Home Assistant 2026.8: Goodbye Port 8123, Hello Simplicity

Home Assistant just released version 2026.8 "Approachable by design", aimed at making the platform easier to pick up without giving up power. The headline change: new Home Assistant OS installs no longer require the famous :8123 port. On top of that, there are UI tweaks, integration improvements and tools for power users.

Goodbye :8123 on new installs

For years, reaching your Home Assistant meant remembering to add :8123 to the address, a small piece of technical trivia everyone had to learn.

With 2026.8, new Home Assistant OS installs use a normal web address by default, with no extra number. You reach your home the way you reach any website: nothing extra to remember, nothing extra to type.

Already running Home Assistant?

No worries: if you already have it up and running, nothing changes and you don't need to do anything. The change only affects new Home Assistant OS installations.

Your existing setup is completely unchanged, keeps the exact port it always used and keeps working as before. If it works today, the simplest thing is to leave it alone.

Want to change the port? Now you can

If you'd like the cleaner address or need to change the port for another reason, you can now do it right from the interface. The same screen also lets you choose which network connection Home Assistant listens on and set up trusted proxies.

Best part: if you lock yourself out, Home Assistant waits 5 minutes for you to confirm things still work. If you don't confirm, it rolls back the change and restarts automatically. Hard to shoot yourself in the foot.

Less "advanced", more approachable

The Open Home Foundation team keeps working on simplifying the whole experience. This release rethinks what should be labeled as "advanced" and what shouldn't, focusing on describing the feature instead of assuming the user's technical level.

The Developer Tools section was renamed simply Tools, because they're useful for anyone, not just developers.

Integrations, entities and devices

Home Assistant Cloud is now easier to explore before you subscribe. You can also customize your entity IDs more freely, and there's a cleaner way to manage devices.

New integrations arrive, others climbed the quality scale, and several more can now be set up directly from the UI without touching YAML.

Quality of life improvements

Lots of small but welcome touches: a roomier template editor, taps that land where you actually mean them, a more trustworthy combined battery level, search inside Media and a faster way to find your favorite cards.

There's also better handling of Z-Wave lock credentials, more triggers and conditions for automations, plus the usual under-the-hood improvements.

At EgeaINC

If you have Home Assistant installed with us and want to take advantage of the port change, the new network UI or any of these improvements, get in touch. We'll review your setup, decide if it makes sense to migrate and roll out the upgrade without breaking your automations.

And if you still haven't jumped into serious, open smart home, this release is a good excuse: Home Assistant has never been this approachable.