First, I do want to say that I am growing to like the new ESPHome Device Builder. I wish the YAML editor could be larger, but tbh I haven't really explored the settings, so it may be there after all.
However, one thing has really killed the excitement for me - the inability to expose it to LAN. I really liked my old setup, where I had a nice little ESPHome Server PWA in my Mac dock, which was just HA's IP and the ESPhome port. One click, and it would open just like a native app, but with no extra resources used on my main computer,
This worked flawlessly for months and months. Then the new Builder killed it for no reason. The reason I liked this is because I could use the update entities in Home Assistant for both the ESPs and the Builder itself. And the fact that everything was automatically backed up perfectly by HA's top-notch backup system was just the cherry on top. Was.
With this new change, I'll just install and migrate to my Mac. I guess I'll have Time Machine backups and stuff, and it's way more powerful for compiling, so it's not all bad. It's just honestly kind of annoying as I don't see why the web UI can't just be exposed with the simple username and password like the old one was? And since it can't, leaving options that make the Builder restart in a loop seems kind of lazy. After all, you can't even get the old one back if you wanted.
I was actually planning on using the HA addon with my Mac as the compile node, as that was one of the highlighted features. But now I'm forced to have it all on the Mac, so I guess Mission failed successfully.
Let me know what you guys think! Maybe this is a rare use case, I honestly am not sure.
I guess I wouldn't even notice a change like that. I have ESPHome command-line installed on my daily driver (a Windows laptop, same idea as your Mac.) I suppose I could also bring it up as a UI local to my laptop, but never really found the need.
Likewise, I don't even start the Device Builder app (add-on) in HA any more. I assumed I could do so from the normal HA UI. Are you saying that isn't an option any more?
As you say, taking the compile process, and ESPHome development in general, off the production HA machine just makes sense. So I don't bother with the Device Builder any more.
With the ESPHome Desktop App, you can link it to your existing dashboard, and keep everything hosted on your HA, and leverage the update you already have running, then leverage the computation of all nodes in the setup when compiling the firmware (assuming your HA host might have less horse power than your desktop).
This feature have been made exactly to make sure your device configs are backed up and secure.
But it really make me wonder -- is there someone "high up" that really hates YAML? You have to use YAML to ask questions about your code and (I have to assume) once you do a few devices the YAML is more handy. Anyway....
My vote is also to run ESPHome builder separately from HA. I have an old Mac running Docker and I have bookmark that takes me right to the builder window. I also put all my configs in Github as it's nice to have the diffs.
I haven't tried this yet, but also a very interesting approach:
[16:17:06] INFO: Starting ESPHome Device Builder... 2026-06-18 16:17:08.580 WARNING (MainThread) [esphome_device_builder.device_builder] Public port 6052 NOT bound: the HA add-on is ingress-only by design and doesn't expose USERNAME/PASSWORD options. The dashboard is reachable through the Home Assistant UI. For password-gated LAN access, run the standalone PyPI install on the same network. See README "Home Assistant add-on". 2026-06-18 16:17:08.582 INFO (MainThread) [esphome_device_builder.device_builder] Serving frontend from /usr/local/lib/python3.13/site-packages/esphome_device_builder_frontend (dev_mode=False)
EDIT: You are correct! The log lines warning about how the add-on is ingress only made me miss it. Okay, well in that case I could keep using the HA app.
The Ingress is still an option, so people who normally use http://homeassistant.local/app/ or use the Open Web UI button won't be affected. What broke was the ability to navigate to http://homeassistant.local:6052 directly without Ingress.
That still isn't a true full screen editor, but it's better than nothing I guess...
As for the hates-YAML thought ... I did honestly get that same vibe. I was honestly pretty surprised at how it completely switched from YAML-first to GUI-first.
I am wondering if they did that to try and ease the sheer amount of non-technical people trying to use it and flooding the forum with support requests, or just to match what Home Assistant does already.
I saw that tool recently too ... I don't think I really want to try a third party tool to manage esphome ATM...I'll prob stick to first party bc it's changing so much right now. If you decide to try it let me know if you like it!
Special thanks to @aceindy - works! I did not see that log line as I only saw the ominous "Ingress only" log
That log line does make me nervous as it suggests that might be removed eventually...if it does, I'm fully migrating to my Mac. But for now, I set my Mac as a remote build server to the HA app, which should be exactly what I need.
The new features are awesome, the remote build server is a game changer and I really like the new look overall.
But....
The new color palette in the editor is an eyesore for my old eyes, we need the color variables to be able to theme that asap.
The yaml editor is a huge downgrade, where are the hover help tooltips gone ? There are only a few left and with no links to the docs. I used them constantly, no I'm in the dark and must search in the documentation to find the corresponding reference.
Where is the right-click menu gone in the editor ?
Even auto-completion is very limited now.
In a nutshell, I don't understand why it was necessary to completely rewrite the editor which was already quite basic in comparison with other IDE and has now become so rudimentary that it's barely usable.
You might want to look up "Update ESPHome Devices Sequentially" automation, it is what I use to update mine after going through my check list before taking the ESPHome update.
It is automated to update all devices, (the sequential part is to keep from overloading the platform running HA by doing all at once, possibly crashing HA). It polls all devices in the list.
