The month of February is charged with the new version of Home Assistant 2025.2, the development team has listened to its users and have improved quite the options for automatic backups through the system itself. They have also taken the opportunity to add new characteristics to the functionality of the voice (Voice), perfect for better compatibility with home Assistant Voice. Finally, we have new integrations and also changes and improvements in which we already have, which demonstrates the good health of this project to mount a completely local home automation system in our home. If you want to know all the news, then you have all the details.
Home Assistant has updates of functions every month, and within each month we have different minor updates that solve problems that the users themselves have found when using the home automation system normally. In this new “big” version we have important changes in native backups, a function that have greatly improved in the previous 2025.1 version, but that still has a lot of margin of improvement.
News in native backups
The first feature that we will see when configuring backup copies is that we now have the possibility to configure these copies on the days of the week we want, to customize to the maximum when we want to be done. We also have the possibility to define an exact hour where to make this backup, before it could only be in the predefined schedule that the system gave us.
A very important change we had in the previous version, is that backups were encrypted by default. We now have the option to deactivate this encryption of backup copies, but whenever they are local or in the public cloud, but in the event that we keep the backup copies in Home Assistant Cloud they will always be encrypted for safety. We have configured these backups on the NAS server to which it is accessed locally, and we have them encrypted, but in this case we could deactivate the encryption without any problem.
If we download the backup from the web browser, it will be deciphered to open it and thus recover what you really want. It does not matter if this backup is in the cloud of home assistant cloud encrypted, when we click to download it will decipher on the flight.
Another feature that they have now incorporated is the possibility of saving the back of the public clouds of Google Drive, OneDrive and even also in the Synology DSM, if you use a NAS server of this brand.
Other changes introduced in the backup system are:
- We can create automation to make backups, calling «backup.create_automatic». For example, if NAS is available on the local network, automatically made an automatic backup. Or if a series of conditions that you want are met.
- In the previous version, when we updated the Core or an Addon, we did not have the option of making a backup, now we have this interesting option again to easily return in case there is a problem.
- The way of naming backups has been changed, so that they are easier to understand. Before I had a really cryptic name, now they have a name like the following: «Automatic_backup_2025.2.0_2025-02-06_08.50_20652778». As you can see, it is formed by the type of backup, the home Assistant version, the date and time. In this way, it is much easier to know what the last copy is.
As you can see, the backup system is still improving, something fundamental in case an update ever goes wrong.
Other improvements in this version
Some voice -related improvements is that we can now make calls from our home assistant system to a phone, provided you have a VOIP configured. In fact, automation could even be made to call us and tell us that an order has been carried out in the system. Another characteristic is that we can now send a specific message to all speakers, as we have in Alexa, in addition, we can configure the temperature in a thermostat through the voice. Other incorporated improvements are to integrate the calendar to interact with the LLM of the home automation system. All these improvements are present at Home Assistant Voice, this system has gradually improved to completely replace a Alexa or Google Home.
Bluetooth has also suffered an important improvement, and now the integration of Bluetooth can be seen in the configuration panel in “devices”, clicking in the “Bluetooth” section and then in “Configure”. Here we can see the state of Bluetooth that we have discharged, such as the one that has integrated the Shelly devices that function as Gateway.
Regarding the integrations, we now have the possibility of using Google Drive and OneDrive to save backups, it is necessary to add this out of backup copies, and then they will automatically recognize it. We also have integration with the Homee brand, the possibility of monitoring the Igloohome device battery, we can integrate Ooverr and even QBUS. In addition, Matter’s compatibility has also been improved by adding support for new devices, Reolink & Olufsen’s integrations have been improved, as well as Shelly Blu Trv among others.
Finally, this new version incorporates an important review of all the graphics that Home Assistant shows, have replaced the software library completely. Although everything seems similar, the truth is that it has changed completely, so they are prepared for the future, since they have indicated that they have many plans and ideas for these graphics.
