Everything New In Home Assistant 2024.4!

Home Assistant 2024.4 features new dashboard types, matter upgrades, categories, labels, floors and AUTOMATION ORGANIZATION! We are taking a run through all of the latest features in this release and looking at the usual new integrations, little things and breaking changes!
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0:00 - Intro
0:17 - Automation Grouping
1:13 - Categories
2:13 - Labels
4:57 - Floors
6:26 - Section Columns
6:50 - Web Dashboard
7:20 - Map Dashboard
7:48 - Locks
8:07 - Matter UI
8:43 - Performance.
9:24 - The little things!
10:04 - New integrations and breaking changes

[@OneOfThePetes]

"Closelier". A new word has been born!

[@PersonXes]

I was surprised to discover that this word actually exists! Not sure what use it has in addition to the perfectly fine word 'closer' though

[@tommythebiker3081]

2023 was the Year of the Voice, 2024 looks like the Year of the "all the UI stuff you've been asking since forever". Nice!

[@Aidan-tu4un]

Anything that reduces dependency on YAML gets my vote🙃

[@74357175]

Nice one, Lewis! Well organized and comprehensive - thanks! Labels for the UI will be INCREDIBLY useful.

[@EverythingSmartHome]

Agreed! 🎉

[@freman]

I don't have multiple floors but I could see abusing floors for like "outside" "inside" outside being back yard, front yard, side yard...

[@lawrencemanning]

I do wish they’d come up with a better word, or just gone with “Area group”. Oh well. Labels look fantastic. 😊

[@jmr]

I was already abusing the current system by creating a room called outside, garden, and, server. 😂 The "Server" room contains computer equipment that's actually in different rooms of my house. As you said though now that we can create a "floor" called outside I can move my garden there which is great because it is indeed outside. I'll probably rename my "outside" room to backyard since most of the stuff there is in the back yard. We have an outside building I might switch to a "floor" as well.

[@jamesderrick8201]

Already added Level -1 "Test" to split out non-production kit. (No basements here - only old coal mines!)

[@tin2001]

I've had a "roof" area since I first started... Solar panels live there (with micro inverters so technically we can measure individual panel performance). Grouping rooms into "inside" and "outside" will make things much tidier. Especially for lights, as mentioned in the video... Quickly turn off all the inside lights when you're out for the weekend, or turn on all you're outside lighting when you're having a BBQ and want guests to be impressed with your house's night time appearance.

[@jmr]

@@jamesderrick8201 I ended up using level 51 and calling it "Area 51".

[@MaxMightyPirate]

Awesome video as always :D I'm really happy the automation organization is finally here and I also like that they went beyond just grouping it. I'm also really thankful for the Drag'n'Drop dashboard. I never thought I needed it but it's so easy and accessible that it makes way more fun to create new boards. 🥳🥳

[@Truble284]

Great Release! Thanks a lot to the hole team for the great work!

[@EverythingSmartHome]

🙏🏻

[@redakker]

Thanks for your work on this kind of videos!

[@junkins]

Thanks for the great video Lewis! The new organization additions are really nice! 🎉

[@EverythingSmartHome]

Agree, super cool!

[@johnhubbard3879]

I am definitely adding "closlier" to my vocab! Thanks for another great video!

[@grzehooo88]

Great one, I'm always waiting for your vid before update. Hope next ones comes soon :)

[@groto27]

Haven’t seen many videos from you lately…. You must be busy making more ultimate smart home products 😁

[@EverythingSmartHome]

Sorry for the lack of videos, just been feeling a little burnt out recently and creatively videos just weren't happening for me. But I'm back now! And yes still been working on products!

[@northan77]

@@EverythingSmartHome Its crazy enough just keeping up with the HA updates

[@ktzsystems]

@@EverythingSmartHome FWIW i'd much rather you did videos you can be proud of than just churning out crap. always a pleasure to see you in my feed.

[@Iisakkiik]

@@EverythingSmartHome it's good and important to take a brake once in a while :) no need to be sorry about it.

[@BitcoinLifeToday]

@@EverythingSmartHome That is all fine man! Take your time to do the stuff you need. I do appreciate that you do these monthly HA update videos as they are my favorite. I do not update until I watched your video of the update! :) Take care!

[@MikeCheck35]

I have nerve thought about labels and categorizing my automatics before, but your explanation now has me incredibly excited to play with this new feature!

[@EverythingSmartHome]

Glad it helped!

[@halko1]

Oh wow. I finally might be able to tame my automations with these new features. Very very very nice update.

[@jmr]

I've been adding "labels" to the name of all my automations for a long time to make them easier to sort. It's been very helpful to pull up a list of all automations related to a specific subject but it made automation names longer. An automation could have multiple labels tacked on the end of the name and sometimes the beginning. It will be awesome to move to an official label system and even better that labels can be used for more then just sorting!

[@EverythingSmartHome]

That's what I do too, glad I don't need to think about that now 😅

[@jmr]

@@EverythingSmartHomeI just did the update and my tags helped me integrate the new labels. This is so much better.

[@Herazio]

There actually is a way to more easily add labels towards automations which I personally find nice. There’s a select button at the top left which allows you to select one or more automations. Once you do there’s an action to “Add a label”. Very happy that they finally implemented organization!

[@Jerry_Bboy]

Motionblinds Bluetooth for sure 🔥🔥 great to finally see it. And would be great to see them on the channel.

[@user-rm3gx3zu9r]

Thank you

[@alih.3128]

Home Assistant is on fire. Love these updates videos

[@traynhamd]

Just updated and when I go to the Automations page I have an Add Label button on the top right. This allowed me to add labels to multiple automations. So, it looks like they gave what you wanted!

[@mrykhoek]

the new categories and labels are a game changer, i love this, makes it so much easier to organize my automations!! How is everyone categorizing their automations? would love to get everyone's thoughts on organization for inspiration! I have mine by lighting control, geolocation, device control, hvac, etc. Lewis maybe make a video on this too how people are using the new labels and categories!

[@TNTProTec]

That update is amazing

[@EverythingSmartHome]

Agreed!

[@adamprovencher2069]

Aren’t we 1/3 through the updates for the year. 4/12 is 1/3 not 1/4 😊

[@thebyzocker]

0:05 2022.4 oh man

[@davidr521]

Came here to say this 😁

[@EverythingSmartHome]

I have no idea what happened there 😂

[@kearfy]

0:33 too haha. I get why though, it just rolls easier xd

[@KarenNakamura1]

Labels (or tags) are huge. I was having to program so much exception code. This is fantastic.

[@EverythingSmartHome]

🎉

[@piotrg431]

I would like to be able to collapse or expand categories in the main view. Filtering is a neat feature but I think it would be quicker and more convenient just to expand the category I need at the moment and then look for the specific automation.

[@EverythingSmartHome]

It looks like that might happen in future releases from what was discussed on the live stream 🤞🏻

[@a-m-r-mrobinet6077]

Hi, thanks for your videos ! just a small question, i remember i was view lock button confirmation on this video (@7:58) but i can find this unlock confirmation anywhere in HA ... 🙄

[@AaronHeaps]

Love the new features! To better visualize the categorized automations, is there a way to collapse and expand each category? Would be nice to be able to collapse the rarely used categories, but I couldn't find a way to do it. Perhaps you could push that as a request, unless I'm just blind and missed it.

[@technithusiast]

These are some great ux improvements. I’m curious about ollama tho…

[@albertkeizer6299]

Think it's a minor path. But in the automation page. there's a button "show settings" where you can add labels a faster way. That's exactly what you mentioned here

[@SuspiciousAra]

I guess i'll have to re-learn the HA. Till this release i have somewhat got stuck behind not wainting to write custom stuff because they were not easy to do or something-something. Now i can see some potential in HA. i am running it for more than one month and beside i hav to get rid of some tp-link hardware because... tp-link, and once the Unifi cameras got broken for a few hours and an update fixed them quickly, i had never had problems with HA. pretty solid stuff here.

[@LukaCZECH]

Hey Lewis, do you have some plans to add microphone to your presence sensor?

[@diedrichguenther401]

FWIW, I had to clear my browser cache to get the new Sections column slider to appear, this also applied to the Add Dashboard dialogue box to display the new dashboard options.

[@EverythingSmartHome]

Yep! That's generally the case with any new front end change as it makes heavy use of caching

[@tomgrounds]

So happy to see the Floor feature. I hope that it is natively understood in the voice assistant automation where I can now simply say “turn off downstairs lights” and it knows what to do. If it does, it is moved closer to what Alexa is able to do. The same with categories. IDE tidying the difference between lights and lamps in a room (lights being in ceiling overhead lights) vs lamps. And the voice assistant knowing how to control those.

[@EverythingSmartHome]

Yep that's how it works! Exciting!

[@RaffBuilding]

As for Automation organization, I was kind of hoping for some sort of folder GUI solution, or even a drop-down toggle. I've just got a bunch of Automations that simply work and would love to bury them in some folder to be mostly forgotten. But I'm also happy to get what is given. I wish you could save the filter state though.

[@vette5808]

Is there a way to get the embed code of a live streaming rtsp ip cam running in picture glass?

[@lukegiles1803]

Did "max number of columns" make it to the release? I've updated but the option is missing

[@user-hk3ej4hk7m]

It'd be super cool to be able to set these labels from things like esphome, that way you can just update your base files to set things like "Supports RGB" for those devices and have them automatically labeled.

[@pepperjackshack2439]

Can you do a video on the integration "home assistant advisor" local AI in home assistant?

[@RogerEuphoria]

Hi, would like to have a video on home assistant vs control4. pros and cons

[@Setmonkey13]

Why/How would I use labels instead of categories (or the other way around)?

[@user-gs8vz3vz7e]

I hope they will update entity selectors search in dashboard card editor. Right now you still must sift through hundreds of objects using only name and id. I was kinda hoping that it got the support too.

[@quadswithmods]

When is the year of ai, local ai intergrations to light lm or slm would be great

[@michaelbuch1782]

I dont get any updates, is it still in beta ?

[@Electronieks]

How do i convert a inputboolean to a lock with double confirmation?

[@WoLpH]

These new organisation features are fantastic! I have been waiting for these for a long time, I have a lot of automations and it was horrible before. Personally I would like a different feature as well, the “grouping” of automations so you have 1 automation with sub-automations. I generally have multiple sensors triggering several timers which trigger multiple lights (or even other automations for chained results) so my doorbell triggers my hallway lights and so on. But these have caveats of course, as long as the front door is open it shouldn’t ever finish the timer and turn off the hallway light and so on.

[@yak27_0]

The core infrastructure of tags support your use case - although the particular feature is yet to be built. An automation can have a parent tag (or several) (or children tags) {parent = myParent}. This enables flexible hierarchical structures. The advantage of tags is you get the flexibility of sorting by tag1 AND tag2 as well as being able to build more complicated relations between nodes.

[@KrispKiwi]

So how is everyone going to handle labels, I was thinking of using it for features. Like as an example if I put a movie mode on it would be under a systems category because its a automation that's based upon a boolean mode but it also impacts lights and devices so I'd have the labels mode, lights, devices etc

[@yak27_0]

This is pretty much exactly how I envisioned automation sorting to work. The one major difference is I want there to be "views". Basically, dynamic hierarchal structures based on tags. This way you can have a one view of "room -> {lights, switches, other}" and a "{lights -> room, switches -> room, other -> room}" view that is dynamically generated based on tags. This gives you the organization that a folder structure provides without forcing you to adopt a particular structure (as sometimes it makes sense to group by type and other times by location or something else). That said, this update lays a strong core that allows for the feature I described and others to be built around and I would like for tags to get adopted more broadly. It never made sense to me that the only grouping available is by rooms. Universally, there are such broad deployments and to handle these scenarios we require tools that provide such flexibility.

[@landryb06]

Are labels supported in the History tab for sensors?

[@EverythingSmartHome]

I think there is a bug that will be resolved in next patch but yes should be

[@MikeHarris1984]

Grouping of automations is going to be hige!!! I saw that my automations were growing a while back and naming them "turn on xxxx at xx:xx" was getting impossible to find them. So i started naming them as a room and thats been huge. Naming automations like "Kitchen - turn on lights at night when motion" or "Front Porch - toggle coach and porch at sunset/sunrise". So if i needed an automatíon in my kitchen, i could type in kitchen in search and go through those few. Instead of a list of 80 automations lol. This new catagories will be way better!!!

[@grzestel]

Nice ;)

[@MichaelDorchain]

Nice UI improvement in the last releases. Now we need a better gestion of the user permissions (not just hiding the dashboards)

[@KillaV91]

Got an email today about AWS Lambda “We are ending support for Python 3.8 in Lambda on October 14, 2024” Do we need to update the alexa thing we set up for this

[@PierreLeroy76620]

Still under 2024.3 but damn I want this automation label 😁

[@richard5mith]

I've got all my items organised into rooms, the problem is that it doesn't show that room info everywhere. I feel like I'm constantly trying to build dashboards by selecting an entity, only for it to not tell me which room that entity is in. Things would be so much easier if I could see that the temperature sensor I was picking (with the automatically generated entity name) was in the Kitchen. I shouldn't have to give them all unique names or entity IDs to find them - that should be the point of the rooms. Just fixing the dropdown to group them would solve it.

[@user-hk3ej4hk7m]

It feels like areas are there just to be something you duplicate onto the entity and device name. It's frustrating how they half assed that part.

[@thezfunk]

Good to see cleanup and usability in the UI. I think a special focus needs to be made on usability. Open source projects have a history of not being accessible to normal people and usability always faulters for the sake of features.

[@PierreLeroy76620]

With all this data floor and categories... I wonder if home assistant could build an "automation gpt" that could predict an automation you could need and suggest it in the automation page 🤔

[@Gothmok]

Finally

[@ac-fs2dc]

Yeeees !!!! 👍👍👍

[@kelvin1316]

I know I am being selfish here, but I really wish there was more drag and drop. Take the automation organisation, being able to drag and drop them into a category would be awesome, or is there a way to select more than one at a time rather than having to click 3 dots, select menu, select catagory etc etc? I haven't updated yet (normally wait for x.1 or x.2) and I have to wait for a time when no one is home to updated in case of issues LOL

[@jamesderrick8201]

Wondering if Labels are just better Groups for automation targets - e.g. "Night Off" automation can act on individul entities, group, or label - with labels having the best many to many GUI?

[@EverythingSmartHome]

I'm not following what you mean sorry?

[@jamesderrick8201]

@@EverythingSmartHome If I understand, (for example) a 'Night Off' automation could call 'Automation: Turn Off' targeting an entity directly, or now a Label matching several entities. The new many-to-many Label GUI looks a lot easier than editing the automation directly to change a list of entities. The Group integration does the same - combining multiple entities into one under Settings -> Helpers, but can't mix lights with switches (not tested mixing with Labels).

[@Shayne55434]

WHAT YEAR IS IT!?

[@davidr521]

0:55 Does "close-lier" mean *really* close? 😀

[@ThatChrisGuy]

2:08 I noticed another one "Sortering" ...apparently it's Swedish for sorting 😂

[@donkey0aty]

More closely

[@VitalyKorolev]

..or closer

[@chrisdixon5241]

Some exciting updates there, interested to see where the Ollama local chat agent goes in the future - this could be a pretty cool addition to assist. By the way, the clocks went forward 1 hour and back 2 years to deliver us the grouping feature in 2022.4? :)

[@EverythingSmartHome]

I can't believe how many people noticed I said that when I didn't even notice during the edit, very unlike me 😂

[@chrisdixon5241]

@@EverythingSmartHome Hanging off your every word mate! :)

[@pepperjackshack2439]

They still need dynamic local timers that voice assist can trigger.

[@EverythingSmartHome]

In time :)

[@jsjiang6120]

Today at 2022.4?

[@JaapVanderHorst]

They forgot to add a no label box so you can select everything without a label

[@JohnHollowell]

Dang it, now I have to redo my automations to use entity labels

[@HydrocephalusQueen]

Has the update been released to everyone today ?, as I have just checked my home assistant and no new system update is available 😊

[@Alessandro---]

Same here

[@kloakovalimonada]

It's in beta.

[@LuukDomhof]

I just got the update right now!

[@jsjiang6120]

Hope adding comments to the automations is supported one day.

[@Waterbottle365]

"Look closelier" - is that a Linus reference? ;)

[@EverythingSmartHome]

Haha someone finally got it 😅

[@buildingsbyair]

met office breaking change?

[@TheRareGamer]

Idk if I am the only one but, as much as I love seeing a product being updated and loved I also hate the fact that HA gets updated so frequently... Its paradoxical really, when a project goes dead sadness ensues because its dead, but when a project gets updated "too frequently" that also bothers me... no clue if its just me lol

[@EverythingSmartHome]

What makes you dislike the frequent updates out of interest? It's been a long time since updates really breaks things IMO (other than minor custom integrations but that's because it's custom integrations) Remember you don't have to update every release 😅👀 easier said than done sometimes

[@lindhe]

I know today is not April 1st, but I still can't believe we have organization of automations now? Is this real??

[@EverythingSmartHome]

I pinched myself, it's not a dream!!

[@philipp1960]

Nice to see the organization gets focused, but I still think I will remain using nodered

[@YKSGuy]

it almost feels like the Floors and Categories could have just been Labels? IE their grouping and filtering could have all been one function.. But maybe that comes down to them needing to have a 1 to many relationship instead of a many to many.

[@chrisgoddard9236]

That was exactly my thought.

[@PaulBottein]

Floors has been introduced to structure your house, not only for organization. It will help building a better auto-generated dashboard in the future and it's also already supported by Assist (e.g. Turn first floor lights on).

[@YKSGuy]

@@PaulBottein But.. It looks like labels could do that as well?

[@EverythingSmartHome]

But how do you know if the user used a label for that since labels can be anything you want?

[@YKSGuy]

More complex labels, like how they work in Azure or AWS. Simple label "Security", value pair label "Floor:1" where Floor is a key word, or "Category:Security". essentially everything is just a label but some are special / have key words.. One feature, one attribute. many uses.

[@danial2001]

2024.04. Also, we're more than quarter of the way. 4/12 is 1/3 of the way, 33.33%. Just thought to correct this. ;)

[@danial2001]

@@adrianhardcastle9297 yes, .4 is the month of April. So we'll have 12 updates in a year in total. So we're now 1/3 of the way, not a quarter (1/4).

[@Fine_i_set_the_handle]

@@adrianhardcastle9297 His math is correct. You can make a fraction or percent out of any number lol.

[@yrmuq]

cringe

[@tharealmb]

Third of the way through releases. Quarter of the way through the year. Guess it depends how you calculate.

[@EverythingSmartHome]

Math hard.

[@bschmu]

Looks like a great update… most importantly, the ecobee integration should be fixed :)

[@EverythingSmartHome]

🥳

[@abartos]

I would like to see the ability to confirm off/on with a simple switch/light.

[@EverythingSmartHome]

Don't understand what you mean sorry?

[@abartos]

@@EverythingSmartHome I apologize for not being more specific. I mean the situation that, for example, I have a computer plugged into a smart outlet. When the computer is on, I would not like to accidentally push the switch and turn it off. At this point I would like to have a confirmation - "Are you sure you want to turn off the PC?".

[@tommythebiker3081]

​@@abartosset up two buttons in you UI. First button toggles a boolean helper that will act as a safety measure. Second button runs a script. The script will check the helper value, if safety is disabled then turn off the plug, else don't. I've been using this workaround for my 3d printer, quite happy with the result.

[@Quaddepo]

🎉🎉

[@mfpears]

Why do none of these platforms realize that all of these things should be organized in a graph structure? I'd be happy with a tree (groups inside groups inside groups) but depending on the job, you may need one thing to belong to multiple groups.

[@Pi-Tutorials]

2022.4!

[@EverythingSmartHome]

👀

[@ekognaG]

I finally may be able to ditch node-red with these automation organizations!

[@Iisakkiik]

A year of what the heck 🤯

[@EverythingSmartHome]

It's almost like that's what's happening 👀

[@kloakovalimonada]

Filtering by device or area doesn't work at all as of beta 7. For me anyway. And yes, the areas are assigned. Edit: same with b9. Only Blueprint filter works.

[@EverythingSmartHome]

Works fine for me on beta 7, at least area filtering does. Haven't tried device

[@kloakovalimonada]

On mobile (IOS) it's so buggy the filters unselect themselves after few seconds (!!), even on beta 9 that has come out in the meantime.

[@Rockwolf50]

It’s about goddamned time we can group automations and filter them. Took them long enough.

[@KimmoJaskari]

There's a lot of "2022.4" being said in this video. 😜

[@1983colincooke]

nooooo. you didn't say closelier right lol?

[@joostlekkerkerker9182]

How will he make thumbnails when the november and december release drop?

[@EverythingSmartHome]

That's gonna put my Photoshop skills to the test 👀😂

[@PaulBottein]

He not only has two hands but also two feet 🤔

[@joostlekkerkerker9182]

I've heard AI is also very good in these things

[@s80keys]

The section columns is what I've been waiting for. I'm planning to immediately migrate all my views over to this. BTW, I hope the EPL will be back in stock soon. I've got so many automation ideas queued just waiting on them. 😎

[@EverythingSmartHome]

They will be a bit longer but it's going to be worth the wait for the tweaks we've been making!

[@ZA26]

PT ZED

[@jeremyturner4327]

You said 2022 not 2024

[@chrisgoddard9236]

What's the point of floors when there are now labels? Same with categories. Labels could do all of this and make life less complex...unless I'm missing an important detail.

[@EverythingSmartHome]

Like I mentioned in the video I think we will see some of this stuff become more important for other features like auto dashboards etc. Also I don't think it makes things more complex, if you don't need it then just don't use it and things will be the same as before

[@chrisgoddard9236]

Yes and no (not being argumentative, just thinking out loud). A label for each floor could organise, and be the target for automations. To add the concept of floors at the same time as labels seems mildly redundant. If labels become more important will the floor concept go away, and if so why introduce it at all. I will of course be picking and choosing which features I use, but repetition of functionality seems intriguing if not a little odd. I look forward to this evenings live stream to see if these details are explained.

[@EverythingSmartHome]

I get what your trying to say, but how does Home Assistant know if you used labels for floors or not, from an auto generating perspective? You might have used labels to indicate floors or you might have used it to indicate something completely different. I could see them offering different types of Auto Generated dashboards for categorising by floor, or room, or device type etc. Same goes for Assist, saying "turn off all the lights downstairs", it would be hard to do that with labels as you don't know if the user added that or not. I think we just haven't seen floors and labels fully utilised yet and it'll be like a lot of other features where they add the framework and then expand it in future releases. Just me personally!

[@PaulBottein]

Also for voice control. You can now ask to Assist: "Turn ground floor lights on". With label, it's not possible to do that because label can be anything you want.

[@triplerinse]

Yeah automation grouping

[@oliverbutterfield9844]

Closelier? 😂

[@EverythingSmartHome]

It's an official word 👀

[@RafaGmod]

Ollama videoo! Its time to have a little electronic brain in my server??

[@niray9469]

Have u said 2022.4? 😅😂 0:06

[@lisandroCT]

A third of the way. 😅

[@EverythingSmartHome]

Just a teeny tiny mathematical error 👀😂

[@vividus101]

ok I swear I heard you say 2022.4 over and over again 🤣 don't you mean 2024.4?

[@JscoLP]

Closelier?😅