First of all to all of the wonderful people that tirelessly put effort into Home Assistant, thank you for all you do sincerely.
I need to give you some feedback and some of you will not like it. You can only improve with feedback, nothing in life is perfect. Before you reply with a snide comment, read this and understand it’s feedback and not an assault on you.
I updated to the latest version of HA March 15. This update broke almost all of the lights in my house. Why? Stricter compliance rules. Someone in the community decided that the color temperature should be expressed in Kelvin instead of what it has been for years. I am all for making things better and I am not at all opposed to change however removing the old way and forcing ONLY the new way on users was wrong. You can not impose these things like this on people, the result will always end up being anger and ill will.
We all want Home Assistant to succeed. To succeed you MUST think practically in all things you do, that means NOT doing things that cause people great problems and anger.
This was such a problem for me that I rolled back the update with a backup and have decided I will never trust another update from Home Assistant. I have turned off as many of the update notifications as I can in HA. This is a sad consequence of whoever decided this was a good idea.
I have noticed that there is more and more slop in the releases as well. When I say slop I mean minor things that are getting overlooked and ignored. I use a Mac with Safari (latest version) and the HA web page on my instance does not always open properly, I have to refresh the page sometimes to get it to load. This has been happening for a few months now. It’s a little thing but a sign that what used to be super tight releases are now getting sloppy.
I also looked at the newest version of HA on another system, again I am not at all opposed to change but now it is not even clear to me how to customize the Overview page, you used to be able to take control of the page and make it your own, now it seems you are stuck with some of the elements. Maybe there is a way to remove all of the elements on the Overview page but it’s not at all obvious how to do this. Maybe I don’t want to know about updates on the overview page? This is more slop, design decisions that are not being made with the practical world in mind.
There has been a clear deviation from how things were being done in the HA community to now and in my opinion it is not for the better. It is my hope that the community comes together and revises how things are being done now. Focus on the problems being fixed and doing everything in a practical way for users - before moving on to new things. You did such a great job on so many aspects of HA, get back to that mind set please. Thank you for reading this.
For future reference, certain changes are announced months in advance allowing users plenty of time to make adjustments before the deadline arrives. In addition, warnings typically appear in the Logs to advise the user that their configuration requires attention. For example, this is the kind of message one would find in Logs as far back as a year ago.
Got color_temp argument in turn_on service, which is deprecated and will break in Home Assistant 2026.1, please use color_temp_kelvin argument
When the deadline arrives, it’s announced in the Release Notes, specifically in the Backward Incompatible Changes section.
It serves to inform users that they must now apply the change before upgrading. If a user doesn’t read it, or fails to implement the change, the result can be failure.
If a person does not check Logs for warnings and errors, doesn’t read Release Notes for impending or immediate changes, and doesn’t read Update notifications, then the odds are high for encountering far more problems with Home Assistant in the future. It’s an evolving product that requires remaining informed about its evolution.
Both your comments ring true, however in the release notes there is a simple procedure to convert from the old to the new, the laws of physics not being changed, just the units of measurement.
The blog even has a lot of comments back and forth about the pros and cons, and the above two posts a summary of that.
What galled me was a procedure to automatically convert from the old to the new was released, indicating it was possible to do this automagically. Why wasn’t this done in the first place, saving all the angst?
The formula to convert Fahrenheit and Celsius back and forth from Kelvin hasn’t changed since I learned it in school, why does it have to be a ‘shatter and let them pick up the pieces’ approach for a computer to do?
Was that too much to do, go the extra mile to do the conversions automagically, and beta test before the deadline?
Unless this was a rhetorical question, I believe the answer is that the person submitting a PR is free to submit as much or as little as is needed to effect the change. In other words, they’re not obligated to supply automatic conversion.
If you believe this should change, contact the project leads.
That is the gist of my comment, it was possible to do the conversion, but it wasn’t done. Somebody saw the need (after the confusion hit), took up the challenge (in the spirit of open source) and did it (admirably), but it should have happened as part of the change process prior to release, not as a reaction when the unsuspecting were left floundering, in the dark (literally).
I believe this is the reason for this thread. The probability of it being the most appropriate method to institute change may have been overlooked by @sirobin171 especially as he has chosen to start a new thread here rather than add his discontent to the existing chorus.
The grumble is we were short changed. The change should have included the automagical conversion - in spirit it was incomplete, and should not have been unleashed upon a (somewhat) unsuspecting world. Yes, I saw the warnings, checked I wasn’t affected, but the thought this may have widespread implications did make me uncomfortable. Maybe I should have spoken up. Nobody stood back, looked at the bigger picture and said ‘hold on, we need to do a wee bit more here before we release this as it stands’ to the point the release process was paused, and extra functionality added. Just because we can, doesn’t mean we should.
Such is the burden of Open Source. One of the drawbacks. You get what you pay for. In this case, I feel we were (slightly) short changed.
For a project that has been touting the “make it easy for users” mantra for several years I fail to see how this is newb friendly in the slightest.
Of course that’s not meant towards you but that is always the go to response when a user (most of the time of the “new” variety) gets caught out by a change that they didn’t know that they needed to read all the pertinent reference manuals (release notes, logs, etc) before updating.
No other app requires a user to read all the release notes before they update so they can fix all the stuff that’s broken in the new release.
I know that HA is not an Android or Apple product (thankfully…yet) but can we at least admit to new users how technical they need to be to use HA instead of leading them down the primrose lane?
HA tries to make new users believe that it’s so user friendly but then chastises people when they don’t read all the techie stuff before updating. At a minimum an explanation of that concept (along with an explanation of the update release strategy) needs to be put out there front and center on the “Getting Started” page so new users know what to expect from both a technical and time commitment aspect so they can know what they’re getting themselves into.
the target audience expects seamless updates just like they get with the other devices they use.
I actually don’t see a difference with this compared to light.turn_on having brightness_pct and brightness.
Why did one temperature have to be removed when we can have two brightness?
To be clear, I am a long time user of Home Assistant and not a member of this product’s management team. The opinion I expressed is based on my personal experience of using Home Assistant, and helping thousands of users, since 2018.
I don’t tell people that Home Assistant is easy to use or manage. I tell them what I believe are the real-world requirements to avoid failure and frustration.
It’s my “go to” response because, in my opinion, it’s the reality of using and managing Home Assistant. If it differs from the official line about ‘making it easy for users’ then it means they have not yet reached that goal.
Discussing the disparity between what’s advertised and what’s real may be cathartic for some people but it doesn’t fix anything. This forum is littered with long-winded discussions that ultimately changed little to nothing.
My suggestion, for anyone who has an idea for improving Home Assistant, is to submit a Feature Request, or WTH (when it’s “in season”), outlining the suggested improvements in clear, precise terms.
Because based on history, this thread will have the same vanishingly low odds of success as its predecessors.
I’m sorry if I wasn’t clear enough. There was absolutely no offense meant towards you at all. I obviously know you’ve been around a long time (almost as long as I have ) and I truly appreciate and value the help you always give to others (even myself).
When I said it was the “go to” response I didn’t specifically mean you. I meant that generically.
I wasn’t trying to “scold” you for saying what you said. I’ve said the same things myself many times in the past. And it’s a completely valid response given the inherent complexity of HA.
My point was that we shouldn’t need to keep telling new users to RTFM. They should already know to RTFM because that’s already been emphasized to them elsewhere during installation or they shouldn’t have to RTFM in the first place to mitigate incessant breaking changes from the monthly update.
As far as trying to go thru the official routes to change things we all know exactly how those suggestions are taken and what the end result will be. Sometimes catharsis is the only thing we are left with.
Exactly.
Holy crap!
That’s literally the exact opposite of what we need to be doing!
I love this quote:
Add a clear rule to the developer documentation (integration development docs) and the frontend contribution guidelines stating that “Advanced”, “Expert”, and similar terms must not be used in user-facing strings. Provide a list of approved alternatives and the reasoning behind the policy.
“provide a list of approved alternatives”…?
That’s a quote that George Orwell would have been proud of. It’s along the same lines as changing “breaking changes” to “backwards-incompatible changes”. It’s insulting to users.
Right. Don’t change the process. Change the messaging.
Don’t manage the expectations of new users by telling them up front that some things are harder and they might be expected to dig into the docs or get help with that stuff. Give those new users a psychological hit by implying that nothing they see here is “advanced”, “expert” or hard. If they are having a hard time grasping any concept in HA it must be their fault and they are somehow mentally deficient because it’s all supposed to be so easy that nothing is deemed “advanced”. Then they’ll be too embarrassed to try to find help because they don’t want to look stupid because it’s all supposed to be easy.
sheesh.
Once you have to start trying to control others language (especially language that conveys reality) then you’re going down a dangerous path.
Coming from developing a very advanced engineering tool for the majority of my career, this path is very normal for software development. The software I worked on for years is much harder to grasp and understand than Home Assistant and we shifted away from those words in ~2017 towards “settings” or “math” instead of “variables”. I don’t think this is anything to really get bent out of shape about. It’s meant to expose the more advanced things to people who would be afraid of touching it otherwise.
A great example is that I made an advanced section in template entities with availability, probably should have just named it ‘options’ instead. Live and learn. Availability isn’t really “advanced”.
I simply used your post as a springboard to clarify my position on this matter.
One of the management team’s stated objectives is to make Home Assistant more approachable to novices. Maybe someday Home Assistant will evolve to a state where people doesn’t need to be so vigilant before performing an update. However, that day isn’t now so I advise users to stay informed. Monitor Logs, read the Release Notes, etc.
I also fell into the kelvin trap, though I try and read all the caveats aforehand.
There was no damage except for HA’s reputation in my wife’s eyes, just because she couldn’t switch on the bedroom lights.
Something didn’t work and, in this case, it took a few hours after running the update to manifest itself.
There was no initial idea if it was a dead light, a dead battery or a dead anything else, with no apparent error message to hold on to.
So I went through the (lengthy) logs, found the suspicious entry that might explain what happened, had a lightbulb (pun intended) moment and fixed a bunch of scripts and automations.
The fix itself didn’t take nearly as much time as finding the reason for the problem did.
I think it would be VERY helpful if HA (or Spook?) would point out deprecated configuration options before they expire.
Just because it’s the way things have always been done doesn’t mean it was the right way to do things and we shouldn’t try to improve. I always said that HA should never go down the same road as all the other dumbed down commercial projects because that’s what has always made HA special. But here we are anyway.
Users shouldn’t be gaslighted into believing that some things they are going to want to do aren’t going to be “advanced”. That’s treating those users as children (“you can’t handle the truth”). Instead they should be warned up front that some things are more complicated than others but then give them the encouragement that they can probably handle that if they put in a bit more work to try to figure it out (I say “probably” because let’s face it that some users are just never going to get it - which is all the more insulting if you imply to those users that everything is easy). That’s empowering users not juvenilizing them.
It’s not really gaslighting, it’s that these features aren’t advanced. That’s really just it. Just like the “advanced” toggle for the user, it adds a ton of useful tools that really aren’t advanced. They are just hidden behind a name. E.g. that likely should change to “Show admin tools”. At the end of the day, is that gaslighting you? Not really.
I can’t think of any other area in the UI that uses the word advanced or expert. So I don’t have any other examples. However my point still stands, it’s not about the thing being advanced, it’s about opening it up to be more descriptive and less exclusive.
) and I truly appreciate and value the help you always give to others (even myself).