January 22, 2025

TL;DR: For all of December 🎄, we’re opening as much as share any subject, thought,
suggestion, or annoyance you have got with Dwelling Assistant
on our community forums!

Welcome to the month of “What the heck?!”: Third version

It’s again! 🎉 We’re thrilled to announce the third version of the month
of “What the heck?!” (WTH for brief). Each two years, we take the time to
pause, listen, and dive deep into the little things that maybe you go
“What the heck?!” about Home Assistant.

We’ve been growing really hard for years now with over one million
Dwelling Assistant-powered good properties on the market, and, as of this 12 months, we’re additionally
the #1 open supply challenge on GitHub!

Loads has occurred because the final version two years in the past. Plenty of effort went
into making a voice-controlled Dwelling Assistant a actuality. We have now applied
new dashboards and playing cards (with drag-and-drop!),
added group capabilities with labels and classes, and a lot
extra! However did every part end up the way in which it ought to? Did we miss issues?
Or, worse, did one thing begin to annoy you?

That’s what this month is about! This 12 months, we’re kicking it off within the month
of December as a pleasant closing exercise for this 12 months, and we will’t wait to
hear from 👉 YOU 👈!

Reducing the barrier for sharing WTH?! moments

We realize reporting bugs on our GitHub may be a steep hill and, for some,
possibly even a bit scary. You want a GitHub account to report a problem following
subject templates and kinds, and the report itself must be written in a means
{that a} developer can work with. Above all, we use our subject tracker to trace
precise points and bugs, not small function requests or annoyances.

Whereas it is a widespread and affordable course of to gather, monitor, and course of
bugs, our subject tracking-process won’t be the best approach to find out about your
“What the heck?!” moments, small tweaks, and enhancements that may make us
all get pleasure from Dwelling Assistant much more.

Immediately, we’ve opened up a Community Forum category as a secure, lower-barrier
place to speak about your Dwelling Assistant “What the heck?!” moments.
Extra importantly: focus on and vote on matters your fellow dwelling automators have
introduced up.

What are we searching for?

Just as with previous editions, I sent out a related question on my socials
earlier this week:

🎅 𝘚𝘢𝘯𝘵𝘢 𝘮𝘪𝘨𝘩𝘵 𝘣𝘦 𝘭𝘪𝘴𝘵𝘦𝘯𝘪𝘯𝘨… If you could ask for one small Home Assistant
improvement this holiday season, what would it be?

The answers to this question pretty much capture the goal behind this month:
Finding those nice quality-of-life features and little annoyances, highlighting
inconsistencies, suggestions for things that could be streamlined more, and even
big-ticket items. All of those things would make Home Assistant even more
awesome for everyone.

I’ve received many responses on these social media posts on X, Mastodon,
and Bluesky. Many of the responses there are precisely what we’re trying
for this month. I’ve picked a number of from these platforms to point out you what I imply:

  • Makes exposing entities to HomeKit the identical as to Alexa & Google” (Peter Hardy-vanDoorn)
  • “Polygon zones can be so very useful as a substitute of simply the bottom circle” (KrispKiwi)
  • Edit a scene with out activating it. I can solely edit my sleep scene after everybody goes to sleep or in YAML.” (codebuild21)
  • “The potential for catching errors in automations and having the ability to take actions after they happen 🙂” (Sergio Mayoral)
  • “Not Fancy! Higher backup administration, particularly pruning choices!” (Alex Alami)
  • “Persist my prefered dashboard throughout my totally different units/browsers.” (Carlos Sánchez López)
  • “Dwelling Assistant voice {hardware}!” (Paulus Schoutsen) 😆

These are all nice matters for the month of “What the heck?!”, I hope they encourage you for extra matters to share 💖.

Roadmap

As you might be aware, we also create and publish a bigger, high level, roadmap
for the greater direction of Home Assistant. A few weeks back,
Madelena
and JLo shared the 2024 Yr-end replace of our roadmap.

This 12 months’s month of “What the heck?!” is thus totally different on this regard, as in
earlier editions we didn’t have any roadmap in place. For this 12 months’s WTH,
the product crew may even be anticipating gadgets that may assist form and
prioritize our roadmap for the close to future.

As a matter of truth, many gadgets on this 12 months’s roadmap that we’ve labored on
have their origins or have been formed by matters from the earlier WTH from
2022. For instance, the ability to organize automations and the power to
drag-and-drop cards on your dashboards.

Why December?

In the previous editions, we had this month in October; this year, we decided to
move it to December. We figured, the holiday season is perfect for this event. 🎄

Many of us have a bit more time on our hands during the holidays, whether that’s
tinkering with automations, exploring our new dashboards, contributing to our
project, or simply enjoying engaging our active and vibrant community.

Start sharing your WTH!

👆That title says it all really. Start sharing your “What the heck?!”
moment, browse through all the WTH moments others brought up, and vote for the
ones you feel the same about.

We are excited about this month and looking forward to everything brought up!

Join us on the forums!, or learn the FAQ under.

Image of a person expressing a what the heck moment
So, when does Dwelling Assistant set off this second for you?

FAQ

  • “Great! I have multiple things! Should I put all my stuff in a single
    topic?!”

    No, please create multiplesmaller topics. There is no limitation
    on how many forum topics one can create for WTH. Each topic can be voted on,
    picked up, and maybe even resolved. Also, having multiple things stacked in
    a single forum topic makes resolving, discussing, and voting on them hard.

  • “Is everything reported going to be fixed/addressed?”

    Sorry, but the answer here is no; there is no guarantee that it will
    happen. The goal is to lower the barrier reporting things for one month.
    Code contributors will definitely join the effort and address a few of the
    listed things. Still, in the end, the number of submissions in WTH is,
    in general, simply too much to address. However, we have picked up a lot of
    items over the years (including bigger topics); it helps us shape our roadmap.

  • “My WTH matter is among the top-voted ones, so it’ll be
    mounted/addressed, proper?”

    That is not a contest. Voting will assist with visibility and provides a way
    of the suggestion’s affect. Nonetheless, it may be tough or too massive to
    implement. A subject with plenty of votes is extra prone to be seen by a
    contributor, however it isn’t assured to be picked up.

    Matters with lots of engagement, after all, assist us form our future roadmap.

  • “I’ve discovered a bug and am comfy with GitHub. The place ought to I report my
    subject now?”

    In case you are comfy utilizing GitHub, please, by all means,
    file an issue report on GitHub as a substitute.