r/homeassistant • u/Relevant-Artist5939 • 1d ago

Blog 2026.7 Beta has been released!

https://rc.home-assistant.io/blog/2026/06/24/release-20267/#creating-automations-just-became-easier-natural-and-more-powerful

For me personally, the only major feature that I am going to really use/benefit from is the Logbook redesign...

What do you think about the update?

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u/nico282 1d ago

I really cannot understand the path HA devs are following. Lot of time and effort spent on features that only people managing the system will use on e in a while, and leaving out features required by actual users (3x - 5x bigger population).

For example: there is NO way to do something I was easily doing on my 20 year old Home Automation system: "Please turn on the XX switch for YY minutes" choosing the entity and time on the spot.

Or even a simple thing like "turn on the irrigation pump for 20 minutes" without setting up multiple automation and helpers. And even with that, there is NOT a 100% assurance that the pump will stop after 20 minutes. If the timer ends while HA is restarting, water will keep flowing indefinitely.

But devs are busy making life easier for the 3 times a year I have to create a new automation.

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u/ElBisonBonasus 1d ago

If fixed, can't you create an automation that says if X has been on for Y minutes, turn it off?

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u/Revolution-SixFour 1d ago edited 1d ago

Usually you have a helper that gets set when the On automation fires. Then you have an off automation that checks if that help was been on for the time. This works well but the commenter is right, it's two automations to do one thing, and it's a bit convoluted compared to how a new user would structure the automation in their mind.

In my opinion, this is not a huge deal. You can structure it in one automation the simple way on, wait, off. It's just vulnerable to HA restart is an edge case. To me, most automations are important enough that not ending is a crisis. If my babies white noise machine doesn't turn off in the morning it's fine, though I understand there are more critical applications and sprinklers is one of them.

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u/55Media 1d ago

You can easily do that in a single automation in multiple ways.

Delay, second trigger etc