Ah, the month of May! Between public holidays and terrace desires, one might think that the world of home automation slows down. Well, not at Home Assistant! Even if the team has taken a little breather (who could blame them?), the version 2025.5 arrives with a host of frankly welcome new features. Ready to discover what will boost your connected home this month? Hold on, there’s some juicy stuff.
Backups: flexibility on demand, at last!
We know it, backups are the nerve of the war. Losing your configuration after a bad operation or a botched update is a disaster. Since the beginning of the year, Home Assistant has strengthened its native backup system with automatic options, encryption, and even the ability to set Google Drive or OneDrive as the destination. But this month, we're stepping it up: each backup location (NAS, internal storage, cloud…) can now have its own retention policy.
Imagine: your NAS is overflowing with space, so you keep backups for six months. On internal storage, however, you limit it to three versions to avoid saturation. All this, without a headache, directly in the settings. This is exactly what the community was asking for, and honestly, it changes everything.
Automatic backup before OS update: peace of mind embodied
Who has never felt a cold sweat when launching an operating system update? Now, Home Assistant offers to create a backup just before upgrading the OS. If things go sideways, whoosh, a rollback in two clicks. And for those who like to automate everything, it is even possible to set this behavior as the default. No more wondering if we remembered to back up before clicking on “Update.” We can sleep soundly.
Smart restart: no more interruptions during backups
Before, a requested restart meant an immediate restart, even if a backup was in progress. Hello corrupted backups! Now, Home Assistant waits for the backup to finish before restarting. This detail may seem trivial, but it prevents many mishaps, especially when managing a family home automation setup where everyone relies on the system's reliability.
Voices on demand for your voice announcements
Home Assistant Cloud subscribers will love it: text-to-speech (TTS) is enriched with thousands of new voice variations and styles. Need a warm announcement for waking up, a firm tone to remind your kids to turn off the light, or a whisper to not wake the baby? It’s possible. We can even imagine scenarios where the voice adapts to the weather or the ambiance of the house. A real playground for fans of custom scenarios.
For French voices, we go from 14 to 22 voices, which already provides a choice!
Entity selection becomes clear
Who has never cursed while searching for the right entity in an endless list, copying and pasting or navigating through the development menu? With 2025.5, the selection now displays the friendly name, the room, and the entity type. No more tearing your hair out trying to find “sensor.temperature_living_room”: everything is clear, readable, and we save a lot of time, especially when tinkering with automations in bulk.
Z-Wave: the return of the king?
We thought the Z-Wave protocol was on a downward slope, but Home Assistant proves otherwise. The configuration of new Z-Wave devices improves with the Smart Start support: a simple scan of the QR code, and the device is added as if by magic. The cherry on top, the long-range version of Z-Wave is now supported. This is enough to rejuvenate your existing installations or dare to extend into the garden without fearing signal loss.
Templates and automations: simplicity and power
Advanced users will appreciate: templates become much more accessible in the graphical interface. No need to dive into YAML for every modification: only the necessary blocks remain in code, the rest is editable visually.
Importing external YAML codes has also been simplified: a simple copy-paste in the UI, and the automation appears, ready to be customized. This is the kind of detail that saves a lot of time, especially when sharing tips or scenarios on forums or among friends.
Little extras that make a difference
Support for Matter 1.4 water heaters arrives, perfect for those who emphasize multi-protocol compatibility. When adding a new device, you can now name it right from the configuration (no more “switch_1” to rename later). Media players gain a search feature, and templates are enriched with new methods to retrieve a device name or search for zone or floor aliases. Even model entities based on triggers for switches and lights are now supported.
Conclusion
Less massive than some previous versions, 2025.5 remains packed with new features that make Home Assistant even more enjoyable to use daily. Between custom backups, customizable voices, clear entity selection, and enhanced Z-Wave, you can feel that the team is listening to the real needs of users. In short, an update not to be missed, whether you are a power user or a simple home automation enthusiast. And for the more cautious, a little test on a secondary instance before deploying in production, as always!
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