Home Assistant 2026.3 brings experimental wake word detection to Android phones, room-aware vacuum cleaning, and automation editor improvements in a community-focused release.
The standout feature is on-device wake word detection for the Home Assistant Companion app on Android. Using the same microWakeWord engine that powers the Home Assistant Voice Preview Edition, the app now supports three wake phrases (Okay Nabu, Hey Jarvis, or Hey Mycroft) with all processing happening locally on your device. The feature works even when your phone is locked and integrates with existing voice equipment, with only the fastest satellite responding when multiple devices detect the wake word. Battery impact is noticeable due to continuous microphone access, but automations can start and stop detection based on context like Wi-Fi connection or location zones.
Robot vacuum users gain the ability to send vacuums to clean specific rooms using Home Assistant areas rather than vendor-specific identifiers. The new clean area action works with Matter, Ecovacs, and Roborock vacuums. Users map vacuum segments to Home Assistant areas through entity settings, and the system alerts you via repair issues when segment layouts change. This foundation enables future voice assistant support for commands like "clean the kitchen."
The automation editor now exposes the Continue on error setting directly in the visual interface, previously only available through YAML configuration. The option appears in the three-dots menu of any action with a visual indicator on the action row, useful for automations where one failing action should not stop subsequent actions from running. The Energy dashboard received multiple improvements including real-time power, gas, and water flow badges in the Now view, a water Sankey chart, renamed tabs (Energy to Electricity), reorganized settings pages split into Electricity, Gas, and Water tabs, and day-of-week labels in bar chart tooltips.
The release includes 17 new integrations spanning Ghost publication monitoring, Hegel amplifier control, Liebherr SmartDevice refrigerators, MTA New York City Transit real-time arrivals, OneDrive for Business backups, Powerfox Local energy monitoring, Trane Local thermostat control, and several battery and energy management systems. Nine integrations reached platinum quality scale status including WLED, Xbox, and Portainer.
Home Assistant 2026.3 runs on Python 3.14, bringing performance improvements through a faster interpreter, improved startup times, and better memory usage. The upgrade happens automatically on all officially supported installation methods. The Open Home Foundation announced State of the Open Home 2026 on 2026-04-08 in Utrecht, Netherlands, with limited tickets available.
