Hi all,
I’d like to request support for triggering Home Assistant automations directly from ICS VALARM entries.
Right now, Home Assistant reads VALARM blocks inside ICS files, but they can’t be used as automation triggers. Instead, we have to recreate the alarm timing manually using event: start with an offset:.
Why this matters
ICS calendars (RFC 5545) support rich alarm definitions:
- Multiple alarms per event
- Different alarm types (
DISPLAY,AUDIO,EMAIL, etc.) - Per‑event alarm configuration
- Human‑readable alarm descriptions
Home Assistant already parses these alarms internally, so exposing them as triggers would make calendar automations much more powerful and reduce duplicated logic.
Example ICS
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART:20260526T170000
SUMMARY:Night Shift
BEGIN:VALARM
TRIGGER:-PT120M
ACTION:DISPLAY
DESCRIPTION:Shift Alarm
END:VALARM
END:VEVENT
Proposed YAML
trigger:
- platform: calendar
event: valarm
entity_id: calendar.roster
Optional filters (if supported):
alarm_index: 0
alarm_type: display
description: "Shift Alarm"
Benefits
- ICS becomes the single source of truth
- No more manually calculating offsets
- Supports multiple alarms per event
- Cleaner automations
- Fully backwards‑compatible
This would be especially useful for shift workers, medication reminders, school schedules, and travel itineraries.
Thanks for considering it — happy to provide more examples if needed.