Home Assistant just released its 2025.7 update, bringing a group of new features and updates to the popular smart home software. This release puts a focus on voice control, user interaction, and dashboard improvements. The update arrives during a period when many users are dealing with warm weather, offering new ways to manage and interact with smart homes.
One of the main points in this release is a change to how the Home Assistant voice feature, called Assist, works. Assist has mostly responded to direct commands or requests from the user in the past. With this release, a new action called “Ask Question” is added. This means Assist can now ask users questions, not just answer them. For example, instead of only waiting for commands, Assist can start a conversation, such as asking what kind of music you want to hear, and then act on the answer. Users can set up these conversations using Home Assistant’s automation tools, and a ready-made template is available for common yes or no questions. The system also includes support for custom phrases, making conversations more natural.
This change is made possible by improvements to the speech engine behind Assist, which now has better support for local and custom conversations. The update includes a blueprint that can handle many ways people say yes or no, so the assistant can understand a wide range of responses. There is also an example showing how to use this feature in an automation, where the assistant asks what music to play and can carry out the user’s choice by playing a genre or artist on a media player.
Another part of the update is a redesign of the Area card. Areas in Home Assistant are used to group devices and entities by room or space in your home. The Area card has been updated to fit better into the Sections dashboard, which helps users organize their smart home controls. The new card gives users more options for how information is shown. There is a simple version with just an icon and the area name, as well as a detailed view that can show more controls and information about devices in that area.
Other changes in this release include improvements to how integrations are managed. There are now sub-entries for integrations, making them easier to extend or organize. The integration page in the user interface has also been updated. For users who work with code, the code editors in the dashboard can now be made full screen, which helps when editing longer files or templates.
The update also brings a number of quality-of-life changes throughout the software. These include small updates to how dashboards are created, changes to make certain integrations easier to set up from the user interface, and the removal of some older features that are no longer supported. The developers have also added tools and links for users who need help, pointing to the Home Assistant community.
The release aims to make it easier for users to interact with and control their smart home devices, whether by voice or through the updated dashboard tools. The software continues to be developed with feedback from the user community, and more changes are planned for the future.
View the original press release.
