Feature Request: Presence Detection Based on Preferred Wi-Fi Network Connection

Feature Requests
1

Body:

Hi all,

I’d like to propose a feature that enhances presence detection in Home Assistant by leveraging the Wi-Fi network a device is connected to — specifically, detecting whether a device is connected to a preferred or known home Wi-Fi network.

Idea

The idea is to associate the Home Assistant instance with one or more Wi-Fi networks defined as “home networks.” When a mobile device (e.g., smartphone) connects to one of these known networks, the device’s status would be set as “in-home” or “present”. When it disconnects or connects to a different (non-home) network, its status would be set to “away”.

This could either supplement or serve as an alternative to GPS-based presence detection (geo-location), which isn’t always reliable or fast enough for certain automations.

Possible Use Cases

  • More reliable presence detection when GPS is disabled or inaccurate.
  • Quickly detect presence without battery-intensive location polling.
  • Support for multiple trusted locations (e.g., primary home, vacation home, office).

Integration Ideas

  • Let users specify a list of trusted SSIDs in their user profile or device tracker settings.
  • Optionally allow combining with other presence detection methods (e.g., GPS, Bluetooth).
  • Could be exposed as a helper or configurable via the UI.

Thanks for considering this! I’d love to hear what others think and if this is something already achievable via workarounds or automations.

2

The mobile app has an SSID sensor. You can create a presence sensor from that.

3

Thanks, Tom!

Yes, I understand that it’s possible to do this manually using the SSID sensor and a template.
My suggestion is more about offering this as a native feature, directly within presence or person: configuration — similar to what already exists for GPS, router, BLE, etc.

It would be great to simply mark certain SSIDs as “trusted/home” and let Home Assistant handle presence detection based on that — even supporting multiple locations (home, office, vacation house…) or micro-location (different APs for different zones).

Thanks for your attention!