The year 2025 is coming to an end, and the Home Assistant 2026.1 beta release has just arrived. While this is considered a minor update—developers deserve a holiday too—there are still several useful improvements and new features worth taking a closer look at.
In this article, I’ll walk you through everything that’s new in Home Assistant 2026.1, including dashboard changes, new automation triggers, settings improvements, energy dashboard updates, new integrations, and important backward-incompatible changes.
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Updated Home Dashboard: Summaries & Devices
New “Summaries” Section
One of the first changes you’ll notice is on the Home dashboard, especially on mobile. A new Summaries option has been added, giving you a quick overview of your smart home at a glance.
The summaries show:
- Number of lights currently on
- Climate status
- Security status
- Media players
- Weather
- Today’s energy usage
Clicking on any category—such as Lights or Climate—immediately brings up a detailed overview of the relevant entities. This makes it much faster to check the current state of your home without digging through menus.
New “Devices” Overview
Another welcome addition to the Home dashboard is the Devices button. This opens a complete list of all devices in your Home Assistant system.
If you have a large setup, it may take a moment to load, but once it does, it provides a fast and centralized way to access every device in your smart home.
Home Assistant Labs & Purpose-Specific Automations
If you enable Home Assistant Labs, you can turn on purpose-specific triggers and conditions. This feature was introduced in an earlier release, but it continues to play an important role in 2026.1.
With Labs enabled, the automation editor switches to a more guided interface, making it easier to create automations without needing advanced YAML knowledge.
New Automation Triggers in 2026.1
This release introduces a large number of new device-based triggers, making automations more powerful and easier to configure.
Button Triggers
You can now trigger automations when a button is pressed and select from all button entities in your system.
Climate Triggers
New climate-related triggers include:
- Climate device started heating
- Climate device turned off
You can also directly select the target climate device, which makes setup much faster.
Device Tracker Triggers
New triggers for device trackers include:
- Entered home
- Left home
This is especially useful for presence-based automations, such as triggering actions when you arrive home.
Humidifier Triggers
New humidifier triggers allow automations when:
- Drying starts
- The humidifier turns off
Even if you don’t currently own a humidifier, this adds flexibility for future setups.
Light Triggers
Lighting automations receive a big upgrade with triggers for:
- Light turned on
- Light turned off
- Brightness changed
- Brightness crossed a threshold
These triggers allow for far more dynamic lighting automations.
New Settings Shortcuts for Protocols
In Settings, a new section has been added that provides direct links to enabled protocols in your system. Depending on what you use, this can include:
- Matter
- Bluetooth
- Tags
Only the protocols that are enabled in your setup are shown, keeping the interface clean and relevant.
Energy Dashboard Improvement
A small but highly requested change arrives in the Energy dashboard. There is now an always-visible date picker at the bottom of the screen.
Previously, users complained that switching dates wasn’t intuitive. With this update, you can easily jump between days—such as going back to yesterday or returning to today—without scrolling or searching.
New Integrations in Home Assistant 2026.1
The 2026.1 release also introduces several new integrations, including:
- Air Patrol
- eGuage
- Fluss+
- Fish Audio
- Fressnapf Tracker
- Home Link
- Watts Vision+
- WebRTC
You can find the full list and details in the official release notes.
Improvements to Existing Integrations
Several popular integrations received improvements, including:
- Matter
- SmartThings
- Fritz!Box
- OpenAI
These updates improve stability, performance, and feature support.
Other Noteworthy Changes
Additional changes in this release include:
- A new gallons-per-day unit
- Volume control support for the Matter integration
- A Statistic Graph Card that now links directly to the history panel
While small individually, these enhancements improve everyday usability.
Backward-Incompatible Changes ⚠️
As always, there are some breaking changes to be aware of. Affected integrations include:
- Cool Master
- Tail Scale
- Unified Protect
- Telegram Bot
- VeSync
If you rely on any of these, make sure to read the release notes carefully before upgrading to avoid surprises.
Final Thoughts
Although Home Assistant 2026.1 is a minor beta release, it delivers meaningful quality-of-life improvements, especially around dashboards, automations, and device management. If you enjoy fine-tuning your smart home, this update is definitely worth exploring—just be mindful of the backward-incompatible changes.
If you want to stay up to date with Home Assistant releases, tutorials, and smart home tips, keep an eye on future updates—and enjoy building your smart home!
