2025.1: Backing Up into 2025!

Why am I reminded of that classic Skinner meme?

“Am I out of touch?..No…it’s the users who are wrong”

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Well said :wink:

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  1. it’s simple
  2. it works

Not sure what is so hard for you to believe.

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500+ highly critical posts and still no meaningful leadership or engagement. Stunning.

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Tried to hack around
The encryption key is stored in config/.storage/backup
It is read when HA restarts
The criteria for HA seeing backup setup is that the psssword key is not null or “”. So no way to disable the password
You can change the horrible random string to a shorter plain text word that a human can remember by changing it in the file and then restart HA

Last I can recommend the custom component from HACS called Auto Backup. It has full flexibility, proper names, no forced encryption, and removal of old backups that can be defined. Super well documented. Using this for local unencrypted backups and only use the native GUI one for Nabu Casa using a human but safe password by file hacking would be a good way to go as of today while we wait for the native “MVP” to be matured

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Like I said above, I think their position is they have a minimal product created now and if you need more functionality that does exist via other addons/integrations (see: Google Drive Backup). They aren’t stopping folks from using them, and in fact seem to be encouraging them if the current solution that’s baked in doesn’t work for your needs right now.

They’re clearly working on improving it, but going for “absolute basic functionality” baked in, and working to catch up to other integrations (that can tackle what 90% of these comments are asking for now).

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We have been told they will eventually be depreciated.

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Yes, but as of now there is no warning/deprecation notices. I assume this is to let people use them until the built-in feature reaches parity.

Again, I’m speculating but choosing to see the “best” in what is being side instead of going straight to “they hate us and our workflows”. Its possible they are working to weed out bad code? shrug

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There will never be parity. The’ve already said all backups will be encrypted. No ifs, no buts. No backing down when it is obviously not what the community want.

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Can you quote/post a link where they explicitly said that? Near as I can see they haven’t said its mandatory forever, just haven’t said much aside from them improving it going forward.

I am new to Home Assistant and was surprised when I found the secrets.yaml files stored in plain text. As a rule I would never store credentials in plain text, even on my own machine.
If the secrets.yaml files were stored in encrypted form then the need for encrypted backups would be greatly reduced.

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The exact quote was:

However, for the future it is a goal to eventually deprecate those handlers when replacement targets/integrations are available in Home Assistant

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Sorry, I was referring to the encryption being mandatory forever with no options. My apologies!

It was mentioned in beta testing, which I’m a lot less likely to volunteer my time to participate in. Stopped short of cancelling my NC subscription, for now, but I have set up an alternative while I consider it.

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Hmm… Almost as if Paulus became king with all those self-ascribed, industry-leader titles after his name. It’s been interesting to watch the list grow. Credit where credit is due, I suppose. Same for blame.

Same here, Tom. I know you can get remote access other ways, but is there any way to get notifications in the mobile app if not using Nabu Casa? What are the options and are they reliable and what kind of router capabilities are required on site. I wonder how many people only pay Nabu Casa just for remote access? At this point, I know I do.

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All I see from Frenck in beta is that it will not be changing in the beta or 2025.1 (presumably due to other moving parts/features incoming). Other comments made it seem clear they are looking at allowing encrypted/decrypted backup, but setting the expectation it will not be happening in the last beta.

Remote access and notification options is off topic here. Start another topic.

Adding my voice to the chorus of others to make encryption optional. My backups are local and private.

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secrets.yaml was created so that users could share configuration files without sharing passwords.

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That may be so but if the secrets.yaml file itself was encrypted then there would be little need to encrypt the whole backup.
Seems to me that when they allowed you to pull the passwords out of the configuration they could have gone one step further and allowed you to protect those passwords.