Home Assistant’s latest update helps older gadgets integrate with your smart home

Home Assistant has released its latest update, bringing a range of improvements for both new and experienced smart home users. The headline feature this time around is native infrared support, which means you can now integrate and control older devices – essentially anything that relies on an infrared remote – directly through Home Assistant using inexpensive ESPHome-powered IR proxies.

The Home Assistant 2026.4 update follows March’s release and, if anything, feels even more impressive. It continues Home Assistant’s wider mission of extending smart home capabilities to as many devices as possible, whilst keeping automations intuitive and effective.

The update is available to download now, and you can check out the full changelog on the Home Assistant website.

Beyond infrared support, the release also introduces expanded purpose-specific triggers and conditions, now including cross-domain options. This essentially lets you build automations using real-world concepts without needing to worry about the technical entity type behind the scenes. The update also brings more than 14 new integrations, alongside improvements to several existing ones.

Users can now add custom background colors to dashboard sections, pin favourites to dashboard cards for quick access, and manage Matter smart lock users and PIN codes directly from Home Assistant. There’s also a redesigned gauge card, auto-height cards for cleaner dashboards, and improved transparency into what your AI-powered Assist is thinking whilst it processes requests.