what about the unintentional breaking changes that happen from time to time?
No app can find those and warn you ahead of time.
And as mentioned many times above there is already an add-on that can allow you to do auto-updates - it’s called Watchtower.
every app has occasional unintentional breaks that happen. For these eventualities, have the auto-updater perform a backup (just like the backup checkbox you can tick on manual updates). In that case, the user can restore from that backup, if something goes wrong.
With this possibility, the user should also be given a clear option to restore from a backup should something go wrong. This is actually something I haven’t had to worry about, so I haven’t taken the time to look up how to restore from these backups either.
Honestly, the ideas I’m proposing are things that would help make updates, and restoring from backups a bit more user friendly for the average consumer. Working for many years in Customer Service, I tend to have an idea of what kinds of things the average consumer might want in the way of ease of use.
Yet another reason NOT to do it:
He’s using a unsupported install method
Not every user has an install that allows for backups (Core and Container) that are easy to restore from.
Actually those backups aren’t restorable at all without substantial computer/Linux knowledge.
And what happens if the auto-update happens while you aren’t in a position to recover from an unplanned failure? Vacation/Holiday/away from home, etc?
Everyone seems to be thinking that this is just another PC/app/device that is inconsequential if it fails catastrophically at a truly inconvenient time. It’s not. it’s an application that literally runs your house. Hopefully people have backup measures in place that don’t put themselves or property in danger if HA breaks but why intentionally add that point of potential failure when the safer alternative of clicking a button that takes 10 seconds to do when it’s convenient for you?
My point was made again just recently when the Supervisor did an auto-update and then subsequently crashed because of a Docker incompatibility issue. I’m sure you saw the frantic posts here by a lot of users trying to figure out how to fix their broken HA systems.
Again, there is a reason why almost no advanced user of HA would ever use a system to auto-update their systems every month.
And I’ve been an industrial electrician for 40 years working with PLC’s and Multi-processor control systems in multi-million dollar production facilities and if Siemens ever decided to start auto-updates for the programming and control system software I can tell you with 100% certainty that we would start looking for another vendor. Reliability is a necessity in automation systems and uncontrolled auto-updates are totally antithetical to that.
HA is the same but on an obviously much smaller scale.
What experience do you have in customer service for systems that literally run complex automation systems that many users heavily rely upon in their daily lives to run their homes?
I’ve been using HA for 5 years and a member of the forum from day one of that time so I’m going to go out on a limb and guess that my customer service experience with users of HA is probably A LOT more extensive than yours. Some times users only THINK they want something without thinking things thru completely.
My CSR experience is from retail work years ago (more than 10 years), and IT work over the last 20+ years (Mainly on Windows, and Linux PCs, android phones, and other various electronics, and some various IOT devices, which are usable by Assistants) dealing directly with the public.
Please don’t get me wrong. I get that HA is a bit different than say Google Home, or Alexa, which are maintained by multi-million dollar companies, but I also have seen some documentation on HA that strongly urges users to keep HA, and all of it’s components up-to-date.
With this being the case, and all these comments about intentional breaks, and complicated backup restoration, such urging can just as easily result in the same breaks on systems that require extensive computer/Linux knowledge, just by users following the strong advice to keep everything updated.
No offense, but that, by itself, takes a lot away from ease-of-use, ultimately making this a service for the highly/fairly technically inclined, as opposed to the average consumer.
Mine runs using the VirtualBox method. I do have some decent Linux knowledge, and overall I’m technically inclined (including some web programming), but I’m not an advanced programmer by any means, and HA’s CLI interface is a big learning curve, forcing me to look up commands, or use the built in help system to do anything via CLI.
I’m really only trying to help improve the usability of this for the average consumer, but ultimately, it’s not my choice, because I can’t do that work myself. I was just figuring that there might be a way to make it work, to make things easier, because if the average consumer has to do a lot of researching, or have more than just basic technical knowledge, they will not want this.
Honestly, I’ve been testing it for months, and I’m not sure I will keep it, because of some things I’ve already seen that are not very intuitive, or user friendly. The only reason I decided to test it is because of the added privacy it provides over over the other assistant I use, in the hopes of eventually replacing the other completely.
No offense taken.
And I completely agree - no matter what the founders of HA/Nabu Casa try to say HA will (and should) be a system designed for the more tech savvy user. As soon as the main focus shifts toward the “average consumer” and away from the more advanced stuff then all of the benefits of HA will be lost.
The home automation space definitely doesn’t need any more mediocre “home automation” apps. and I use that term loosely.
If you want to just remotely control your lights and want a few simple automations then the solutions for that market already exists. But as far as I know they can’t do the same things that HA can.
If that functionality already existed then HA wouldn’t have been needed.
HA is far from perfect but if I thought something else could do the same thing HA can and be easier I’d be using it immediately.
The reason I started testing HA was due to the promising level of privacy it has over my existing assistant.
Without the cloud service, everything is stored on HA’s local instance, and you know where your data is going. (No offense to the cloud service, or it’s users) I think this is one of the things that people need in today’s world.
As far as advanced stuff, and “average consumer” ease of use, why can’t there be both? I mean… a lot of it is already there.
Mainly what I’ve tested it with so far is Smart Home related stuff (eg Lights, TV, location based automation, cameras). I haven’t really delved much deeper into what HA can do yet.
there can be to a degree. but only to a degree.
You will never get the “average consumer” (i.e. non-tech savvy “I need to call customer support because I can’t figure out how to set the clock on my microwave” types and with you in tech support I’m sure you’ve had your run-ins with them) to the point so they will be satisfied unless there is a solution that ends up being “why can’t HA just know what I want it to do? There are too many choices in the UI. I don’t want to learn to write any templates or yaml. But I want to have the same capability that I saw that Joe Advanced has in a forum post”.
I’ve seen those types on here a lot.
it either goes one of two ways…those people move on from HA because it’s too complicated to get what they see others doing with their systems and they get frustrated. Or they put in the time to learn to do those things themselves and so become more advanced in their knowledge.
Either way it’s still a system that ends up being used by techie types.
Having backups makes such issues very easy to handle.
But yes it was/is an issue with wrong dependencies in the installation routine of HA. Shouldn’t happen, but is hopefully fixed soon.
I remember that core developers of HA such as @frenck and some others have had valid arguments that auto update also means auto breaking. However, I would like to report here that not-updating the core or HA version (not confirmed - it’s probable) during my month long holidays highly probably stopped controlling HACS integration of my B-Hyve valves and my garden is almost dead. I was once again reminded that cross checking of irrigation (including whether physical water is detected in soil) is crucial.
I don’t understand this debate. Or at the very least, I don’t understand people’s insistence in trying to convince others to follow their practice. The original question was “is this possible” not “should I do this”. Basically what I’ve seen in this thread is:
OP: How do I get pie shipped to my house?
Others: You shouldn’t even be eating pie, not unless you understand that it can make you fat.
OP: Okay…but I’m gonna eat pie anyway. I just don’t want to drive to the store to get it. Can I get it delievered?
Others: Getting pie delivered to you is a bad idea. It’s going to enable you to continue in your ways, which are bad.
OP: That’s fine. I’m going to get pie no matter what, even if I have to drive to the store. I just don’t want to waste my time doing that. I want it delivered so that it’s available to me if I want it.
Others: …getting pie delivered is a bad idea.
What the heck?? Just let the user have their pie delivered!! As was mentioned over and over, OP is going to install the updates regardless of what the breaking changes are without reading the notes. I have worked in professional IT fields for nearly 20 years, working on Support teams, Help Desk teams, dev teams, and more and personally I never read release notes. If something breaks, I just roll back. It’s not that hard.
There’s several schools of thought, many of which have been represented here, including (but not limited to) “never update automatically or manually”, “update manually, but never auto-update and always read all notes”, “update manually but never read the notes”, and “auto-update, because I like to live dangerously”. No one opinion is “right” and everyone is welcome to run their system the way they wan’t. Stop trying to convince OP that your way is the better way. If they want to run auto-updates, and there is a way to do it, why not help them accomplish it? The worst thing that’s gonna happen is they’re going to brick their current build and will have to roll back. Which, if I understand correctly, is going to happen ANYWAY because they’re going to manually install updates without reading notes whenever they become available. You’re not stopping the outcome from happening by refusing to help or by trying to force them to live your ideal. All you’re doing is frustrating the user who just wants to automate their life a little bit. Which, by the way, is the entire purpose of HA. Just because there are parts of your routine that you don’t want to automate, doesn’t mean you should try and force others to live the same standard.
Also, whenever someone responsd with “no one is forcing you to do anything” I want just want to scream. If I’m going to run the updates no matter what, and you are refusing to help automate it even though you know it’s possible and you know how to do it, then you essentially are forcing me to do it manually. Because it’s going to happen no matter what. Doing it manually is just tedious and time consuming. If you want to read the release notes in their entirety every time an update comes out, then maybe you don’t care about tedium. Maybe you like spending the majority of your day on such dry material. But for me personally, I have better things to do with my time. I can run an auto backup every night, then run an auto update every night, and if I wake to something being broken then I can roll back to the previous day’s build. That is far less time consuming and headache enducing to me than reading every single note of every single release that ever happens.
In short, why not just let the man (or woman?) have pie delivered? It’s not harming you, they have a contingency plan in place for if things go wrong, and they’re going to be eating it anyway. Where is the harm, really? They understand the risk, and they’re gonna do it anyway.
(It should be noted, I’m not a dev and I don’t know how to auto-update. In fact, I only found this thread because I also was looking for a way to run automatic updates. Because, like I mentioned, I don’t ever read release notes and I have the means of restoring my previous builds. I also find manually updating tedious and time consuming, and want to find a way to keep my system up-to-date without the hassle of having to always come in and click the button.)
Relax. People are gonna be people. No reason to get bent out of shape. This wasn’t possible to automate until recently.
Make an automation that uses the update.install service when an update is found from the update entity.
just updates home assistant
alias: Auto Update HA
trigger:
- platform: state
entity_id: update.home_assistant_core_update
to: 'on'
action:
- service: update.install
target:
entity_id: update.home_assistant_core_update
Allows for any update entity trigger.
alias: Auto Update HA
trigger:
- platform: state
entity_id: update.home_assistant_core_update
to: 'on'
action:
- service: update.install
target:
entity_id: "{{ trigger.to_state.entity_id }}"
I like it. The only suggestion I’d make would be to send a notification before the install, to say what’s about to be updated. Then if something breaks after an upgrade you know that the upgrade may have caused it (and if something breaks and there wasn’t an upgrade, you know that too).
I’m using Scheduled auto-update for Home Assistant and have it set to only operate during a few hours each day (early morning). I also have a shutdown and startup automation that I use that sends a notice before shutdown and one after startup.
So, when I get up in the morning if I see a pair of those I know that either an update happened for my instance rebooted for some other reason.
In that case, I would suggest you to create a toggle helper and use that in the pre-update actions to set the helper as true, and then in the post-updates actions to set it back to off.
Then you add to your startup automation t9 check for this helper and if it is on you can send a different message saying something like “the system restarted during the update process”. Also use your startup automation t9 set the helper off after sending the message.
Then you will know if it was the automation or something else.
Too complex?
Sure, I could do that, but I actually have a good idea of when my systems are going to auto-update since I see the update in the UI waiting during the day 
I am new to the HA project (been just over a month) and have tried to keep current with core updates. It seems to be about every 3 days I see the (1) icon by settings suggesting to me that I should update. I have added the automation recommended just up thread (thanks for that!).
I can’t help but chime in to the debate: If the UI is presenting to the user that an update is available and highlighting it via a notification, I would assume as a new user that it’s recommended to take the update. After manually taking so many of these updates (and all without issue - thanks for the stable project and solid release process!), I can only wonder why there isn’t a simple way to auto update (which ultimately brought me to this thread).
I did notice an attribute on update.home_assistant_core_update: { auto_update: false, ...}. Does this mean an auto update feature is in progress (or already exists, just not in the UI)?
Thanks, Jeff
You don’t want this.
If there is a breaking change, you don’t want to spend hours trying to figure out why something in your system stopped working. It happened to me once. Since then I am reading the Breaking Changes in every update notes. Then I update.
It can break on a manual update as easily as it can an automated one. Personally, I don’t have time to read update notes. I’d be fine with one of
I’ll take any of these. Anyway, I see there is an Core OS 9.3 update pending. I’d read the release notes, but I have got to get ready for work. Since I don’t have time to read them, I’m pressing the update button.