Home Assistant is incredibly powerful, but there are so many features that navigating your way through all the menus can be a chore. You can do things much faster if you stick to using your keyboard.
Open Quick search instantly
In Home Assistant 2026.2, the Quick bar was replaced with a new Quick search function that you can use to search for devices, entities, commands, and more. Previously, you could open specific modes such as the Entity Filter, Device Filter, or Command Palette by pressing single-key shortcuts.
The Quick bar itself would only show one mode at a time. To switch between the different modes, you’d need to add or remove “>” or “#” signs from the start of the input to change between the different filters while the dialog was open. You couldn’t see commands, devices, and entities in the same window at the same time.
The new Quick search tool fixes this problem. You use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl+K (or Cmd+K on macOS) to open Quick search. Type your search query, and you’ll see results for commands, devices, and entities, all in one place, as long as matches are found.
A useful trick is to remember that search looks at substrings and letter sequences. You can usually figure out a shorter combination of letters that will get the result you want to the top of the list. Once it’s at the top of the results, you can press Enter to open it.
For example, to open Developer Tools, I have to type “deve” before the Developer Tools navigate command moves to the top of the list. However, typing “ol” also works, saving me two extra key presses each time. Figuring out a few of these shorter options can save you a lot of time in the long run.
These Are the 7 Best Ways to Run Home Assistant
Find the best hardware for your smart home hub.
Use one key to jump straight to entities, devices, and commands
Although the new Quick search includes results for entities, devices, and commands, if you’re searching for something specific, you might prefer to filter the search to limit the results. In the Quick search tool, you can click one of the tabs for “Navigate,” “Commands,” “Entities,” “Devices,” and “Areas” to filter the results for that specific type. You can click the tabs using the mouse or press Tab to move down to the row of tabs, use the arrow keys to navigate to the appropriate tab, and press Space to select it.
There are also some hotkeys that can make things much faster. Pressing “e” opens Quick search with the entities filter active. Pressing “d” does the same for devices, and “c” for commands. If you know which type of thing you’re searching for, this not only makes opening Quick search a single key, but also makes it much quicker to get to the result that you’re looking for.
Navigate Home Assistant faster without touching the mouse
Even with a fresh install of Home Assistant, it can be quite a maze to navigate around. Once you start adding integrations and devices, creating different dashboards, and installing add-ons (now called apps), you end up with hundreds of entities to search through.
Trying to navigate through Home Assistant using your mouse or touchpad is a thankless task. The settings section alone has more than ten different subsections, and many of these have multiple tabs or subsections of their own. Trying to find a specific entity, for example, requires going to Settings, then Devices & services, then selecting the Entities tab, before you can even start searching for what you want.
Using the keyboard can make things much faster. If you’re looking for a specific entity, instead of having to navigate through all the menus, you just press the “e” key, and the Quick search window appears with the appropriate filter. Type a few letters, and you can bring up the entity you need.
One of the most useful things about Quick search is that it works from almost anywhere within Home Assistant. For example, you can use the kiosk-mode custom component to hide the sidebar for your dashboards. Even though you can’t access the sidebar, you can still press Ctrl+K or Cmd+K, and the Quick search window will open right within the dashboard.
Using the keyboard also means you don’t have to lose the flow of what you’re doing by taking your hands off the keyboard to grab the mouse and navigate through a mess of menus. If you’re working on an automation, for example, and want to find the entity ID of a sensor you want to use, you can use Quick search to find the sensor you need, copy the ID, and go back and paste it into your automation, all without touching the mouse at all.
You can use Tab and Shift+Tab to navigate forward and backward through the different UI elements and press Enter or Space to select focused buttons or toggles. You can use the arrow keys to navigate through lists and escape to close out of any dialog box that you’ve opened. With a little practice, you can quickly move through Home Assistant like it’s second nature while your mouse takes a well-earned rest.
Speed up automation editing with familiar shortcuts
Quick search isn’t the only place that you can take advantage of keyboard shortcuts in Home Assistant. Since the 2025.10 update, Home Assistant users have had access to three well-known keyboard shortcuts.
In the automation editor, if you want to copy a block from the automation and paste it somewhere else, you can use the keyboard to do so. Ctrl+C (or Cmd+C on Mac) will copy the currently selected block. Ctrl+V (or Cmd+V) will paste the copied block directly beneath any other block in your automation; just select the block, press the keyboard shortcut, and the copied block will appear underneath.
2025.10 also added two other keyboard shortcuts. You can now undo steps in the automation editor using Ctrl+Z (or Cmd+Z). You can step back through up to 75 steps of editing history, and if you want to restore a step you’ve just undone, Ctrl+Y (Cmd+Y) will redo the last thing you undid.
If you use Home Assistant a lot, trawling your way through all the menus can eat up a lot of your time. Using the keyboard can be a far better way to find what you’re looking for. With a little practice, you can find almost anything in Home Assistant in a matter of moments.
