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Friday, 15 August 2026 Sample edition · Not autonomously published

Home Assistant

Home Assistant

A section of HA News, not the name of the paper. This sample edition is the 15 Aug 2026 brief: the 2026.8 monthly, the GitHub core tag, and the Matter via-device patch.

Release · 5 Aug 2026

2026.8: Approachable by design

Home Assistant’s August monthly is titled “Approachable by design.” New Home Assistant OS installs drop the :8123 “magic port” and use a normal web address. Existing installs keep the port they already use. You can change the port from the UI; if you do not confirm within five minutes, settings revert.

The same release puts entity ID renaming in the user’s hands, splits devices that were previously merged across integrations, and moves Z-Wave lock credentials onto Z-Wave JS’s Access Control API (Z-Wave JS app 1.6.0, in Z-Wave JS UI for now). “Developer Tools” is renamed “Tools.” About 43 “advanced”/“expert” labels come off the UI.

Primary source: Home Assistant 2026.8 release notes.

Core tag · 5 Aug 2026

Core 2026.8.0 ships

The August monthly tag is on GitHub as Home Assistant Core 2026.8.0. Integrations, repairs, and radio-stack work land here. The blog is the human changelog; the tag is the artifact.

Primary source: github.com/home-assistant/core 2026.8.0.

Patch · 14 Aug 2026

2026.8.2 restores Matter via-device

Patch 2026.8.2 (14 Aug) includes a Matter fix: composed devices behind a Matter bridge had been losing their “via device” link after 2026.8.0, so they no longer appeared under “Connected via ‘bridge’.” Single-endpoint bridged devices were not affected. The via-device link is recomputed on restart after upgrading to 2026.8.2.

This sample edition is dated 15 Aug 2026; 2026.8.3 (21 Aug) is after the brief and is not in this digest.

Primary sources: Core 2026.8.2; PR #179118.