Home Assistant 2026.8 came out on August 5 with the tagline “Approachable by design,” and for once the tagline matches the release. Most of what changed this month makes the software easier to live with rather than adding new capability. If you run Home Assistant on a homelab box, three changes will actually touch your setup: the default port, a real web server settings screen, and a quiet rework of how devices get recorded.
Port 80 is the new default, and only for new installs
New Home Assistant OS installations now answer on a normal web address, with no :8123 on the end.
That is the part to read twice, because it is where the confusion will come from. It applies only to new HAOS installations. An existing installation keeps exactly the port it already uses, and nothing about it changes on update. Your bookmarks are safe.
If you do want to move the port, you no longer have to edit YAML for it. 2026.8 adds a web server settings screen to the interface. It covers the port, the network interface Home Assistant listens on, and trusted proxies.
There is a safety net. After you save a change, Home Assistant applies the new configuration and then waits for you to confirm it still works. If no confirmation arrives within five minutes, it restores the previous settings and restarts. If the new settings cannot be applied at all, it falls back immediately instead of leaving you locked out of your own dashboard.
Existing YAML web server configuration migrates into the interface automatically on the first boot after the update, and a repair notification may appear. One thing to plan for: if you do change the port, bookmarks, connected services and the mobile app may all need updating to match.
Each integration now keeps its own device entry
The device registry change is the other one to read carefully.
Until now, if the same physical device was set up through two different integrations, Home Assistant merged them into a single device. Tidy in theory. In practice it created conflicts on fields that can only hold one value, such as model and serial number. From 2026.8, each integration keeps its own device entry.
On update, devices that had been merged are separated automatically and their entities move to the correct device. Automations and scripts keep working. Two cases deserve a check afterwards: automations that target a device directly by its ID, and unusual configurations. A repair may appear for those.
Home Assistant describes the change as groundwork for more flexible device management later. If you maintain custom integrations, most need no changes, and the old approach still works for now.
Plainer wording, and a rebuilt Cloud page
The approachable theme shows up most visibly in vocabulary. The words “advanced” and “expert” have been removed from roughly 43 places across the app, the documentation and the companion apps. No functionality changed, only the labels. Developer Tools is now just Tools.
The Home Assistant Cloud page has been redesigned as well, contributed by @klejejs. The main page is now an overview where each feature has its own space: remote access, backups, voice assistants, the companion app. Settings for each moved onto their own pages, and newcomers get a step-by-step guided setup.
Entity IDs can also be renamed by hand now, with control over their order, from @arturpragacz and @piitaya. That replaces an earlier approach that built entity IDs automatically from the area. Feedback showed it did not suit everyone.
Fifteen new integrations, four worth a homelab’s attention
Four of the fifteen new integrations are self-hosted software rather than consumer hardware:
- Gatus, the self-hosted monitoring tool. Each monitored endpoint becomes a binary sensor.
- Karakeep, the self-hosted bookmarking service.
- LiteLLM, an OpenAI-compatible LLM proxy you can host yourself.
- llama.cpp, a local LLM server usable as a conversation agent.
The rest are Dyson Infrared, Fuelprices.dk, GeoSphere Austria Warnings, Google Health, Harbor Sleep, Harman Luxury Audio, LED Infrared, Lyngdorf, Midea, NeoPool (local Modbus TCP, no cloud) and ScorpionTrack.
Updates to integrations you probably already run
Portainer picks up an update platform and container health state, the change most homelab users will notice first. MQTT gains an infrared platform for sending IR commands over MQTT, useful if you already run Mosquitto as your broker. KNX gets a large batch: button and notify entities configurable from the interface, a “Send telegram” dialog with an s keyboard shortcut, a datapoint type reference, a view of the project’s devices, and state restoration for all KNX entities after a reload or restart.
Shelly now supports Enhanced Security, the HTTPS-only mode from firmware 2.0 on gen2 and newer, plus Shelly circuit breakers. Reolink adds pre-siren entities and a motion device class on its AI detection binary sensors. Mikrotik gains sensor, button and update platforms. OpenAI Conversation supports GPT-5.6. SMLIGHT adds a Bluetooth proxy and an infrared receiver on Ultima devices.
Two automation building blocks are new as well, from @nielsrowinbik. Vibration now has conditions to match its triggers, so a “laundry done” notification can wait until the machine has genuinely stopped moving. Moon gains a trigger and conditions for lunar phase changes.
The ESPHome Starter Kit
The ESPHome Starter Kit has launched, with an official launch party on August 12, 2026 at 21:00 CEST on the ESPHome YouTube channel, featuring the ESPHome team and hardware partner Apollo Automation.
The 2026.8 release notes were written by Ashley Abbott, Technical Program Manager at the Open Home Foundation, with Bram Kragten. The full announcement and the complete changelog are on the Home Assistant site. If you are still deciding which hub belongs at the centre of your setup, our guide to Home Assistant alternatives and the self-hosted home automation stack covers the options.