Hi! It’s almost September 2023 and Home Assistant 2023.9 will be released on the first Wednesday of the month. This time there are some interesting user interface and template changes. And there are more things to mention! Let’s dive into it!
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Summer is almost over and a fresh Home Assistant release is almost available. This release has some interesting UI changes for the Climate dialog and Tile cards. Next to that, you can start creating template sensors using the UI and there are more changes that might be of interest to you. One thing I noticed is that there’s nothing new to report about the voice functionality this time around, which seems a bit odd since this is the year of voice after all.
Be aware that this video is based on the beta version of 2023.9, so it might be that some functionalities will not make the final release.
Climate, humidifier, and water heater more info
The Climate, humidifier, and water heater dialog has got quite a big overhaul. The Climate dialog has gotten a ring that shows what the target temperature is. The little dot shows the current temperature and when you move the ring beyond the dot, you will see that it will turn to orange and starts heating. The current temperature is also visible above the ring. Next to dragging the ring, you can also click on the plus and minus signs to set the target temperature. And, there are buttons to set the Mode and Preset. With all these changes, the interface of the climate dialog is touch, keyboard, and mouse-friendly.
When you control an air conditioner with the thermostat card, it shows the same ring, but this time, the ring has multiple options depending on the modes that your air conditioning provides. The ring changes color for each mode. In my case, the current temperature is the same as the target temperature. I’m not sure if this is a bug in the bèta, or that this is a limitation of my air conditioning. Please, let me know in the comments what your experience is with your airconditioning. When you choose to heat, the ring can be dragged from left to right and turns orange. When you choose to cool, the ring can be dragged from right to left and turns blue. Next to this, there are buttons for Mode, Preset, Fan Mode, and Swing Mode.
A lot of new tile features
The tile card has new features for climate devices, covers, lights, and the lawn mower.
You can select Climat modes and a target temperature for climate devices now so that you can quickly switch between the modes that your heater or air conditioner provides. And you can easily change the target temperature on the card itself without having to go into the dialog of the thermostat card.
For light entities, you can enable the color temperature feature so that you can quickly change the color temperature for a light or a light group on the card now.
For covers, you can enable the cover tilt position and the cover position feature now as well.
I do not own a lawn mower robot myself, so I couldn’t test the lawn mower features, but there should be some lawn mower features for the tile card now as well.
Lawn mower
Talking about the lawn mower, a new entity component for the lawn mower is added to this release as well. You can start and pause the lawn mower, and you can send the lawn mower back to its dock. Only MQTT is supported for now, but more integrations will come in the future.
Group previews in Home Assistant 2023.9
In release 2023.9, a new helpful feature is added to the Group helpers. You can now preview the value of a group helper in the group helper dialog. Let’s say, you want to know the median temperature for two rooms like the front and the back of the office. You can create a group, select the front and back office temperatures, and select median as the type. You will see the result straight into the dialog. This helps a lot when you are setting up groups and want to check if you’ve set up the correct type and selected the correct devices.
Template sensors from the UI
This next new feature of this release can be a big one for people who like to create template sensors but do not like to code a lot using a text editor. You can now create template sensors from the UI! You can choose to create a sensor or a binary sensor. In my example, I will create a sensor that calculates the Netto power usage in my house by subtracting the value of my solar panels from the value of the power that I am currently using.
You can enter the template code in the dialog. And you can select the Unit of Measurement, Device Class, and State Class as well. This makes it much more easy to create templates. At the moment, the template state edit field is a bit small. So I hope there will be an option added to expand that field so that editing will become a bit clearer.
Weather forecast service
And now this next change is a change that I personally do not like at all… One of my biggest automations makes use of the weather forecast attributes in the weather integration. These attributes are going to be removed from the weather integrations in 6 months from now. So, I have to refactor my sprinkler automation that makes use of these attributes. Instead of the attributes, a new service is introduced in this release that gets the forecast. It’s called weather.get_forecast and will respond with the forecast. So, in six months you cannot create a template sensor anymore to retrieve the forecast. But you need to create an automation that gets the weather forecast and does the magic to show forecast values or calculate the total precipitation for example.
The guys from Home Assistant do see that this change is a bit too impactful. They will make this easier in the next upcoming releases, so let’s wait and see how this evolves.
Onboarding
The onboarding flow of Home Assistant has changed in this new release. It’s easier for new users to start using Home Assistant now. One of the new things is that you can change the language during onboarding now. In the previous release, you could already search for an address and now you can select all the tracking options as well. Furthermore, you do not have to configure all the found devices right at the beginning, but you can just click finish and start configuring all your devices in a later stage.
Other noteworthy changes in Home Assistant 2023.9
Next to these new functionalities, there are more changes. The whole list of changes will be added to this page, but for now, the following noteworthy changes are known to me:
- Local Bluetooth got faster.
- You can now set colors for energy graphs.
- Setting colors for energy graphs.
- Sort options of input select.
- When you change a password, you can log out of all instances directly now.
- The File upload (for instance the person’s picture) got a new design.
- CO2 Signal is renamed to Electricity maps.
New integrations in Home Assistant 2023.9
This release also contains some new integrations that you can find in this list. For now, there are new integrations for Comelit Simplehome, Lawn Mower, Schlage, Trafikverket Camera, Vodafone station, and Yardian in this release.
Conclusion
As always, this video is created based on the beta release of Home Assistant 2023.9, so the functionalities in the final release might slightly differ from what’s in the beta. The final release of Home Assistant 2023.9 will be released on the 1st Wednesday of September. Make sure you read the breaking changes to prevent you from running into any trouble after you’ve updated to this version.
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