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Home Assistant

INFRA · APIS
Velocity6.3

Open-source home automation platform for local control of smart devices

www.home-assistant.io ↗

Home Assistant folds HACS into core as a built-in Marketplace for community add-ons.

home-automationmarketplaceautomation-uxself-hostedopen-sourcesmart-home
◆Current state
Home Assistant ships one release a month, and 2026.11 is the largest yet. HACS, the community store for custom integrations, cards and themes, is now built in as the Marketplace under Settings, on every installation type and without a GitHub account. The same release lets targets exclude items, reworks entity naming in a backward-incompatible way, and adds Matter cameras with talk-back, LoRaWAN, local-drive backups, trace tools and 38 integrations.
◆Where it's heading
The 2026 releases keep moving power-user features out of YAML and side installs into the default UI: purpose-specific triggers, trigger IDs, card picker, and now the community store itself. With HACS inside the release process, the project takes on responsibility for third-party code it previously kept at arm's length. Debuggability is the second thread, with traces, per-integration logs and an action record arriving together.
◆Prediction
Expect follow-up releases to add curation or quality signals to the Marketplace, since the notes call this its first version. Entity naming fallout will likely drive fixes in 2026.12.

◆Recent moves

  1. 10d ago

    2026.11: HACS becomes a built-in Marketplace

    ⚡ SPARK

    2026.11 completes the year's pattern of pulling side-installed power-user tools into the default product, this time the whole community store. It also ships target exclusions, reworked entity naming, Matter cameras and 38 integrations, making it the largest release Home Assistant has shipped.

    View source ↗
  2. 1mo ago

    2026.10: Trigger IDs get a UI and maps move to OpenStreetMap

    2026.10 gives trigger IDs a UI: users tick the triggers a condition should match and Home Assistant manages the IDs. It continues the year's pattern of exposing existing power features, and the forced map swap to OpenStreetMap turned an outage into a vector map with redesigned markers.

    View source ↗
  3. 2mo ago

    2026.9: Modbus Connection Sharing and UI Device Selection

    2026.9 solves a long-standing Modbus friction: integrations now share a single connection instead of competing for it, and device selection moves from hand-written register maps to a UI picker. This removes a meaningful barrier for solar, heat pump, and energy meter owners.

    View source ↗
  4. 3mo ago

    2026.8: Approachability Improvements and ESPHome Starter Kit

    2026.8 emphasizes approachability — consistent with the 2026 series theme of reducing setup complexity. The ESPHome Starter Kit launch alongside this release signals a push to lower the hardware entry point for new users.

    View source ↗
  5. 4mo ago

    2026.7: Automations that speak your language

    ⚡ SPARK

    2026.7 graduates purpose-specific automation triggers from Labs to the default experience for all users — a genuine UX architecture shift. Users now start from intent ("when this happens") rather than Home Assistant internals (entity, state, trigger type), which is the clearest signal yet that the product is reorienting around non-expert users.

    View source ↗
  6. 5mo ago

    2026.6: Dashboard Card Picker Redesign

    2026.6 improves the dashboard card-picker experience, reducing the friction of custom dashboard creation. Incremental UX work consistent with the broader approachability push.

    View source ↗