always, there are some other noteworthy changes in this update. Here are some of them:
- There is a new trigger selector that helps you pick triggers for your Blueprints and scripts.
- You can now use Kelvin in the color temperature selector.
- If you have an IKEA IDÅSEN desk, there’s a new height sensor.
- The ESPHome got faster and more reliable.
- Now you can see maps from your Roborock vacuums!
- Services with responses can handle responses when multiple entities are targeted.
- ViCare got lots of improvements.
- The media browser lets you switch between grid and list view.
- Error messages from manual YAML setup are clearer and more detailed.
- There’s a new way to add selectors to your script field using a UI.
- Errors shown by Home Assistant can now be translated!
New Integrations in Home Assistant 2023.12
We have some new integrations as well in this latest Home Assistant release:
- We’ve got Komfovent on board! Now you can easily control your Komfovent ventilation unit.
- Linear Garage Door integration is also available and allows control and automate these garage doors.
- MyPermobil, is also added along with various sensors for these wheelchairs
- OurGroceries Integration we briefly mentioned it during the to-do lists updates.
- V2C is also in allowing local Monitoring and control.
- You can now integrate а wireless Devialet speakers if you have such devices.
New UI integrations
There are there new integrations that can now be set up right from the UI and these are:
- CalDav – we mentioned it earlier,
- fast.com to measure network bandwidth performance
- Ping which allows you to send ICMP echo requests.
Don’t forget to check the Backward-incompatible changes also known as breaking changes in the release notes.
If something is not quite clear for you, download my free Smart Home Glossary
Thanks for reading, I’m Kiril, and until next one. Bye!
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