Deprecate DeviceEntry.suggested_area

[emontnemery]

Proposed change

Deprecate DeviceEntry.suggested_area.

Note:
Setting suggested_area in DeviceInfo, and passing suggested_area to DeviceRegistry.async_get_or_create is still supported and influences the area of craeted devices, although that may change in the future.

Rationale:
DeviceEntry.suggested_area was not stored, meaning its behavior was unpredictable. Moreover, was used almost only in tests, the one exception being device analytics dump.

Type of change

• Dependency upgrade
• Bugfix (non-breaking change which fixes an issue)
• New integration (thank you!)
• New feature (which adds functionality to an existing integration)
• Deprecation (breaking change to happen in the future)
• Breaking change (fix/feature causing existing functionality to break)
• Code quality improvements to existing code or addition of tests

Additional information

• This PR fixes or closes issue: fixes #
• This PR is related to issue:
• Link to documentation pull request:
• Link to developer documentation pull request: Add blog post on deprecation of DeviceEntry.suggested_area developers.home-assistant#2740
• Link to frontend pull request:

Checklist

• The code change is tested and works locally.
• Local tests pass. Your PR cannot be merged unless tests pass
• There is no commented out code in this PR.
• I have followed the development checklist
• I have followed the perfect PR recommendations
• The code has been formatted using Ruff (ruff format homeassistant tests)
• Tests have been added to verify that the new code works.

If user exposed functionality or configuration variables are added/changed:

• Documentation added/updated for www.home-assistant.io

If the code communicates with devices, web services, or third-party tools:

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• New or updated dependencies have been added to requirements_all.txt.
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• For the updated dependencies - a link to the changelog, or at minimum a diff between library versions is added to the PR description.

To help with the load of incoming pull requests:

• I have reviewed two other open pull requests in this repository.

[emontnemery]

A github code search for /(?-i)\.suggested_area/ path:custom_components suggests DeviceEntry.suggested_area is not widely used by custom integrations.

The search query above, filtered for false positives, suggests it's used by:

• airalab/homeassistant-robonomics-integration
• xannor/ha_reolink_rest
• djbios/home-assistant-cat-scale

[Copilot]

Pull Request Overview

This PR deprecates the DeviceEntry.suggested_area property in Home Assistant. The property was not stored persistently, making its behavior unpredictable and unreliable. It was primarily used in tests with only one exception being device analytics dump functionality.

Key changes:

• Deprecates the suggested_area property with a deprecation warning
• Updates all tests to use area_id instead of suggested_area
• Removes suggested_area from snapshot test outputs

Reviewed Changes

Copilot reviewed 128 out of 128 changed files in this pull request and generated no comments.

File	Description
tests/syrupy.py	Adds removal of _suggested_area from serialization for snapshots
tests/helpers/test_device_registry.py	Adds deprecation test and updates existing tests to use area_id
Multiple test snapshot files	Removes suggested_area from expected device output
Various integration test files	Updates tests to use area_id and area registry instead of suggested_area

Comments suppressed due to low confidence (1)

tests/helpers/test_device_registry.py:2512

• There is a typo in the variable name: 'witout' should be 'without'.

    orig_kitchen_light_without_suggested_area = device_registry.async_update_device(

[jbouwh]

I think we should have a breaking change for MQTT in advance of this one. Marking the YAML options as deprecated, and explaining this no longer works. This will prevent unexpected results. I think the deprecation deadline is okay BTW.

[bdraco]

It should probably be more clear that this is only deprecating reading the property not actually suggesting an area

[emontnemery]

I think we should have a breaking change for MQTT in advance of this one. Marking the YAML options as deprecated, and explaining this no longer works. This will prevent unexpected results. I think the deprecation deadline is okay BTW.

This PR does not deprecate the suggested_area functionality, it just removed the suggested_area attribute from the DeviceEntry object.

[jbouwh]

It should probably be more clear that this is only deprecating reading the property not actually suggesting an area

Ah, I misunderstood. I'll discuss with @emontnemery about the MQTT feature in this.

Stale

[emontnemery]

Tagged for 2025.8.0 to prevent merge conflicts with #149758