Home Assistant 2026.1: SendSpin, new Home Dashboard improvements and presence using labels

Headlines

• Sendspin
  Music Assistant has gained their first full-time employee Marvin, and is releasing a wireless sync streaming protocol called “Sendspin”
  
  Sendspin can stream high-fidelity audio, album art, and visualizer data, automatically adapting to each device’s capabilities. An example Music Assistant offers is an e-paper display showcasing the album cover, while multiple speakers play in sync, and smart lights pulse to the rhythm.
  
  There’s also a firmware update available for the Home Assistant Voice Preview Edition. They’re also looking into Google Cast and AirPlay support.
  
  Music Assistant has had some massive improvements, including lyrics support, smart fading and the ability to track and share your listening history.
  

New Features

• Home Dashboard
  On mobile devices, the Home dashboard now displays summary cards (like lights, climate, security, media players, weather, and energy) directly at the top of the view, followed by your favorites and areas. This replaces the previous tab-based navigation, giving you instant access to everything that matters without extra taps.
  
  A new Devices page now appears on the Home dashboard to show all devices that aren’t currently assigned to a specific area. This makes it easy to find and control those “orphaned” devices without hunting through the settings.
  
• Purpose Specific Conditions and Triggers
  this release adds a lot more trigger types, making this new approach even more useful. Here is an overview of all the new triggers added in this release:
• New Protocol Dashboards
  This release reorganizes the Settings page to give these open protocols a more prominent spot. The protocols section now appears right after the core settings, making it much easier to find and access your protocol-specific configurations.
  
• Matter
  There’s now support for controlling volume levels for compatible Matter speakers.
  
• Statistics
  The statistics graph card now includes a link to the history panel in its header, just like the history graph card already had. Selecting the link takes you directly to the history with the same entities and time range pre-selected
  
• SmartThings
  SmartThings has gained new sensors, including air quality sensors for PM1, PM2.5, and PM10, hood filter usage tracking, fridge temperature sensors for One Door refrigerators, and fan speed control for range hoods.
  
• Roborock Q7 devices are now supported with Home Assistant
  
• Ping
  The ping integration can now track packet loss as a percentage. Disabled by default.
  
• Squezebox
  Now offers alarm monitoring. You get binary sensors to track if an alarm is upcoming, active, or snoozed, plus a timestamp sensor showing when the next alarm is scheduled.
  
• Hikvision
  NVR support is here, including extended event detection and automatic discovery of video channels.
  

New Integrations

• AirPatrol
  Control your air conditioning units through Airpatrol WiFi devices directly from Home Assistant.
  
• eGauge
  Integrate eGauge energy monitors for residential and commercial applications, commonly used with solar energy installations
  
• Fluss+
  Connect your Fluss+ Button to Home Assistant for quick and easy control of your smart home.
  
• Fish Audio
  Use Fish Audio’s text-to-speech service to generate natural-sounding speech in Home Assistant.
  
• Fressnapf Tracker
  Track the location of your pets and monitor their activity using Fressnapf GPS Trackers.
  
• HomeLink
  Integrate your HomeLink devices to trigger smart home routines from the comfort of your vehicle.
  
• Watts Vision+
  Control your Watts Vision + smart heating system, allowing remote control of individual home heating zones.
  

Links Discussed

• <a href="https://github.com/clmun/Shadow?sfnsn=wa” target=”_blank”>https://github.com/clmun/Shadow?sfnsn=wa