Home Assistant's "What the Heck?!" month: tell the project what confuses you
For all of November, Home Assistant is asking users, and the people who share a home with them, what is hard, confusing or annoying.
By Andrew Ingleton · Published
On 29 October Franck Nijhof announced the 2026 edition of "What the Heck?!" (WTH), a month-long feedback drive for Home Assistant. It runs for November 2026, and by the project's own account it happens only once every two years, so that both the software and the smart home market have time to change.
How it works
You post what confuses or annoys you in the Month of "What the Heck?!" category of the community forum. A free forum account is needed. The post asks for:
- one topic per issue, with no limit on how many you post;
- what happened, what you expected and why it was frustrating, with no need for a solution or technical terms;
- a search of existing topics first, voting on and replying to matches;
- kindness, since many contributors are volunteers.
The team says it reads every WTH, and contributors may fix some during the month (they are asked to link their pull request). Votes show how common a problem is, but nothing is guaranteed. Companion apps, documentation and the website are all in scope. New integration requests belong in GitHub feature requests, and confirmed bugs are better filed as GitHub issues. The post's footer is blunt: no technical support.
Who is being asked
Past editions drew mostly from tinkerers. This year the invitation is explicitly for new users, non-technical users who want things to simply work, and people who live in a home where someone else runs Home Assistant. Nijhof admits the team is poor at spotting confusing points because "we stopped being confused years ago".
He asks household administrators to put questions to the people they live with: what annoys them most, whether they can find what they need, and what they would change. Posting on someone else's behalf is allowed if you say so and keep their wording.
A small example
The post cites profile pictures. Until Home Assistant 2026.10 only an administrator could change a user's picture; now everyone can change their own from their profile page. We covered that release in Home Assistant 2026.10.
Why it matters
If you maintain the system at home, the feedback of the people who just want the lights to work is probably the most useful you can give. It fits the project's wider push to be approachable, as in the rename of its cloud service to Home Assistant Link. The community event on 7 November is covered in our Community Day article.
