How to navigate Home Assistant faster (without changing a thing)
Home Assistant is incredibly powerful, but there are so many features that navigating all the menus can be a chore. You can do things much faster if you stick to your keyboard.
Instantly open quick search
In Home Assistant 2026.2, the Quickbar has been replaced with a new Quick Find feature that you can use to search for devices, entities, commands, and more. Previously, you could open specific modes like the Entity Filter, Device Filter, or Command Palette by pressing single-key shortcuts.
The quickbar itself would only show one mode at a time. To switch between the different modes, you will need to add or remove the “>” or “#” signs from the start of typing to switch between the different filters while the dialog was open. You couldn’t see controls, devices, and entities in the same window at the same time.
The new quick search tool solves this problem. You use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl+K (or Cmd+K on macOS) to open Quick Find. Type in your search query and you’ll see results for orders, devices, and entities, all in one place, as long as matches are found.
A useful tip is to remember that the search is for substrings and letter sequences. You can usually find a shorter combination of letters that will get the result you want at the top of the list. Once it’s at the top of the results, you can press Enter to open it.
For example, to open the developer tools, I have to type “deve” before the developer tools navigation command moves to the top of the list. However, typing “ol” also works, saving me two extra key presses each time. Finding a few of these shorter options can save you a lot of time in the long run.
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Use a single touch to directly access entities, devices and commands
Although the new quick search includes results for entities, devices, and orders, if you are looking for something specific, you may prefer to filter the search to limit the results. In the Quick Find tool, you can click on any of the “Navigate”, “Commands”, “Entities”, “Devices” and “Zones” tabs to filter the results for that specific type. You can click on the tabs using the mouse or press Tab to move down to the row of tabs, use the arrow keys to navigate to the appropriate tab and press Spacebar to select it.
There are also keyboard shortcuts that can make things much faster. Pressing “e” opens the quick search with the entity filter active. Pressing “d” does the same thing for devices and “c” for commands. If you know what type of thing you’re looking for, this not only makes opening Quick Search a single touch, but it also makes it much quicker to get the result you’re looking for.
Navigate Home Assistant faster without touching the mouse
Even with a fresh installation of Home Assistant, it can be a real maze to navigate. Once you start adding integrations and devices, creating different dashboards, and installing add-ons (now called apps), you end up with hundreds of entities to search through.
Trying to navigate Home Assistant using your mouse or touchpad is a thankless task. The settings section alone has over ten different subsections, and many of them have multiple tabs or subsections of their own. Trying to find a specific entity, for example, requires going to Settings, then Devices & Services, then selecting the Entities tab, before you can even start searching for what you want.
Using the keyboard can make things much faster. If you are looking for a specific entity, instead of having to navigate through all the menus, you simply press the “e” key and the quick search window appears with the appropriate filter. Type a few letters and you will be able to display the entity you need.
One of the most useful benefits of Quick Search is that it works from almost anywhere in Home Assistant. For example, you can use the custom component in kiosk mode to hide the sidebar of your dashboards. Even if you can’t access the sidebar, you can still press Ctrl+K or Cmd+K, and the quick find window will open directly in the dashboard.
Using the keyboard also means you don’t have to lose the flow of what you’re doing by taking your hands off the keyboard to grab the mouse and navigate a mess of menus. If you’re working on an automation, for example, and want to find the entity ID of a sensor you want to use, you can use Quick Find to find the sensor you need, copy the ID, then go back and paste it into your automation, all without touching the mouse at all.
You can use Tab and Shift+Tab to navigate forward and backward through different UI elements and press Enter or Space to select targeted buttons or toggles. You can use the arrow keys to navigate lists and escape to close any dialog box you have open. With a little practice, you can quickly move around Home Assistant like it’s second nature while your mouse takes a well-deserved rest.
Speed ​​up automation editing with familiar shortcuts
Quick Find isn’t the only place you can take advantage of keyboard shortcuts in Home Assistant. Since update 2025.10, Home Assistant users have access to three well-known keyboard shortcuts.
In the automation editor, if you want to copy a block from the automation and paste it elsewhere, you can use the keyboard to do so. Ctrl+C (or Cmd+C on Mac) will copy the currently selected block. Ctrl+V (or Cmd+V) will paste the copied block directly below any other block in your automation; just select the block, press the keyboard shortcut and the copied block will appear below.
Version 2025.10 also added two more keyboard shortcuts. You can now undo steps in the Automation Editor using Ctrl+Z (or Cmd+Z). You can go back up to 75 steps in the edit history, and if you want to restore a step you just undone, Ctrl+Y (Cmd+Y) will revert to the last thing you undone.
If you use Home Assistant a lot, going through all the menus can waste a lot of time. Using the keyboard can be a much better way to find what you’re looking for. With a little practice, you can find almost anything in Home Assistant in just a few moments.
