The April Home Assistant beta is well and truly underway, releasing this past Wednesday. It's shaping up to be one of the more consequential releases, though we've had some absolute belters over the months. The developers continue to roll out improvements to the UI, which is forever making Home Assistant that much more accessible, but 2026.4 goes one step further with a few notable improvements. A highlight is native infrared (IR) control. That's right, Home Assistant will now be a remote control for your TV without installing anything.

Infrared is now baked in

It's not just great for cameras

I reckon one of the more exciting additions to 2026.4 is the native support for infrared devices. Before this beta update, you'd have to jump through hoops with workarounds, custom configurations, and integrations to get IR support to work, but now you can connect TVs, fans, and even HVAC systems without lifting a finger. Well, you'd still need to lift a finger or two to activate it, but you catch my drift! With 2026.4, IR support becomes far more accessible and streamlined.

Instead of having to map IR codes and learn just about all there is to know for it all to work somewhat reliably, Home Assistant now provides integrations that provide predefined command sets. This alone effectively transforms compatible IR transmitters into smart home controllers, utilizing another protocol to control various devices without clogging up the Wi-Fi network. Think those cool universal remotes that claim to work with everything. That's pretty much what we're working with here.

We're stern supporters of legacy hardware and making full use of devices you already own, which is what makes this particularly exciting. It allows you to retain easier control of older devices, enjoy faster setup for common appliances, and reduce reliance on YAML or manual configuration edits that can often break along the way. It's not final, even for the beta, and the team is looking to potential enhancements like automatic device detection and expanded IR library support, but it's certainly a step in the right direction.

Renaming entities with a new process

This change tastes like Marmite

One of the more impactful changes included in 2026.4 is the switching up of entity naming. Prior to this update, we've all enjoyed relative freedom when naming devices and registered entities, but this can lead to inconsistency. If you've ever managed a mature Home Assistant hub, you'll know this can result in quite the mess with duplication and other oddities. This is why the developers have decided to address this by enforcing a standardized structure.

So, why is this a controversial change? It's all down to how much freedom Home Assistant users expect from the open platform. Now, with 2026.4, we've got friendly names that are more tightly aligned with parent device names. It will ensure better consistency across dashboards and automation, but it will limit what you can set. I'm down for the change, reducing ambiguity, improving discoverability, and enabling smarter automation logic.

Pull the trigger with purposeful automation

Further improving the heart of Home Assistant

Speaking of automation, we've got purpose-built triggers now in 2026.4! Rather than relying on generic state changes, automations can now respond to more meaningful events, such as occupancy detection, temperature thresholds, and context-aware environmental changes. This change is part of a broader shift toward semantic automation, where Home Assistant will understand what is happening, as opposed to knowing that something changed.

With this improvement to automation, I can now have Home Assistant react to threshold crossings or trends, instead of using raw temperature readings. It's pretty neat and makes the entire system feel much more integrated and smart. One thing to note with this is that existing automations may need to be updated to match the new triggers. I had to adjust two of mine when moving up to the beta branch, so it's something to look out for if you plan to do some testing.

Some more notable changes

The dashboard continues to receive some love

Like a few updates that came before it, 2026.4 isn't breaking from tradition in loading up some subtle but meaningful dashboard improvements. We've now got background colors for sections, which should help with differentiating the different categories and making it easier to quickly distinguish between various grouped settings and toggles. It's not a huge change, but it can go a long way in improving the look and feel of Home Assistant.

Improved Matter support

2026.4 brings with it some improvements to Matter support, namely lock management. Smart locks using the Matter protocol will now benefit from enhanced features like better control over lock codes, improved integration with automation, and consistent behavior across devices. I've not dabbled with Matter too much, but it's clear to see this is quite the step forward for platform support with enhanced handling of critical components.

Introducing SecureTar v3

Security is always the focus of open-source software, especially when code is available to the general public with commits loaded through GitHub and other repositories, not to mention ransomware on NAS. Home Assistant is no different, and starting with 2026.4, backups will be automatically handled through SecureTar v3, a format designed to provide stronger protection. This offers updated cryptographic algorithms, improved password protection, and independent security audit validation.

What's great about this change is that it's backward-compatible. Existing backups will remain usable, even if you make the jump up to Home Assistant 2026.4. I know for sure that many smart home and home lab users love security and privacy, so this is a great step forward.

One small update for HA

One giant leap for the smart home

As well as the features I opted to highlight, there were also numerous under-the-hood improvements and quality-of-life changes that made it in this beta. These included improved automation editor interactions with better drag-and-drop. Better Assist customization, expanded integration support, and performance optimizations. This is quite the release for Home Assistant, focusing on standardization, accessibility, and security.