Home Assistant 2024.8 | What’s new and why it matters

New Features

• New Badges for the Dashboard
  As part of the updates happening to Dashboards, (and go and watch Dashboard Chapter 2 on YouTube if you can) – 2024.8 brings fully re-designed badges for your Dashboards.
  
• Service Calls are now actions
  Home Assistant has always had the concept of services. In YAML, to trigger a light turning off you would call the light.turn_off service.
  
  Home Assistant is now going to refer to these as actions. This was already done via the UI for the January release, but now all documentation and other places in Home Assistant itself will use the new action terminology.
  
  For YAML users, you can use service or action as the change will be backward compatible. Home Assistant recommends using action in your YAML moving forward.
  
• Ollama is here
  Ollama is a local LLM AI, that can now be used in place of OpenAI or GoogleAI (Gemini).
  
• OpenAI now defaults to gpt-4o-mini
  
• Homekit Bridge
  Now supports the event entities representing doorbell and motion sensors.
  
• Mealie
  A whole bunch of new features, including new actions. There is now the ability to import recipies, set meal plans and view shopping lists.
  
• KNX Can now be managed by the UI
  The KNX integration now supports managing entities from the UI. This means you can now create, update, and delete KNX entities directly from the UI in the brand new dedicated KNX panel.
  
• Assist
  Timer support for mobile devices is here, and now Assist can tell you the current date and time
  
• Integrations setup via YAML will now be shown in the UI
  All integrations, regardless of how they are set up, are now visible in the integrations page in the UI. This means that even if you set up an integration using YAML, you can now find them in the UI and can view their provided entities.
  

New Integrations

• Autarco
  Monitor the performance of your Autarco connected solar panels, inverters and batteries.
  
• Bryant Evolution
  Control your Bryant Evolution HVAC system.
  
• Dio Chacon
  Connect your Dio Chacon devices via RF 433 Mhz or Wi-Fi.
  
• iotty
  Control your iotty Smart Home light switch, gate, smart cover, and outlet devices.
  
• IronOS
  Integrate your IronOS powered soldering iron with Home Assistant over Bluetooth.
  
• Israel Rail
  Get real-time departure information from the Israel railways
  
• LinkPlay
  Control various media player based on the LinkPlay protocol.
  
  Includes speakers from brands WIIM, Belkin, Edifer, Harman Kardon, JBL, Yamaha
  
• MadVR Envy
  Control your madVR Envy video processor for your home theatre.
  
• Simplefin
  SimpleFIN is a financial data provider that offers a simple and easy-to-use API for retrieving financial data.
  
• Tesla Fleet
  Connect and monitor various sensors from Tesla vehicles, PowerWall, Solar or Wall connectors through the Tesla Fleet API.
  

Backward-incompatible Changes

• Recorder Database
  This release includes a database upgrade/migration that increases the size of the number we can store for the idenfier fields. A more technical explanation: We are upgrading integer fields for ID columns from a 32-bit integer to BIGINT, which is a 64-bit integer.
  
  This can cause the database upgrade to take longer than usual, depending on the size of your database.
  
• Lights
  A whole bunch of attributes against lights (such as brightness, color, effect etc) will no longer be recorded in the database.
  
  This change has no impact on the operation of your lights, but it will reduce the amount of data stored in the database.
  
• WLED
  The WLED integration now requires a WLED device running at least WLED 0.14.0