First of all, thank you for the volunteer work in creating this great home automation system and keeping it up to date.
However, this is the first time I feel the need to express a complaint about the backup system. While itās great to have an option to encrypt backups and even have it enabled by default IF the backup is being stored in the Nabu Casa Cloud, this should not be enforced for local backups or backups to our own NAS, OneDrive, Google Drive, or iCloud. For these types of backups, it should be our own responsibility to ensure security. I understand that Nabu Casa aims to avoid potential security issues, but local backups are a different matter.
As you can see from discussions across forums worldwide, users are not happy about this enforced encryption.
Additionally, there is no option to change the backup time. I do not want backups to run at 4:45 in the morning, as I am often awake at that time. I would prefer to schedule backups for the middle of the night.
Lastly, a minor point: the German translation is missing. This isnāt an issue for me personally, but I thought it worth mentioning.
So I recommend/wish for:
An option to disable encryption (at least for all backups other than those to the Nabu Casa Cloud)
Iām sorry if anything I said sounded ābackhand.ā I certainly didnāt intend it that way. I try to just call 'em as I see 'em.
Your response to @madelena was excellent. Thank you for saying things better (and more diplomatically) than I did. I do appreciate your honest and helpful approach on this forum.
I have used the phrase us-vs-them a few times. Maybe you could construe that as pushing that idea. But itās a concern I feel is important we all understand, and try to avoid. As I said, Iāve seen that attitude before and I see signs of it developing here. The fact that every post questioning project decisions gets immediate and forceful negative responses only bolsters my argument.
For the record, I feel confident that the message from the user community about enforced encryption has been received and will be acted on. I only wish the process could have been more collaborative and less divisive. This is a distraction none of us want.
Please understand that my goal as a moderator is to let users speak their mind without starting a flame war against whoever added a feature. Many features are not added by the core development team (this one is an exception), but volunteer users like yourself.
There should be no āus vs themā mentality. HA has added a number of employees over the past 3 years specifically to address the average users concerns.
Another hand up for the ability to disable encrypted backups.
I donāt use nabu casa and store everything on local networks.
Even if I did use nabu casa, 5gb isnāt enough, so I couldnāt use it for backups anyway.
I know this change is to make things easier for people with nabu casa, but donāt forget those of us who donāt.
Whilst new features are great, this change has upset lots because it wasnāt pre communicated and is a fundamental change, really these things should be communicated in advance and have a fallback to previous.
In my world this would be classed as a ābreaking changeā
Already said during beta but Iām against mandatory encryption. Again today I needed a yaml template I deleted sometimes ago. If I had to restore an old backup to get the template I would have lost recent changes on esphome devices, automations, etc.
Also note that Iām using HA nearly exclusively on an iPad. And currently Iām able to download a backup on it, decompress it and open files to get what I need. How to do that now that backup are encrypted??
Itās kind of bad when your attempt to make something easier introduces another WTH. WTH canāt I configure the time for automatic backups, rather than you assuming 4:45 AM is a good time? That is around the time when I have my network equipment set for auto-update. But I guess it isnāt much of a problem right now, as my first automatic backups inexplicably failed anyway. Also, add me to the list of people that HATE the idea of enforcing encryption on local devices.
I like the progress in the backups in HA 2025.1, but am also a little concerned about the mandated encryption, but is an unencrypted local version the right solution?
how often do you open your backup archives?
3 to 5 times in the last year.
What do you open it up for?
To revert a specific configuration, when Iāve made a mess editing a yaml file.
I donāt want a full restore - as Iāll lose history.
How often do you need to restore your backups?
Luckily never, but as above e 3-5 times refer to the backup to restore a config entry Iāve messed up editing a yaml file.
So while I hear the sentiment calling for an unencrypted local file - this will give me back the functionality I currently have. But progressing, is this actually what I need for my use case from a UX perspective? No. What would be better would be
a) The ability to browse an encrypted backup to recover via cut/paste single entry.
b) The ability to restore a single yaml file, not all or nothing.
Ironically just had to restore the last core release as this release broke ZHA (and possibly more) on my system - odroid n2. All OK after roll back. I use Dropback and local backups before upgrades.
Compare and merge (diff) option for yaml files, instead of wholesale restore would be beyond awesome
More times than Iād like to admit Iāve deleted stuff in my dashboards accidentally, like entire sections thinking Iām deleting a card (bad usability there, but thatās another issue) and then have to cherry pick changes from a backup.
Being able to diff against a backup is a great way to troubleshoot in general. Seeing whatās changed
You are 100% correct. When I first set up Home Assistant last year (2024.1.5), I added network storage as default backup storage. Mine backs up to a storage drive on a different machine in my local network. The file is immediately created on that storage disk and no local files are created. I am currently on 2024.12.5 and it still works that way.
the core_ backups are the āpartialā backups without add-onsā¦ and the automatic ones have all add-ons.
maybe they are compressed (more) than the partial backups. That would explain why these are so fast, practically immediate upon clicking the confirmation to create them
