Use button press events as trigger

[lukas-wo]

Describe the feature

Currently, it is impossible to use button press events as trigger. The 'state' event does not work since this event type does not constitute a state change.

The current way of automating button presses is as follows: https://www.home-assistant.io/integrations/event/#to-automate-on-a-button-press

This work-around requires using any state change as the trigger and placing the button press state (single press, double press) as a condition. Which is unnecessary convoluted and not user-friendly. Especially since button presses are nicely visible in the history panel, so obviously the event exists on a common-sense level.

Please acknowledge that the current approach is bad for user-friendliness and not desirable.

Proposed solution: add an event option next to 'state change' events, namely just an event trigger on an entity. Even if this is (behind the scenes) the exact same logic as the tutorial gives us, the experience for a user would be much improved.

A user shouldn't need to follow arcane tutorials to automate a trivial button press to turn some lights on and off.

Use cases

Any automation involving a button press. For example to toggle the lights based on a button being pressed on a Matter button device.

Current workarounds

The current workaround avoids stating the button press as the triggering event, and instead uses the button press type as a condition:
https://www.home-assistant.io/integrations/event/#to-automate-on-a-button-press

Anything else?

No response

[mib1185]

this is already implemented with home-assistant/core#158745 and will be part of the upcoming 2026.1 release

[lukas-wo]

I have the same experience as @jimjam-slam: I am still not able to add the button press as a trigger.

When I try to add a trigger (having the labs feature enabled), and I search for the button device (both the Bilresa button from Ikea, and a button switch from Aqara), I see no available triggers.

That can either be because it's technically not possible, or because it is unintuitive for normal users. Based on your responses I would assume it should be technically possible with the new features enabled. But I cannot figure out how.
I would expect it in the list of trigger types, under the label 'Button'. But it's not there; this list mostly just contains a long list of 'Identify' entities (which IMHO should not count as buttons, but have a separate event type called Identify).

At the very least it's a UX/UI problem, that could be made more user friendly.

[jimjam-slam]

@mib1185 Is there a way to surface these buttons as button entities instead of event entities? I agree with @lukas-wo that it is confusing from a user perspective to connect these buttons, see them appear in the device description as buttons but then not find them in the trigger list. I understand Home Assistant has limited control over how devices advertise themselves, though!

[mib1185]

@lukas-wo it's indeed a bit UX-unfriendly as these entities are named as buttons, but are technically event entities - they represent some real physical buttons and shows when you press the physical button, but you can't trigger the button press event from HA side (so it is read-only from HA perspective). While button entities are purposed to be pressed in HA to trigger some actions on the physical device eq. start the identify process on the physical device (usually let a led blink on the device) or trigger some device actions like a restart.
So for user-friendly usage of the event entities in automations, we need to wait for home-assistant/core#158328

@jimjam-slam this would be another feature request for the matter integration

[jimjam-slam]

To just really join the dots for folks as new to HA as me, here's how I hooked up a single button press with the new purpose-driven triggers (using the approach @lukas-wo outlined):

[DefconTony]

@jimjam-slam - You have saved me after hours of confusion. After moving my old IKEA DIRIGERA devices from HomeKit to Matter integration (they are not actually matter devices) only a single Device option was available in triggers (for battery) despite seeing the events triggered on the device. After following your advice above I got the buttons triggers working on EVENTS instead of Device Triggers. Thanks for your help and taking the time to post this.

I just need to work out how to do this using the 'single', 'double' and 'long press' on the entity now!

We just need this option available with a simple UI now, to make it easier for the old folk like me :-)

[frenck]

Home Assistant now supports a dedicated button-pressed trigger. It shipped in Core 2026.1 through home-assistant/core#158745, so automations can trigger directly on a button press instead of relying on a generic state trigger and condition.

../Frenck

                       

Blogging my personal ramblings at frenck.dev