ESPHome 2026.5.0 released with new ESPHome Device Builder (beta), performance/memory optimizations

ESPHome 2026.5.0 has just been released with the beta version of the new ESPHome Device Builder web app that replaces the legacy in-tree dashboard with a real configuration editor, a firmware job queue, multi-select bulk actions, labels and areas, out-of-sync detection, cross-config search, distributed builds, and a proper settings UI. The firmware itself gains optimizations of the main loop, scheduler, and task watchdog to lower CPU and power usage on supported platforms, and a range of other memory/performance optimizations across the API, audio, and helper hot paths. The audio decoder pipeline has been improved and features new microMP3, microWAV, and microFLAC streaming libraries. OTA has also been enhanced with partition-table and bootloader updates, web-server OTA, and soft-brick recovery, and ESP32 MCUs are now handled by up to the ESP-IDF v6.0.1 framework natively, while Zigbee support has been expanded to ESP32 H2 and ESP32-C6, among other features. Key features of the […]

The post ESPHome 2026.5.0 released with new ESPHome Device Builder (beta), performance/memory optimizations appeared first on CNX Software – Embedded Systems News.