Home Assistant July 2024.7 Update: Card Resizing, Board Customization, and Blueprint Reuse

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New month, new update for Home Assistant! It's become a habit, and we always look forward to the new features that arrive! This month we are still entitled to some very nice improvements: resizing cards, customizing tables, recovering Blueprints to make scenarios, etc. Let's discover all this in more detail!

Resizing the cards of your dashboard

The team continues to make organizing and customizing dashboards easier and more intuitive. This month, they added the ability to resize the cards of your dashboard!

Resizing is done using a very convenient grid interface, which is found in the card editing menu under the new “Layout” tab, where you can preview your changes.

Create small 1×1 buttons or give a card the space it needs. This feature is only available in the experimental section view, which was recently launched with drag and drop.

Resizing works with all cards, giving users a lot of freedom. Most cards have been given a built-in minimum and maximum size, to make layout easier. If you make a mistake with the appearance of a card, a flip button in the upper left corner will return it to its normal size.

Improved data tables

As with the last and previous versions, the team continues to improve data tables. These are used to organize information in configuration pages, including device and automation pages. With this version, it becomes possible to customize the columns displayed, in order to only display the information that is really useful to us!

By selecting the box at the top right, you can not only customize the displayed columns by changing their visibility, but also change the order of the columns by dragging them. This makes it even easier to display the data you want, in the order you want.

Your custom columns and display are stored in your browser, so you only have to configure them once. They will be remembered the next time you visit the page.

Voice Assistant

Many new features have arrived for the Assist voice assistant, such as timers, AI compatibility, the ability to expose your scripts to LLMs (like ChatGPT and Google Gemini), etc. We have already talked about them in detail in a article dedicated to the voice assistant.

Take control of automations based on Blueprints

Blueprints are amazing: they allow you to use automations and scripts created and shared by other Home Assistant users. Most are easy to use and set up, but what if that great blueprint you’ve been using needs a little tweaking? Just a tiny change to make it perfect for your home? Now you can!

You can now take full control of automations created from a Blueprint. By taking control, Home Assistant will convert the automation in the blueprint into a regular, standalone automation. This allows you to make any changes you want, without having to reinvent the wheel.

The great thing is that it shows you a preview of what the converted automation would look like before you take control. This way, you can see what you’re getting into before you do it.

Integrations

We’re welcoming the following new integrations in this release:

Aquacell: Monitor your AquaCell water softener from Home Assistant.
ista EcoTrend: The ista EcoTrend integration allows you to import your monthly heating, hot water and water consumption and costs from the ista EcoTrend service.
Mealie: Mealie is a self-hosted recipe manager and meal planner. This integration will integrate your meal plan as calendars into Home Assistant.
Knocki: Knocki is a smart device that turns any surface into a remote control, which you can now use in Home Assistant to trigger automations. Other existing integrations have seen some improvements:

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