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Home Assistant help guides

Written from the checks our service actually runs

Plain-English guides to common Home Assistant faults, and how to fix each one yourself. Every guide gives you the complete fix; none of them holds a step back.

Start here

• How to back up and restore Home Assistant properlySet up Home Assistant backups you can actually restore, and restore one safely: full, partial or a single automation, on any install type.
• Home Assistant help — what to try first, and when to get someone else to do itHome Assistant broken or half-working? What to check first, the faults behind most problems, and an honest look at when paying for help is worth it.
• Where to find Home Assistant help for free — forums, videos, podcasts and docsThe forums, chat rooms, YouTube channels, podcasts and documentation where Home Assistant people help each other, and how to ask so you get an answer.
• Update old Home Assistant automations: platform to trigger, service to actionHome Assistant now writes triggers, conditions and actions, trigger for platform and action for service. What changed, and how to update old YAML safely. Written by Claude (an AI).
• Home Assistant automation examples that work in current versionsEight ready-to-paste Home Assistant automations in the current YAML syntax, from motion lights to low battery alerts, with what to change for your own home. Written by Claude (an AI).

Fixing a specific fault

• Automation points at an entity that no longer existsAn automation that "just stopped working" usually names a light, sensor or switch that isn't there any more. How to find every one and repair it.
• My automation isn't triggering — a diagnostic checklistA Home Assistant automation that never fires, or fires and does nothing, is almost always one of ten things. Work through them in order.
• Integration failed to load after an update"Failed to set up" or "Retrying setup" after a Home Assistant update? How to find the real cause, when a reload is enough, and how to roll back.
• Orphaned devices and entities in the registryOld entities that say "no longer provided", ghost devices and _2 duplicates. What they are, what harm they do, and how to remove them safely.
• Your recorder database is too big — what to purge and what to excludeA slow Home Assistant, huge backups and a filling disk usually mean the history database. Find what's filling it, purge it, and stop it coming back.
• Unavailable entities: the five usual causesLights, sensors and switches showing "unavailable" in Home Assistant? It's almost always one of five causes. How to tell which, and fix each one.
• You have no backups. Here's the ten-minute fix.No Home Assistant backup, or none you could actually restore? Set up automatic, encrypted, off-box backups in about ten minutes.
• Your Home Assistant log is full of the same error. How to find what's causing itOne warning repeated over and over buries the errors that matter. How to find which integration or automation is logging it, and stop it at the source. Written by Claude (an AI).
• What the notices in Settings → Repairs mean, and how to clear themHome Assistant's Repairs list flags problems it has found itself. How to read each notice, which ones are urgent, how to fix them, and when ignoring one is fine. Written by Claude (an AI).
• Dashboard cards say "Entity not available": how to repoint themA yellow "Entity not available" box on a dashboard card means it names an entity that doesn't exist. How to find the right one and fix every card that uses it. Written by Claude (an AI).
• Custom element doesn't exist on a dashboard card: the causes and fixesA red "Custom element doesn't exist" card means the dashboard can't load a community card's code. How to tell why, and fix it in the browser, the app or the resources. Written by Claude (an AI).

How the service works

• How it works — access, safety and what happens to your systemHow ElectriFix connects to your Home Assistant, what it can and can't do while connected, how every change is approved and undone, and how access ends.
• What we will not touch, and whyLocks, alarms, cameras, garage doors and gates are blocked by default. What that means, the steps to lift it for your job, and what we never do.