ESPHome 2025.9.0: MIPI RGB displays and a camera JPEG encoder

Sep 17, 2025

Release Overview

ESPHome 2025.9.0 brings significant enhancements to display technology, camera functionality, and performance optimizations. This release focuses on advanced display capabilities, improved memory efficiency, and enhanced developer tools while maintaining backward compatibility for most use cases.

Key Highlights:

MIPI RGB Display support for high-performance color displays with dedicated hardware acceleration
ESPHome Builder improvements with support for uploading existing YAML files and blank configurations
Camera JPEG encoder enabling efficient image compression and streaming capabilities
Enhanced NRF52 features including DFU (Device Firmware Update) support
Extensive memory optimizations reducing flash and RAM usage across all platforms
Improved sensor support with enhanced BL0940 power monitoring capabilities
Component improvements including restructured Inkplate e-paper display support

🎉 Welcome Jonathan to the Open Home Foundation Team!

We’re excited to announce that Jonathan (@swoboda1337) has joined the Open Home Foundation as a full-time developer on ESPHome!

Jonathan has been a long-standing and valued contributor, and now he’ll be able to focus fully on building ESPHome — helping people create smart homes that are private, sustainable, and built on open standards.

This milestone is made possible by the support of our community and the Open Home Foundation’s mission to advance open-source smart home technologies while upholding the principles of privacy, choice, and sustainability.

If you’d like to support continued development of ESPHome and other open home projects, consider:

Supporting the Open Home Foundation → openhomefoundation.org
Subscribing to Home Assistant Cloud → nabucasa.com to help fund open-source development

🚀 Welcome to the team, Jonathan — we can’t wait to see what you’ll help build!

MIPI RGB Display Support

ESPHome 2025.9.0 introduces comprehensive support for MIPI RGB displays through the new Mipi Rgb component.

Key Features:

Hardware acceleration through dedicated MIPI controllers
High refresh rates with excellent color reproduction
Unified configuration supporting multiple display models
Reduced CPU overhead compared to traditional parallel displays
Professional display quality for advanced user interfaces

MIPI RGB displays offer superior performance for applications requiring high-quality graphics, smooth animations, and professional-grade user interfaces.

ESPHome Builder Enhancements

The ESPHome Builder web interface now offers improved flexibility for getting started with your projects:

New Capabilities:

Upload existing YAML files to continue working on configurations created elsewhere
Start with a blank configuration for complete customization from scratch

Camera JPEG Encoder

The new Camera Encoder component adds efficient JPEG compression capabilities to ESP32 camera implementations, enabling:

Benefits:

Reduced bandwidth for image transmission over WiFi
Lower storage requirements for image capture applications
Improved streaming performance with compressed image data
Configurable quality settings to balance size vs. quality
Hardware acceleration where available on supported platforms

This component is particularly valuable for security cameras, time-lapse photography, and any application requiring efficient image handling.

Enhanced NRF52 Platform

Building on the NRF52 platform introduced in 2025.8.0, this release adds crucial development and deployment features:

New Capabilities:

DFU (Device Firmware Update) support for over-the-air updates
Improved debugging tools with enhanced Zephyr integration

These enhancements make NRF52 development more practical for production deployments while maintaining the low-power advantages of Nordic semiconductors.

Memory & Performance Optimizations

ESPHome 2025.9.0 continues the optimization efforts with significant improvements:

Flash Memory Savings:

Component source strings moved to flash (ESP8266) saving substantial RAM
GPIO memory optimization reducing usage by up to 50% through bit-packing
Scheduler improvements with memory pools to reduce heap fragmentation
String optimizations eliminating unnecessary allocations in core functions

Runtime Improvements:

Enhanced GPIO expander support with cached operations reducing I2C bus usage
Optimized sensor logging with compile-time string management
Better timezone synchronization allowing the timezone to be sent from Home Assistant for devices that are pre-installed with ESPHome

Breaking Changes

ESPHome 2025.9.0 includes several breaking changes that may require configuration updates:

Core Preference Storage Changes

Device ID consideration: Preference storage now accounts for device_id to prevent conflicts
Impact: Devices may lose some stored preferences on first boot after upgrade
Action Required: No configuration changes needed, but stored calibration data may need to be reconfigured

LVGL Spinbox Configuration

Configuration change: step property replaced with selected_digit for spinbox widgets
Impact: Existing LVGL spinbox configurations will fail validation
Action Required: Update spinbox configurations to use selected_digit instead of step

Bluetooth Proxy Connection Defaults

Default change: Active connections now default to true instead of false
Impact: Bluetooth proxy will allow active connections by default
Action Required: Explicitly set active: false if you want to maintain previous behavior

API and Memory Optimizations

String function changes: state_class_to_string() now returns const char* instead of std::string
Component storage changes: Component source strings moved to flash memory on ESP8266
Impact: Custom components using these functions may need updates
Action Required: Update custom components to handle new return types

Inkplate Component Rename

Component renamed: Inkplate component has been renamed and grayscale handling improved
Impact: Existing Inkplate configurations will need component name updates
Action Required: Update component references in your configuration

Most breaking changes are internal optimizations that shouldn’t affect typical configurations, but custom components and advanced setups may require updates.

Release 2025.9.1 - September 19

[mqtt] Fix KeyError when MQTT logging configured without explicit level esphome#10774 by @bdraco
fix(packet_transport): Add initialization for sensor configuration in packet transport esphome#10765 by @TMaYaD
[core] Fix ESP8266 mDNS compilation failure caused by incorrect coroutine priorities esphome#10773 by @bdraco
[gpio] Fix unused function warnings when compiling with log level below DEBUG esphome#10779 by @bdraco

Release 2025.9.2 - September 29

[esp32_improv] Disable loop by default until provisioning needed esphome#10764 by @bdraco
[libretiny] Fix lib_ignore handling and ignore incompatible libraries esphome#10846 by @swoboda1337
Set color_order to RGB for the Waveshare ESP32-S3-TOUCH-LCD-4.3 and ESP32-S3-TOUCH-LCD-7-800X480 esphome#10835 by @stuartparmenter
[esp32_improv] Fix crashes from uninitialized pointers and missing null checks esphome#10902 by @bdraco
[sx126x] Fix issues with variable length FSK packets esphome#10911 by @swoboda1337
[mipi_spi] Fix t-display-amoled esphome#10922 by @clydebarrow

Release 2025.9.3 - October 1

[api] Prevent API from overriding noise encryption keys set in YAML esphome#10927 by @bdraco
[sim800l] Fixed ignoring incoming calls. esphome#10865 by @vmakeev
[voice_assistant] Fix wakeword string being reset while referenced esphome#10945 by @abmantis

Full List of Changes

For the complete list of every merged pull request in this release, see the full 2025.9.0 changelog.