What is new in Home Assistant 2023.10?

Hello, I’m excited to share the latest Home Assistant 2023.10 features and integrations that have landed in the middle of the celebration of Home Assistant’s 10th anniversary.

Just a quick remark that this is probably the smallest release since a very long time, probably due to the recent holiday season, or because of the Home Assistant Birthday, or due to announcing of the Home Assistant Green device and the new logo or maybe because all of these I don’t know.  Nevertheless, there are some new interesting features that are introduced so let’s give them a look.

Tile Cards updates again in Home Assistant 2023.10

In the previous releases, a bunch of new features for the Tile card were introduced, especially tailored for climate control. And this time, they are a bit upgraded thanks to some awesome contributions. Now you can add buttons for presets of your climate device right into the tile card.

Is it possible to handpick which presets you want to display. Plus, you can now present them in a sleek dropdown list instead of a series of buttons.

There’s even more Tile card updates as they now have a select feature. This means you can easily choose an option from a list of options. And this is not just limited to select entities, but also works with dropdown helpers, also known as input_select entities.

Map entity markers option

Now, let’s talk about the map card which is the next update. In Home Assistant 2023.10 an onwards instead of cluttering up the map with every single entity, you can actually customize how each one appears.

Before, it would just show the name or a little tag.

Now, you can choose to display the state, the full name, or even come up with your own custom label. 

Here’s a great example: imagine you want to know the best gas prices in your area (thanks @franck for that idea). With this update, the map can now display those prices, making it way more helpful than just a list of names. I think that’s pretty cool, do you think the same?

It is also possible to exclude certain entities from being shown when centering the map.

Overall, It’s pretty amazing to see these changes in the map card. This is the first significant update since tracing was introduced a couple of years back and there’s so much potential here.

Now, let’s tackle an issue that’s been around for a while – using password managers with the Home Assistant login. 

You know how annoying it is when your browser wipes out all your cookies and you have to log in again and you don’t remember your Home Assistant password or even your username?

Well, that’s the headache they’ve been dealing with in Home Assistant 2023.10. They basically did a major overhaul of the forms system, introducing a fresh template language so if you’re a user of a password manager, you’re in for a smoother ride.

Other Noteworthy Changes

And of course, there’s a bunch of other improvements in this Home Assistant 2023.10 release. Here are a few highlights:

• ESPHome users, get ready for smaller and faster Home Assistant backups with this latest version!
• HomeKit Bridge now supports media receivers,
• The Roborock integration is expanded with water and last clean sensors.
• Withings integration has been revamped for an easier setup and now plays nice with Home Assistant Cloud webhooks.

New integrations

Some new integrations are joining the Home Assistant family as well:

• First is Apple WeatherKit, which allows tracking the weather using Apple’s WeatherKit API.
• Ecoforest, is also new
• IKEA IDÅSEN Desk, which allows to connect and control the height of your stand desk.
• Medcom Bluetooth, is now supported.
• Private BLE Devices are now supported as well, and this allows tracking of BLE devices with frequently changing MAC addresses. This one is the most interesting to me and I have to further test if it will be able to track my smart watch. If you happen to know more about that integration share your wisdom in the comments.
• SwitchBot Cloud, will give you control over your SwitchBot devices using the SwitchBot Cloud API.
• And finally WeatherFlow integration is also added

Another not bad release packed with features and integrations that can elevate your Home Assistant experience. And If you want to elevate even higher join my free Home Assistant webinar and download my Smart Home Glossary which is also absolutely free.

I’m Kiril, Until next time, happy automating! Bye