One thing that makes me a more grateful Home Assistant user
We tend to bang the Home Assistant drum a bit here at How-To Geek, and for good reason. Not only do we love it, but most of you do too. The more people who discover its raw potential, the better.
There’s one thing that continually impresses me about the project, and I’m not just talking about its open source development model or its price.
So many improvements, every month
Every month, like clockwork, Home Assistant receives an update with quite significant improvements. We’ll often collect our favorite changes into a news article and highlight our favorite new features (like Targeted Automations last December). You can read all the release notes in full on the Home Assistant blog.
Rather than releasing a major release every year like most operating systems, Home Assistant adds features consistently and incrementally over time. This may mean it’s a little easier to ignore big updates like a new Home dashboard or a revised save system when they arrive.
This unwavering release schedule isn’t necessarily something I expected when I chose the platform to run my smart home. I was most interested in the open home philosophy, bringing together devices from all kinds of ecosystems, and the possibility of tweaking and tinkering with ever more complex automations.
I’ve purchased apps that don’t get updates as often as Home Assistant, and I’m paying for subscriptions that seem to offer less value. It could be argued that every app or service doesn’t need to be continually iterated on, but these regular releases highlight the monumental challenge of creating and continually improving a smart home platform. For developers, the work never stops.
I’m writing this right after the release of Home Assistant’s January 2026 update (2026.1), which the developers say is “a smaller version” due to the holiday season we just had. A quick look at the release notes shows that even with the holidays off, the release is packed with improvements ranging from dashboard improvements on mobile to feature enhancements still in development, and even new integrations.
Home Assistant is truly a team effort
A quick glance at the release notes for any Home Assistant update demonstrates that the final version is the sum of many individual moving parts, held together by a pool of talented contributors. Although the Home Assistant project is financially supported by a company called Nabu Casa, much of the work is done by volunteers.
These are people like you and me who just want to see the platform grow and improve. They want to integrate more devices to expand the reach of the platform. They share their own skills with the aim of creating a better platform that benefits everyone. This is what makes the open source software model so attractive; everyone benefits.
Outside of the main Home Assistant release, many community contributions are highlighted in the liner notes for each release. These include integrations that are built into the main version of Home Assistant while still being maintained by the community. It also includes small tweaks like adding volume sliders to media plugins or changing how data is presented in existing integrations.
Of course, there’s even more than that to the Home Assistant community forums, like Blueprints Exchange for sharing automation plans, a place to showcase and share your projects, as well as technical support from other users. Why not create an account and contribute your own knowledge?
All this for free
The open source software model adopted by Home Assistant is a shining example of a successful self-fulfilling prophecy. The platform’s goal of bringing together a wide range of smart home devices into one powerful package is admirable, and the $0 barrier to entry means you have nothing to lose by trying. At the same time, the more people who use the platform, the more popular it becomes.
This attracts more users, who use a wider variety of devices, with a broader set of skills and interests. A small percentage of them might have the skills and time to contribute to the project. Over time, this snowballed into the Home Assistant we know and love today, an ever-expanding juggernaut of potential, free to download and use.
Fortunately, there are ways to support the project with your wallet while improving your smart home experience. The simplest of these is a $6.50 Home Assistant Cloud subscription, which adds simple remote access, cloud backup, and better voice assistant support.
Otherwise, there are hardware projects that also benefit the Open Home Foundation. Home Assistant Green is a “turnkey” server, Home Assistant Voice is an offline smart speaker, while the Home Assistant Connect ZWA-2 and ZBT-2 add Z-Wave and Thread or Zigbee support to your server. Even when these devices aren’t perfect, buying them is a great way to support the Home Assistant project (and just like the main release, software updates are guaranteed).
You can update your Home Assistant server under Settings by looking for available updates at the top of the menu. Make sure you have backups enabled first, just in case something goes wrong.
