21 October 2026

01 · ESPHome

ESPHome 2026.10.0 goes stable: native ESP8266 builds, updates a third smaller

What happened: ESPHome tagged 2026.10.0 at 11:42 UTC today, hours after the final beta (b6, 03:39 UTC). The native Arduino toolchain is now the default for every ESP8266 build — ESPHome builds its own xtensa gcc 10.3 toolchain, so recent Apple Silicon Macs no longer need Rosetta and ESP8266 compiles run quicker end-to-end. Over-the-air updates install about a third smaller, and proportionally faster, on every platform. The release adds 20 new components — Wi-Fi motion sensing, a persistent counter, a new CO2 sensor, USB-UART bridging and TCP-UART — plus broader Zigbee cluster coverage, live light transition reporting and CSS color names in light actions.

Why it matters: Four config changes need eyes before you update: initial_state is now actually respected at boot; the codec_support_enabled key on speaker media players is gone (configs still carrying it fail validation — set the pipeline format to NONE for the old behavior); IR climate devices no longer offer the heat/cool auto mode unless you add supports_heat_cool true; and sendspin speakers now encrypt every connection and need Music Assistant 2.10.7 or 2.11.0b4 or newer. A typical config carries over otherwise. The cheapest way to try the new toolchain is a plain ESP32 dev board.

Primary source

ESPHome release post; release tag; changelog

Buy (affiliate)

ESP32 DevKit — search on Amazon

02 · Z-Wave

Z-Wave JS UI 11.25.0: Configuration CC entities, Node 24 on 32-bit ARM

What happened: Z-Wave JS UI tagged 11.25.0 at 15:20 UTC. New: an option to enable Configuration CC entities by default at discovery, min/max/step hints on values, and column filters limited to the choices actually present in the filtered rows. Docker images now ship Node 24 on 32-bit ARM, using Alpine's nodejs. Fixes: discovery for kVAh and pulse-count electric meters, the PE653 pool controller's circuit 4 state topic, color_temp templates on warm/cold white lights, retained discovery and value topics now cleared with an empty payload, and external presets no longer wipe sibling driver options.

Why it matters: The Configuration CC option turns settings that used to need manual value-ID work into ordinary entities you can automate. And if you run Z-Wave JS UI on a 32-bit ARM host — an older Raspberry Pi, say — the Node 24 images finally clear the old Node ceiling.

Primary source

zwave-js-ui 11.25.0

03 · The rest of the rail

HAOS 18.4.rc1 out; Core, Supervisor and Z2M steady

What happened: The beta channel picked up Home Assistant OS 18.4.rc1, tagged yesterday — the first release candidate for the 18.4 line. Stable Core is still 2026.10.2 (since Friday), Supervisor 2026.10.3, Zigbee2MQTT 2.14.2, and the matter.js library tagged 0.18.0 yesterday morning.

Why it matters: Release candidates are for testing, not for houses that need to just work — 18.3 remains the stable OS. If nothing here names a bug you have, there is nothing to do today.

Primary source

HAOS 18.4.rc1; version.json (beta channel)