MQTT Birth and Last Will


MQTT support so-called Birth and Last Will and Testament (LWT) messages. The former is used to sned a message after the service has started. the latter is here to notify other clients about an ungracefully disconnected client or alike.

To integrate MQTT Birth and Last Will messages into Home Assistant, add the following section to your configuration.yaml file:

# Example configuration.yaml entry
mqtt:
  birth_message:
    topic: 'hass/status'
    payload: 'online'
  will_message:
    topic: 'hass/status'
    payload: 'offline'

Configuration variables:

  • birth_message (Optional):
    • topic (Required): The MQTT topic to publish the message.
    • payload (Required): The message content.
    • qos (Optional): The maximum QoS level of the topic. Default is 0.
    • retain (Optional): If the published message should have the retain flag on or not. Defaults to True.
  • will_message (Optional):
    • topic (Required): The MQTT topic to publish the message.
    • payload (Required): The message content.
    • qos (Optional): The maximum QoS level of the topic. Default is 0.
    • retain (Optional): If the published message should have the retain flag on or not. Defaults to True.