evcc, the open-source energy manager that charges electric cars from solar surplus, released version 0.318.0 on 24 October 2026, followed by the bugfix release 0.318.1 on 25 October. The headline change is an automatic mode for the optimizer. There is also local support for Tuya-based wallboxes, a guided first-run setup and a few breaking changes w
ESPresense, the ESP32 firmware for room-level presence detection that tracks phones, watches and BLE beacons and reports them over MQTT, is heading for version 5. The first v5 beta appeared on 11 October 2026, and the latest, v5.0.0b4, was published on 24 October. The stable release has no date yet, but it matters now for one reason: according to t
Nanoleaf's Matter-over-Thread bulbs, downlights, GU10s and lightstrips have a new firmware, 5.1.45, and this week the company's app caught up with it. Version 12.0.0 of the Nanoleaf app, which its release notes say adds "support for firmware 5.x.x on Nanoleaf Matter over Thread devices", started rolling out on Android on 20 October and on iOS on 21
A four-gang wall switch or a six-outlet power strip is one product, but in Home Assistant it has always been hard to show that. Integrations either piled every channel onto one device or created a separate device per channel and linked it back with via_device, a field meant to say "reached through this hub". On 22 October the developer blog publish
If your Nest thermostat, doorbell or camera reaches Home Assistant through the official Nest integration, its real-time updates depend on a Google Cloud Pub/Sub topic. Many older setups use a topic that Google hosts for you, with an ID in the form projects/sdm-prod/topics/enterprise-<project-id>. Google's Device Access documentation now carries a w
The second release candidate of Home Assistant OS 18.4 went out on 23 October 2026 at 23:15 Polish time. Most of it is security housekeeping on top of RC1: Linux kernel 6.18.58, Buildroot 2025.02.19 and Go 1.27.3. The change worth testing is a fix for a common USB Bluetooth adapter, the Realtek RTL8761B with USB ID 0bda:a728, which the release note
Home Assistant Supervisor 2026.10.4 reached the beta channel on 24 October 2026 at 10:12 Polish time. Stable installs were still on 2026.10.3 at the time of writing and will update on their own once the release is promoted. Two of its fixes deal with situations where a Home Assistant system could get stuck without any obvious cause.
The matter.js-based Matter Server, which Home Assistant's Matter integration talks to, reached version 1.5.5 on 24 October 2026. It is the third release in two days, after 1.5.3 and 1.5.4 on 23 October. The main fix is for systems where, after an upgrade to the 1.5 series, only part of the Matter devices came back after a restart.
Home Assistant 2026.10.4 came out on 24 October 2026 at 22:03 Polish time, one day after 2026.10.3. It has only two changes, and both repair things that broke last week. If you use Lutron Caséta, this is the update to install.
