The 2026.6 release of Home Assistant closes a loop on the project's infrared platform that began two releases back. Where the previous implementation could only transmit IR commands, the system can now receive them as well through a new receiver event entity in the Infrared platform. ESPHome is the first transmitter integration with support, meaning any ESPHome board with an IR receiver wired up can act as a whole-house IR listener, surfacing button presses from original remotes as events that automations can react to. LG TVs are the first device-side integration to use the new receiver path.
The automation editor picks up the bulk of this cycle's polish. New zone-based triggers and conditions in the Labs preview replace the older entered_home, left_home, is_home, and is_not_home building blocks with cross-domain successors that work against any defined zone, not just the home one. Every condition row now carries a live test badge that updates in real time as state changes, replacing the previous workflow of running an automation and reading the trace after the fact. Target pills for floors, areas, devices, and labels now display the expanded entity count, so an action aimed at a bedrooms floor tells you whether that resolves to three lights or thirty. A dedicated Notes field on every trigger, condition, and action lets contributors document the reasoning behind a step without resorting to YAML comments, and notes travel with the automation when it is duplicated, exported, or shared as a blueprint.
The card picker has been redesigned around entities rather than card types. The new By entity tab opens on a tree of floors, areas, devices, and entities, and picking one populates the right pane with live previews of cards that actually fit that entity. Lights get brightness sliders and color temperature controls, numeric sensors get trend graphs, covers get position sliders, and media players get playback or volume tiles. Custom cards can opt into the picker by adding a getEntitySuggestion function to their window.customCards entry, with implementation details on the developer blog. It is the first visible step of a broader roadmap effort at the Open Home Foundation to make dashboard building feel as guided as automation building.
Z-Wave smart locks gain the credential management dialog that Matter locks received two releases back, with one Z-Wave specific addition: both PIN codes and alphanumeric passwords are supported on locks that accept them. All credential operations run directly between Home Assistant and the lock over Z-Wave with no cloud account or vendor app involved, and each action is exposed as a service for scripting rotation schedules or issuing one-time guest codes. The Bluetooth integration switches its default scanning mode to Auto, dynamically toggling between active and passive scanning per scanner depending on what integrations need. The project reports a roughly 95 to 96 percent reduction in battery used for scanning while keeping functional parity, and ESPHome Bluetooth proxies are migrated automatically.
Sixteen new integrations land this release, including Mitsubishi Comfort for ductless minisplits with local control after initial Kumo Cloud discovery, Ouman EH-800 for heating controllers, Yoto audio players, and an OVHcloud AI Endpoints conversation agent backed by open-weight LLMs hosted in Europe. The Advanced Mode toggle on user profiles is retired entirely, with every feature it used to gate now available to all users. The legacy template entity syntax deprecated in 2025.12 is removed across the alarm_control_panel, binary_sensor, cover, fan, light, lock, sensor, switch, vacuum, and weather platforms, with a step-by-step migration guide posted to the community forum. The full changelog covers the rest.
