Chapter 2

System settings

Set the time zone, language, units, currency, and location correctly. Home Assistant uses these values for sunrise and sunset, weather, temperatures, timestamps, and energy costs. A mistake here can affect every automation you build later.

Why this matters

Many Home Assistant automations depend on your location and time zone:

  • “Turn on the entry light 30 minutes after sunset” requires the correct location.
  • If you later create an automation that turns on a light at sunset, incorrect coordinates will make it run at the wrong time.
  • “Turn on the air conditioner at 27°C” only works as intended when Home Assistant uses the correct temperature unit.

These settings take only a few minutes to check, but they affect everything that follows.

Warning: An incorrect time zone shifts History charts, changes when sunrise and sunset triggers run, and can assign Energy dashboard data to the wrong day. Your location affects sunrise, sunset, and zone.home; Home Assistant creates that home zone with a radius of 100 meters around the coordinates you choose. Select the time zone, units, and currency separately. Home Assistant does not infer them from the map location.

Open Settings

Select Settings, marked with a gear in the sidebar. This is the starting point for Home Assistant system configuration.

Settings entry in the sidebar
Figure 2-1 Select the Settings gear in the sidebar.

Configure your system

Note: The zh-TW source uses Asia/Taipei, TWD, and metric units. This international edition instead asks you to choose the values for your own region. The page is now named Settings → System → Home information; earlier versions call it General.

  1. Open Home information

    Go to Settings → System → Home information. In an earlier version, select General instead.

    Home information settings page
    Figure 2-2 Home information includes the system name, time zone, units, and currency.

  2. Set the name and location of your home

    Name: Use a name your household will recognize, such as “My Home.” This name can appear in phone notification titles.

    Location: Drag the map pin to your home. Home Assistant uses this point as the center for determining whether someone is home or away.

    Home location setting
    Figure 2-3 Drag the location pin on the map.

  3. Choose the time zone and currency

    Time zone: Choose your local IANA time zone. The zh-TW source uses Asia/Taipei. Currency: Choose your local currency; the source example is TWD. These settings affect timestamps and the Energy dashboard.

  4. Choose the unit system

    Unit system: Choose Metric for Celsius, millimeters of rainfall, and wind speed in m/s or km/h. Choose the system and individual units used in your region.

  5. Save your changes

    Select Save in the lower-right corner. Refresh the page if a changed value does not appear immediately.

    Tip: If sunrise, sunset, or notification times later look wrong, return to this page and check every field.
Verify: After saving, return to the Settings overview and confirm that the displayed date and time match your time zone. Then open Settings → Areas, labels & zones → Zones → home and check that the map circle covers your home.

Set your personal preferences

Concept: system settings and personal settings are different. The time zone, units, and currency apply to the whole system. Language, date format, and the first day of the week apply only to the current account. Two household members can therefore see different languages without anything being wrong.

The previous steps configured the home. To configure your account, select your name at the bottom of the sidebar, then open User profile. Earlier versions call this page User settings.

  1. Language

    Select English to change the interface language for your account immediately.

    Language setting in the user profile
    Figure 2-4 The Language field in the user profile.

  2. Time format and default dashboard

    Time format: Choose a 24-hour or 12-hour clock. Default dashboard: Choose which dashboard opens after you sign in. The original default was Overview.

  3. Theme

    Choose one of the built-in options, including Backend-selected, which follows the system light or dark setting, and the default light and dark themes.

FAQ

Will changing the time zone alter earlier chart times?
Yes. Historical data is stored in UTC and converted for display. Changing the time zone shifts the displayed timeline; it does not rewrite the stored measurements.
Must the home location be exact?
An accurate location gives the best results for sunrise, sunset, weather, and location-based notifications. If you prefer not to use the exact point, the source suggests choosing a landmark within 1 kilometer, but this reduces location accuracy.
Can each user choose a different language?
Yes. Each person can choose a language in their own User profile.

Next step: create a backup

You have completed the most important system settings. Before you configure more rooms and devices, create a backup. It gives you a clean point to restore if a later integration experiment goes wrong.

You can create the backup in about 3 minutes. Follow the instructions in Chapter 9.