The new Overview dashboard in Home Assistant

Home Assistant 2026.2+ No YAML

Home Assistant’s new Overview organises the home by area and surfaces useful devices without asking you to build an entire dashboard first. It became the default for new installations in Home Assistant 2026.2. Existing installations can try it alongside their current dashboards.

The main improvement does not come from colours or cards. It comes from correct areas, floors, and device names. This guide helps you clean up that foundation and decide whether Overview should become your everyday starting point.

What does the new Overview use?

Overview is a system-managed view of the home. It relies mainly on:

areas, such as kitchen, living room, and garden;
floors, which collect several areas;
device and entity type, name, and availability;
primary temperature, humidity, and other area sensors;
discovered devices that have not been configured;
devices that have not yet been assigned to an area.

It works well as a living index of the house. A hand-built dashboard is still better when a wall panel, a particular user, or a specialist task needs fixed controls.

Organise the building blocks

Item	Use it for
Area	A physical room or place
Floor	Several areas on one level
Label	A flexible property such as `critical`, `battery`, or `guest`
Category	Sorting within one table, such as automations
Group	One combined entity representing several entities

An area and a group are not the same. An area organises the home and can be an action target. A group creates a new entity with a combined state.

Enable and review Overview

Update and back up

Use a supported Home Assistant version and take a backup before a large naming or area clean-up. Trying the view itself is low risk.
Open dashboard settings

Go to Settings → Dashboards. Select the new Overview, or follow the suggestion to try it if Home Assistant presents one.
Review “For you”

Look for discovered devices, unavailable devices, and organisation prompts. Add a discovered device only when you recognise it and understand the integration.
Assign devices to areas

Open the list of unassigned devices and place them in physical rooms. Do not create an area named Zigbee or Wi-Fi; technology is better represented by a label.
Create floors

Open the area and floor settings. Assign Living room, Kitchen, and Hallway, for example, to Ground floor.
Select primary sensors

Edit an area and choose the temperature or humidity sensor that best represents the room. A sensor inside a warm equipment cabinet is a poor primary room temperature.
Check mobile and desktop

Review navigation, areas, and important controls at both sizes. A useful overview should make sense without knowing entity IDs.

Names that work

Use the area for context rather than repeating everything:

Less useful	Better
`TS0201_0x54ef`	`Temperature` in `Living room`
`Living room living room ceiling`	`Ceiling light` in `Living room`
`Sensor 1`	`Window` in `Bedroom`
Area: `Zigbee`	Label: `Zigbee`

The device name should identify the physical product. The entity name should describe the measurement or control. The area supplies the remaining context.

When should you keep a custom dashboard?

Keep or build a separate dashboard for:

a wall panel with a few large touch targets;
energy and operational charts;
cameras in a panel view;
administration and troubleshooting;
a user who only needs selected everyday controls;
a room with a specialist control surface.

Use Sections and built-in Tile cards as the starting point for custom dashboards. They provide a responsive layout with fewer third-party parts.

A safe clean-up order

Assign devices to areas.
Create and assign floors.
Correct only clearly poor names.
Check automations, scripts, and dashboards before changing an entity_id.
Select primary area sensors.
Only then decide which custom dashboards you still need.

A display name can often be changed without changing the entity_id. Renaming the entity ID itself may break automations and cards and deserves a separate impact check.

Troubleshooting

A room is missing

Confirm the area exists and has at least one relevant device or entity. Review its floor assignment and disabled or hidden entities as well.

The displayed temperature is wrong

Open the area settings and select the correct primary temperature sensor. Compare the sensor’s raw state before blaming the dashboard.

Too many irrelevant entities are shown

Review each device’s entities. Disable only diagnostic or duplicate entities you understand, and retain any data used by automations.

I want to return to my custom dashboard

Open the existing dashboard from the sidebar or select it as the default using the available dashboard settings. Do not delete the old one until the new view has been tested on every relevant device.

Build a custom dashboard

Continue with Dashboard Design in Home Assistant.

Start with Home Assistant

Read the getting started guide.