update 2022.4 has just been released and it's jam-packed full of new ui
and ux changes and just a general all-round streamlined goodness
so let's get straight into this and have a look at the five features that i really like
up first we've got my favorite feature of the entire update and it's the ability to create
groups using the ui i've waited a long time for this feature and i think a lot of other people
have so this is definitely probably going to be a fan favorite in fact i love this feature so much
that i even created a dedicated video to it so if you're interested in seeing that video you'll find
a link to it in the description below creating groups in the ui might seem like it's a small
feature especially if you were already making use of groups in your own yaml files what i love about
this feature is the fact that prior to the update using groups was seen as a more advanced feature
as you had to be willing to learn a little bit of yaml and actually type out the groups yourself now
that it's available through the ui it's just more accessible and more friendly to all user types
creating groups with the ui is exactly what it sounds like it allows you to group together a
set of entities all of the same type and this group then gets represented as a singular entity
and that singular entity can control and manage the whole group you'll find groups underneath
helpers in your configuration and again if you are after a bit more information on groups be sure to
check out my video as part of this update a lot of helpers that were previously only accessible
and usable by making use of yaml are now all available through the ui so again this is another
really nice accessibility feature so features that were previously more advanced are now open and
accessible to users of all types through the ui we now have access to helpers for derivatives groups
integrals min and max switches x threshold time of day and the utility meter some of these helpers
have a bit of a steep learning curve but it is nice that they're now all available through the ui
in addition to groups another really cool helper that we now have access to is the switches axe
switches x allows you to take any of your home assistant entities and convert them into another
home assistant entity and this could be really useful especially if you're making use of groups
as groups only allow you to create groups of entities of the same type so you could take say
a plug entity and you could turn it into a light and then you could add that light into your light
group moving on then to our third feature and it's update entities update entities are a brand new
entity that integrations are able to provide if an integration provides an update entity
it can do things like prompt you when there's an update available for a specific device or service
and in some cases it can even let you update that particular device directly through home assistant
a good example of this is wled so if one of your individual wled devices has an update
you'll be shown it through home assistant and you can even click the update button and update
that directly through home assistant without ever having to leave another really cool thing
about update entities is the fact that it's an entity and because it's an entity you can make
use of it in your automations so you can actually automate the process of updating specific devices
in addition to update entities being able to update a device or service directly through
home assistant they can also provide you with some other helpful bits of information such as
the version number or even the release notes for a particular update there's now also an option to
skip an update so if ever you see a pop-up on your home assistant screen and you don't want
to install that update you can just simply press the skip button carrying on to our fourth feature
then and we've got testing conditions in the previous update we've got the ability to test out
individual triggers for our automations and now we also have that same ability but with conditions
now when you're creating your automations and you get onto the conditions you'll see that there's a
little test button just to the right if you press that it's going to test the current condition that
you have set and if it passes you'll get a little green tick and if it doesn't you'll
see a red exclamation mark testing triggers also got a very small update and now when you test the
trigger when you see the trigger bar appear if you select that you'll be presented with a raw
view of all the triggered variable data and this can be very helpful if you're trying to create a
really advanced or complex automation or template which brings us onto our fifth and final feature
and that feature is the ability to adjust the measurements of sensors this one is something
that's very simple but it's also very sleek and it allows you to directly adjust the measurement of a
sensor all using the user interface so if you've got something that's presented in degree celsius
but you'd rather view it in fahrenheit then you can simply just change this in a drop down list
and this is all done directly through the user interface so there's no need to play around with
any templates or do any kind of crazy maths you just simply select it and it's done in the future
i'd love to see that feature come to other types of measurements so things like pressure or energy
monitoring or even data rates that'd be pretty cool before we wrap this up then i've got a couple
of other features and changes that didn't quite make my top five but nevertheless they're still
really cool the first one is a whole bunch of new material design icons that were added so there's
now loads to choose from and i think in the next update there's going to be even more following
this we've had even more changes to the samsung tv integration i personally make use of the tv
integration in home assistant and it now just works flawlessly so thank you for that be dracco
and the last one is a big change for timers now when home assistant restarts timers will remember
and persist their state so if it was in the middle of a timer it will carry on when it restarts
and there we go guys that's been a quick look at five of the new features that i really like in the
update let me know in the comments below what your favorite feature was and while you're down there
don't forget to hit that like button and if you're not already hit the subscribe button
and ding dong that notification bell you'll then be alerted to any future video that i do as always
a massive thank you to these awesome dudes these awesome dudes are my patreons if you're
interested in helping support my channel which in turn allows me to create content like this
then you'll find a link to my patreon in the description below if you want to
know a bit more about groups then you should definitely check out this video that i created
or maybe you want to see how i build and make use of some of my smart home devices
in which case this video is for you thank you for watching and i'll catch you in the next one cheers