Home Assistant Voice chapter 9 arrives with new Speech-to-Phrase tool

Home Assistant has launched Voice chapter 9. This latest release comes after the launch of the Home Assistant Voice Preview Edition hardware in December. It also follows the wider Home Assistant 2025.2 release at the start of February.

Home Assistant Voice chapter 9 is making a fully local voice assistant accessible to more users. Previously, the company recommended the Whisper Speech-to-Text tool. Running on a Raspberry Pi 4, transcribing speech would take around five seconds, with mixed results, meaning that the company recommended using at least an Intel N100. Now, Home Assistant suggests that you use Speech-to-Phrase, which will be rolled out to English, French, German, Dutch, Spanish, and Italian speakers at launch. 

Speech-to-Phrase can convert speech to text in less than a second on a Raspberry Pi 4 or Home Assistant Green (curr. $120 at Amazon), and those with a Raspberry Pi 5 benefit from speeds as low as 150 ms. It is worth noting that Speech-to-Phrase is limited, with support for a smaller set of voice commands out-of-the box. However, these include controls for smart lights and media players, and the ability to set a timer and check the weather forecast. 

As discussed in the release notes for 2025.2, Voice chapter 9 brings support for broadcasts, sharing a message across all various linked devices, and the ability to set the temperature of a smart thermostat with voice commands. On top of this, users now have the ability to call their analog phone and leave a message, like a notification that the washing machine cycle has finished. You can view the full release notes for Voice chapter 9 on the Home Assistant blog.