The RP2040 platform has been updated to arduino-pico 5.5.0 (from 3.9.4), pico-sdk 2.1.0 (from 1.5.1), and GCC 14 (from GCC 12). Several hardware register names, API functions, and macros have changed. External components targeting RP2040 may need updates.
This is a breaking change for external components in ESPHome 2026.3.0 and later.
The socket::Socket and socket::ListenSocket types have been changed from virtual base classes to concrete type aliases. Listen sockets now use the ListenSocket type instead of Socket. These changes save 1,020–3,228 bytes of flash across platforms by eliminating virtual dispatch overhead.
This is a breaking change for external components in ESPHome 2026.3.0 and later.
The UARTComponent::flush() method return type has changed from void to FlushResult. External components that subclass UARTComponent and override flush() must update their override to return a FlushResult value.
This is a breaking change for external components in ESPHome 2026.3.0 and later.
ESP32 builds now exclude unused built-in IDF components by default to reduce compile time. This applies to both ESP-IDF and Arduino framework builds, since both use the ESP-IDF build system underneath. External components that use excluded IDF APIs (e.g., esp_vfs_fat.h, esp_http_client.h, esp_eth.h) must explicitly re-enable them via include_builtin_idf_component().
This is a breaking change for external components in ESPHome 2026.2.0 and later.
get_preference_hash() is deprecated. Use the new make_entity_preference<T>() method to create preference objects for storing entity state. This prepares for fixing preference hash collisions that cause entities to overwrite each other’s stored data.
This is a breaking change for external components in ESPHome 2026.2.0 and later.
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