The improvements sound great.

I did not look through the details, but it's strange that one of the features is that Cloudflare R2 will be used to improve download speeds and reduce API calls to Github while at the same time adding a new requirement of adding a personal Github API token.

Hopefully one day the Github requirement will be removed. It would be nice if projects/code stored on Gitlab, Codeberg, or other Git services like Gitea or Forgejo could be used without having to mirror/fork the project onto Github.

Hell yeah

Summary:

HACS 2.0: A Major Update to the Home Assistant Community Store

• HACS 2.0, the latest version of the Home Assistant Community Store, brings significant improvements, including an easier installation method, faster updates, a revamped user interface, and improved notifications for Home Assistant updates and repairs.

• HACS serves as a platform for users to discover, install, and update community-created integrations and user interface elements, enhancing the functionality and customization of Home Assistant.

• The new version introduces a user interface that closely resembles the native look and functionality of Home Assistant, providing a consistent and intuitive experience.

• To enhance performance, HACS now utilizes a remote dataset stored in Cloudflare R2 buckets, reducing the number of API calls to GitHub and resulting in significantly faster updates.

• System and add-on updates are now displayed in the same format as native Home Assistant updates, eliminating the need to visit the HACS page for updates.

• HACS 2.0 introduces Template management, leveraging the new template type to improve Jinja templates.

• While HACS offers a wide range of community-made integrations, cards, themes, and more, it is important to note that these are not officially supported by Home Assistant and may affect system stability.

https://www.home-assistant.io/blog/2024/08/21/hacs-the-best-way-to-share-community-made-projects/

Upgraded today. Ui is vastly improved. The breaking changes are minor (for me) and I haven't noticed issues. Great update. Cheers to the devs.

Either they A/B tested this or they accidentally released some of it early because I got all of that new UI stuff a few months ago, complete with addons appearing in the HA updates section. A few days later, just as I'd got used the change, it disappeared!

At least I now know I wasn't going mad.

Just updated and it looks like this one fixed the log spam:

json_loads was called from hacs, this is a deprecated function which will be removed in HA Core 2025.8. 
Use homeassistant.util.json.json_loads instead, please create a bug report at https://github.com/hacs/integration/issues

It's a little weird they don't have a download update button on the new HACS dashboard for an individual repository, now you have to go to Settings > Updates. I also wish I could hide new and available repositories and only show the ones I have installed (you can't seem to select Pending Restart, Pending Update, and Downloaded at the same time.)