2026.8 Beta week!

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A general reminder: Beta week is not designed to fully overhaul a new feature, but to identify bugs that may be introduced with the update.

If you have an issue, please let us know here! However, the developers are very active in the #beta channel of our Discord server during Beta - it’s good to hop in there if you can. To ensure things are addressed in a timely manner, be sure to also submit issues on GitHub in their proper space:

Here are this month’s Beta notes! This release isn’t filled with a bunch of big hitters similar to other releases during (the northern hemisphere) summer months, but it’s doing one important thing we’ve talked about a lot this year - making Home Assistant more approachable. :relieved_face:

Here are my cliff notes for this month’s release, in order of my excitement:

Yes, I am genuinely excited about this, I have always wondered why we have this random port at the end of the URL and I will be changing it as soon as I get my instance running in my new home - if I don’t just start from scratch anyway.

  • The Home Assistant Cloud page is getting a much-needed facelift. This one is higher up in this list for selfish reasons - I contributed to some phrasing on the page and I’m patting myself on the back. :winking_face_with_tongue:

  • MORE TRIGGERS AND CONDITIONS. That’s right, we just can’t stop adding them. I’m particularly excited about the Moon trigger and conditions - be still my witchy heart. :sparkling_heart:

  • Favorite your favorite cards in the card picker! Thanks to everyone who suggested this during release party - no more scrolling or searching for those cards you always use. :star:

  • In response to the feedback around entity ID formatting from 2026.6, we’ve implemented a system-wide setting for how your entity IDs will be formatted.

  • “Advanced” and “expert” labelings have been removed throughout HA in favor of describing the feature instead of giving the impression that you need to be an expert in HA to use those features.

  • And following up with that, Developer Tools are simply called Tools now! Tools are useful for everyone, not just developers.

  • A single device that is available for multiple integrations will no longer merge into one device - now each integration will have its own device entry for that one device. Nothing you should need to do here! But if you see a repair get raised, follow its instructions.

    • We’ve already seen some issues on Discord related to this change, though, so if you also have issues please let us know! We want to make this as smooth as possible. :folded_hands:

  • New integrations keep getting added to Home Assistant Core, and this month we get a truck load: Fuelprices.dk, Gatus, Google Health, Harbor Sleep, Harman Luxury Audio, Karakeep, LED Infrared, LiteLLM, llama.cpp, Lyngdorf, Midea LAN, NeoPool, and ScorpionTrack. Welcome to all the new integration owners who put the hard work into getting these into Core. :clap:

  • Noteworthy improvements to existing integrations is also a lengthy list, so check out the full list to see if your active integrations received some improvements this month. Notable changes I’d like to specifically call out are Shelly supports Enhanced Security, SwitchBot has a few new devices it supports, Roborock got updates for the Q10, MQTT has an infrared platform now, SMLIGHT added both Bluetooth proxy and infrared receiver support, Ecowitt now supports soil conductivity sensors, and LG Infrared supports air conditioners (MUCH needed right now in Europe and North America :hot_face:).

  • We had 10 integrations achieve new quality scale levels - 2 reached Platinum, 1 reached Gold, 5 reached Silver, and 2 reached Bronze. Excellent job getting these integrations moving up the scale, devs! :partying_face:

  • We have two new integrations now available to set up from the UI: AquaLogic and OpenWrt (luci).

  • We say farewell to just a couple integrations this release.

  • Other noteworthy changes:

    • The template tool in Tools is more flexible in size and position
    • Picture element cards on dashboards are more forgiving to tap
    • Combined battery levels on the energy dashboard are more accurate
    • Integrations that provide media will provide results when searching in the media browser
    • Templates continue to get faster and template entities now remember states after restart
    • Searching for a device/entity will now pull up more of what’s related to those items
    • The system update entity let’s you know when an update needs a reboot
    • Radon is a new device class
    • Z-Wave locks with paired users and credentials is now supported
    • Entity filter will filter entities by manufacturer and model
    • Start an Assist command from quick search
    • Dates can now be displayed on the clock card
    • The Activity panel gained a CSV download (arguably the best release of the year)

  • The list of integrations impacted by backward-incompatible changes includes deprecating battery_level for robot vacuums, UniFi Protect AI Port devices have been removed, and a small handful of other changes. Check out the full list to ensure that you’re not impacted before updating.

There are a few Developer blog posts related to this release:

The build is available now - happy testing, friends! :tada:

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Hallelujah, there is a template god!
Thier name is Petro

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Was going to reply with the same comment but you beat me to it!

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@petro look, some people like you!

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That’s all @frenck! I did absolutely nothing for templates this release :smiley:

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You did the restore state PRs.

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Actually we appreciate the work he does, there’s a difference :wink: :joy:

Right of course, it’s all Frenck, Frenck and Frenck… I read the rc release notes.
And I’ll pretend I don’t follow template PR’s

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I note that the state_color changes are missing from the release notes, and Developer blog (I think there was a PR for that too?). While the changes are a nuanced and good changes, it is one that may have some scratching their heads, especially if they don’t like change.

For those following these state_color to color changes for entities and glance, the following custom integration/plugins have betas available which handle these changes, following .

UI eXtension (UIX) - 8.0.0-beta.2 (beta.1 had the changes, beta.2 fixes a console error). Without updating UIX Forge will have configuration error with Forged rows in entities card due to not liking migrated color.
slider-entity-row - 20.0.0-beta.2
template-entity-row 3.0.0-beta.2
fold-entity-row 4.0.0-beta.2

For thos not updating the last three plugins for a while, note that these are the LFT Forks for these plugins.

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Great work, thanks! Now all we need here is to add the possibility to change default tab - now it’s “by entity”. If we’d be able to change that to “by card” then world would be perfect…

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is this in 26.8? what’s planned ? Modernizing Modbus in Home Assistant | Home Assistant Developer Docs

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The PRs are merged but that doesn’t mean there are integrations that are using it. That will likely take months.

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I have my own integration based on the documentation. However there is no modbus-connection in the beta 1

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And allow Favorite the manual Card

Current workaround : favorite custom Forge (from Uix) and overwrite the single line..

Faster than scrolling all the way down :wink:

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Will there be a “think about this and that” if you change from 8123 to http 80? Any integrations, checks, apis, etc.? Or is this a “you can change to 80 and find out yourself whats not working anymore”?

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When you update, any devices that were merged this way are separated automatically, and their entities move to the right device for you.

Not a fan ot this; I’ve got many devices exposed through multiple integrations (most commonly Unifi + native device, but there are others.) Being able to see all the entities affiliated with a single device is useful (is a button or sensor unavailable because the device is disconnected from the network?) having to jump around to different integrations sounds like a step backwards in usability. If anything, I’d want a greater ability to merge devices so that integrations that aren’t able to get auto merged due to differing identifiers could be put together (ex: ADB and bravia integrations for a sony tv.)

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main probleem with the new device handling I get is multiple discoveries of the same device, when used in helpers, like statistics, or mold indicator.

this must be an overlooked effect, or calculated risk maybe, didnt yet follow the full architectural discussion.

Which I shouldnt have to in a release that opens with

Scherm­afbeelding 2026-07-31 om 09.24.53
Scherm­afbeelding 2026-07-31 om 09.24.531250×140 6.11 KB

and takes out mere words like developer and expert :slight_smile:

this multiple device discovery now is a real regression of that new method, and I would hope that gets looked into.

With that, I don’t mean that devs of CC’s like Battery Notes or Powercalc should fix it. Because they merely ingest what HA throws at them

other than that, a fine release, happy toying with it

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There is this catch22 problem the developers have created as well:

They don’t think the integration is capable of creating unique ids but will make it stop working if it doesn’t. Yay.

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Not sure about splitting up merged devices, that was always a handy feature. I don’t see the real benefit, instead I need to do some additional clicks in some scenarios. I hope this will be dropped from the release.

If not, maybe we can get at least a “linked devices” feature for better navigation?

This is groundwork for more flexible device handling we are building toward over the coming months, so think of it as a step along the way rather than the finished picture.

What could that be? I’m curious whether it could be worth it…

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When I go into “settings → network → home assistant cloud” I only get a spinning circle. Also “Settings → Home Assistant Cloud” sits continuously at “Loading”.

I am running on HA versions:

  • Installation methodHome Assistant OS
  • Core2026.8.0b3
  • Supervisor2026.07.5
  • Operating System18.2
  • Frontend20260729.3

Nabu Casa is showing Connected.

Can not find anything yet on where to look for help.

Greg