The Alert integrationIntegrations connect and integrate Home Assistant with your devices, services, and more. [Learn more] is designed to notify you when problematic issues arise. For example, if the garage door is left open, the alert integration can be used to remind you of this by sending you repeating notifications at customizable intervals. This is also used for low battery sensors, water leak sensors, or any condition that may need your attention.

Alerts will add an entity to the front end. This entity allows you to silence an alert until it is resolved and has three possible states:

Basic example

The alert integration uses any of the notification integrations. To set up the alert integration, first, you must set up a notification integration. Then, add the following to your configuration.yamlThe configuration.yaml file is the main configuration file for Home Assistant. It lists the integrations to be loaded and their specific configurations. In some cases, the configuration needs to be edited manually directly in the configuration.yaml file. Most integrations can be configured in the UI. [Learn more] file. After changing the configuration.yamlThe configuration.yaml file is the main configuration file for Home Assistant. It lists the integrations to be loaded and their specific configurations. In some cases, the configuration needs to be edited manually directly in the configuration.yaml file. Most integrations can be configured in the UI. [Learn more] file, restart Home Assistant to apply the changes.

# Example configuration.yaml entry
alert:
 garage_door:
 name: Garage is open
 done_message: Garage is closed
 entity_id: input_boolean.garage_door
 state: "on"
 repeat: 30
 can_acknowledge: true
 skip_first: true
 notifiers:
 - ryans_phone
 - kristens_phone

In this example, the garage door status (input_boolean.garage_door) is watched and this alert will be triggered when its status is equal to on. This indicates that the door has been opened. Because the skip_first option was set to true, the first notification will not be delivered immediately. However, every 30 minutes, a notification will be delivered until either input_boolean.garage_door no longer has a state of on or until the alert is acknowledged using the Home Assistant frontend.

For notifiers that require other parameters (such as twilio_sms which requires you specify a target parameter when sending the notification), you can use the group notification to wrap them for an alert. Simply create a group notification type with a single notification member (such as twilio_sms) specifying the required parameters other than message provided by the alert integration:

- platform: group
 name: john_phone_sms
 services:
 - action: twilio_sms
 data:
 target: !secret john_phone

alert:
 freshwater_temp_alert:
 name: "Warning:Ihavedetectedaproblemwiththefreshwatertanktemperature"
 entity_id: binary_sensor.freshwater_temperature_status
 state: "on"
 repeat: 5
 can_acknowledge: true
 skip_first: false
 notifiers:
 - john_phone_sms

Complex alert criteria

By design, the alert integration only handles very simple criteria for firing. That is, it only checks if a single entity’s state is equal to a value. At some point, it may be desirable to have an alert with a more complex criteria. Possibly, when a battery percentage falls below a threshold. Maybe you want to disable the alert on certain days. Maybe the alert firing should depend on more than one input. For all of these situations, it is best to use the alert in conjunction with a Template Binary Sensor. The following example does that.

template:
 - binary_sensor:
 - name: "MotionBatteryisLow"
 state: "{{state_attr('sensor.motion','battery')|float(default=0)<15}}"
 device_class: battery

alert:
 motion_battery:
 name: Motion Battery is Low
 entity_id: binary_sensor.motion_battery_is_low
 repeat: 30
 notifiers:
 - ryans_phone
 - kristens_phone

This example will begin firing as soon as the entity sensor.motion’s battery attribute falls below 15. It will continue to fire until the battery attribute raises above 15 or the alert is acknowledged on the frontend.

Dynamic notification delay times

It may be desirable to have the delays between alert notifications dynamically change as the alert continues to fire. This can be done by setting the repeat configuration key to a list of numbers rather than a single number. Altering the first example would look like the following.

# Example configuration.yaml entry
alert:
 garage_door:
 name: Garage is open
 entity_id: input_boolean.garage_door
 state: "on" # Optional, 'on' is the default value
 repeat:
 - 15
 - 30
 - 60
 can_acknowledge: true # Optional, default is true
 skip_first: true # Optional, false is the default
 notifiers:
 - ryans_phone
 - kristens_phone

Now the first message will be sent after a 15 minute delay, the second will be sent 30 minutes after that, and a 60 minute delay will fall between every following notification. For example, if the garage door opens at 2:00, a notification will be sent at 2:15, 2:45, 3:45, 4:45, and so on, continuing every 60 minutes.

Message templates

It may be desirable to have the alert notifications include information about the state of the entity. Templates can be used in the message or name of the alert to make it more relevant. The following will show for a plant how to include the problem attribute of the entity.

# Example configuration.yaml entry
alert:
 office_plant:
 name: Plant in office needs help
 entity_id: plant.plant_office
 state: "problem"
 repeat: 30
 can_acknowledge: true
 skip_first: true
 message: "Plant{{states.plant.plant_office}}needshelp({{state_attr('plant.plant_office','problem')}})"
 done_message: Plant in office is fine
 notifiers:
 - ryans_phone
 - kristens_phone

The resulting message could be Plant Officeplant needs help (moisture low).

Additional parameters for notifiers

Some notifiers support more parameters (e.g., to set text color or action buttons). These can be supplied via the data parameter:

# Example configuration.yaml entry
alert:
 garage_door:
 name: "Garageisopen"
 message: "Thegaragedoorisstillopen"
 done_message: "Thegaragedoorisclosed"
 entity_id: input_boolean.garage_door
 state: "on" # Optional, 'on' is the default value
 repeat:
 - 15
 - 30
 - 60
 can_acknowledge: true # Optional, default is true
 skip_first: true # Optional, false is the default
 data:
 inline_keyboard:
 - 'Closegarage:/close_garage,Acknowledge:/garage_acknowledge'
 notifiers:
 - frank_telegram

This particular example relies on the inline_keyboard functionality of Telegram, where the user is presented with buttons to execute certain actions.

Based on the example above you can make an automation to stop further messages, but you will still receive the done message.

- alias: "Telegramcallbacktostopalertsforgaragedoor"
 triggers:
 - trigger: event
 event_type: telegram_callback
 event_data:
 data: "/garage_acknowledge"
 actions:
 - action: alert.turn_off
 target:
 entity_id: alert.garage_door

Notifications sent to Home Assistant Companion apps support replacing and clearing notifications. To use these functions with alerts, set a tag in the message data, send clear_notification as the done_message, and use mobile_app_* as the notifier:

alert:
 garage_door:
 name: Garage is open
 done_message: clear_notification
 entity_id: input_boolean.garage_door
 state: "on"
 repeat: 30
 can_acknowledge: true
 skip_first: true
 notifiers:
 - mobile_app_ryan
 - mobile_app_kristen
 data:
 tag: garage-door