Local voice assistants have a lot of appeal in the world of secure smart homes, but they often come with limitations. If you’re using a tool like Home Assistant to manage your smart home, you can typically install add-ons for speech-to-text (like Whisper) and text-to-speech (like Piper) and configure a voice pipeline. Plus, you can integrate your own smart speakers to work with. Home Assistant also recently rolled out the Home Assistant Preview Edition, a work-in-progress $69 voice assistant that allows you to manage your connected devices with voice commands. It doesn’t quite have the expertise that Amazon’s Alexa has in handling commands, and as with all local voice assistants, you’ll have to control the responses.

Still, the premise of a local voice assistant is promising, and as you continue to develop them, you can use them completely locally and still use automations that will make your life easier, or pair them with an LLM, which will give you more options (bonus points if you’re self-hosting your own LLM).

When you’re setting up the voice assistant, you can add a custom sentence to trigger an automation and create aliases for your devices, spaces/rooms in your home, to make the commands easier to understand.

Here are some voice commands to get you started if you’re using a local voice assistant.

“Good morning”

Start the day off right

If you want to get a jumpstart on your day, creating a “good morning” automation can help you get there. Depending on how you prefer to wake up, you can use the automation to turn on your lights (either gradually or at full blast), start brewing coffee, and play your morning playlist. If you’ve integrated a weather service, you can also get a preview of the daily forecast.

It’ll require a little work to configure everything for Home Assistant, but the possibilities are endless, and if you’re working on lowering your screen time, this automation can help you get your day started without picking up your phone first thing.

How to set it up:

1. In Home Assistant, go to Settings -> Automations & Scenes -> Create Automation.

2. Choose Voice Command as the trigger and set the sentence to something like “Good morning.”

3. Under Actions, add:

4. Turn on lights (optionally with brightness ramping).

5. Start a smart plug for your coffee maker.

6. Use a TTS action (via Piper) to read the daily forecast.

7. Save and test your automation by saying your chosen phrase.

“Goodbye”

Never second-guess if you locked the door again

Credit: Opera

Let Home Assistant secure your home by turning off the lights, lowering the thermostat, locking the doors, and arming your security system when you’re heading out. If you have presence detection enabled, Home Assistant can even confirm that the house is empty before activating your “away” routine.

How to set it up:

1. Add **actions, **set:

2. Turning off all lights (light.turn_off service).

3. Locking doors (lock.lock).

4. Setting thermostat to eco-mode.

5. Arming security system.

6. (Optional) Add a condition to only trigger if presence detection shows all users as “away.”

“Lights out”

Create a bedtime routine that works

A good bedtime routine is made easier with a voice assistant, setting the mood so you don’t have to get up. Depending on the sentence trigger you use, you can get Home Assistant to shut or dim the lights in your room, turn on an integrated fan or white noise machine, and silence notifications on your phone. You can even add a small delay to devices like bedside lamps so they fade out gently.

How to set it up:

1. Add a new voice automation for the phrase “Lights out.”

2. Under Actions, set:

3. Dimming bedroom lights to 10% or turning them off.

4. Powering a fan or noise machine with a smart plug.

5. Using a delay for bedside lamps to fade gradually.

Housekeeping

Make your smart home work for you

If you’ve integrated vacuum cleaners into your Home Assistant, saying “Start cleaning” (or any custom phrase you prefer) can tell your vacuum to begin its routine while pausing motion sensors that might otherwise trigger during cleaning.

How to set it up:

1. Make sure your vacuum is integrated
2. Create a voice automation with “Start cleaning.”
3. Add actions to:

• Call the vacuum.start service.
• Temporarily disable motion-based automations or sensors.

Add to your grocery list and create other reminders

It’s easier than keeping it all in your head

Once you’ve set up a shopping list integration in Home Assistant, you can easily add items on the fly. Just say, “Add milk to grocery list” or “Add batteries to shopping list.” It’s a small thing, but it eliminates one of the most common household forgetfulness moments.

How to set it up:

1. Enable the Shopping List integration under Settings -> Devices & Services -> + Add Integration -> Shopping List.
2. Create a sentence trigger like “Add milk to grocery list.”
3. Use the shopping_list.add_item service and pass the item name as a variable (e.g., {item} in the voice sentence).
4. You can then view or sync the list in the Home Assistant mobile app.

“Nevermind”

You’re probably going to change your mind at some point

Sometimes your assistant mishears you, or you simply change your mind mid-command. “Never mind” acts as a quick abort phrase that stops whatever automation is in progress — handy for preventing unwanted device activations or premature coffee brewing.

How to set it up:

1. Create a voice command “Nevermind.”
2. Add an action to call the script.turn_off or automation.turn_off service for active routines.
3. Optionally, use Piper to say “Okay, stopping that.”

Broadcast messages

This one is more for fun than function

Credit: Edifier

If you have multiple smart speakers around your home, you can use a broadcast or announcement feature to send a quick message to everyone. “Broadcast: Dinner is ready” or “Announce: Movie time” lets you skip yelling across rooms and adds a little smart-home flair to your communication.

How to set it up:

1. Set up TTS with Piper and ensure multiple media players are integrated.
2. Create a voice automation for “Broadcast: {message}.”
3. Use the tts.speak service to send {message} to all selected speakers.
4. Bonus: You can use it for fun messages like “Movie time” or “Kids, bedtime!”

Make the most out of local voice control

Local voice assistants still have some catching up to do to match the convenience of cloud-based assistants like Alexa and Google Assistant, but the flexibility and privacy of a local voice assistant can’t be beat. Pairing Home Assistant with tools like Whisper, Piper, and even a self-hosted large language model gives you a customizable, private, and convenient alternative.

Whether you’re using it to automate your mornings, secure your home, or just simplify the little things, these voice commands can help you get the most out of your local setup.