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How to Schedule UniFi Access Point LED Lights with Home Assistant

January 10, 2026

UniFi access points feature a blue LED ring that indicates device status. While useful during the day, these lights can be distracting at night, especially in bedrooms or hallways. The UniFi Network Controller itself allows you to toggle the LED on or off, but it’s a permanent setting. There’s no built-in way to schedule the lights to turn off at night and back on in the morning.

I have played a little bit with this and decided to put it into a guide that shows you how to solve this using Home Assistant’s automation capabilities combined with the UniFi Controller API.

Test Environment

My test and production :) environment have the following hardware:

UniFi Controller: UniFi Cloud Gateway Fiber (UCG-Fiber) running UniFi OS
Access Points: UniFi U7 Pro XGS (the process works with any UniFi AP with LED rings)
Home Automation: Home Assistant Green with Home Assistant OS
Network: All devices on the same local network (192.168.1.x)

The approach should work with other UniFi OS devices including:

UniFi Dream Machine (UDM)
UniFi Dream Machine Pro (UDM-Pro)
UniFi Dream Router (UDR)
UniFi Cloud Key Gen2

How It Works

The UniFi Controller exposes a REST API that can control device settings, including LED state. We’ll create a shell script that:

Authenticates with the UniFi Controller
Captures the CSRF token required for API requests
Sends a PUT request to change the LED override state

Then we’ll wire this script into Home Assistant as a shell command and trigger it via time-based automations.

Prerequisites

Home Assistant with SSH access (we’ll use the Terminal & SSH add-on)
A local admin account on your UniFi Controller

Step 1: Get Your Access Point Device IDs

The UniFi API identifies devices by their internal ID (a 24-character hexadecimal string), not by name or MAC address. The newer UniFi web interface doesn’t expose these IDs anywhere, so we’ll query the API directly.

From any machine with curl installed (Mac, Linux, or Windows with WSL), run:

# Authenticate and save the session cookie
curl -ks -c /tmp/unifi_cookie -X POST \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"username":"YOUR_ADMIN_USERNAME","password":"YOUR_PASSWORD"}' \
  "https://YOUR_CONTROLLER_IP/api/auth/login"

# List all devices with their IDs
curl -ks -b /tmp/unifi_cookie \
  "https://YOUR_CONTROLLER_IP/proxy/network/api/s/default/stat/device" | \
  python3 -c "import sys,json; data=json.load(sys.stdin)['data']; 
[print(f\"Name: {d.get('name','unnamed')}\nID: {d['_id']}\nModel: {d.get('model','')}\n\") for d in data if d.get('type')=='uap']"

Replace:

YOUR_ADMIN_USERNAME with your UniFi admin username
YOUR_PASSWORD with your password
YOUR_CONTROLLER_IP with your controller’s IP address (e.g., 192.168.1.1)

This outputs only your access points (type uap) with their names and IDs.

Save the device ID(s) for your access points, you’ll need them later.

Step 2: Install the Terminal & SSH Add-on

In Home Assistant, navigate to Settings > Add-ons
Click Add-on Store (bottom right)
Search for “Terminal & SSH” (the official Home Assistant add-on)
Click Install
After installation, go to the Configuration tab and set a password or add your SSH public key
Start the add-on
Click Open Web UI to access the terminal

Step 3: Create the LED Control Script

In the SSH terminal, create a scripts directory and the control script:

mkdir -p /config/scripts
nano /config/scripts/unifi_led.sh

Paste the following script, replacing the configuration variables with your values:

#!/bin/bash

# ===========================================
# Configuration - Update these values
# ===========================================
CONTROLLER="https://192.168.1.1"    # Your UniFi Controller IP
USERNAME="your_admin_username"       # Local admin username
PASSWORD="your_password"             # Admin password
SITE="default"                       # Site name (usually "default")

# ===========================================
# Script parameters (passed from Home Assistant)
# ===========================================
DEVICE_ID="$1"    # AP device ID
LED_STATE="$2"    # "on", "off", or "default"

# ===========================================
# Create temporary files for session handling
# ===========================================
COOKIE_FILE=$(mktemp)
HEADER_FILE=$(mktemp)

# ===========================================
# Authenticate and capture CSRF token
# ===========================================
curl -ks -c "$COOKIE_FILE" -D "$HEADER_FILE" -X POST \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d "{\"username\":\"$USERNAME\",\"password\":\"$PASSWORD\"}" \
  "$CONTROLLER/api/auth/login" > /dev/null

# IMPORTANT: Extract CSRF token from the correct header line
# The header file contains multiple lines with "csrf" - we need the actual token
CSRF_TOKEN=$(grep "^x-csrf-token:" "$HEADER_FILE" | awk '{print $2}' | tr -d '\r')

# ===========================================
# Set LED state via API
# ===========================================
curl -ks -b "$COOKIE_FILE" -X PUT \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -H "X-CSRF-Token: $CSRF_TOKEN" \
  -d "{\"led_override\":\"$LED_STATE\"}" \
  "$CONTROLLER/proxy/network/api/s/$SITE/rest/device/$DEVICE_ID"

# ===========================================
# Cleanup
# ===========================================
rm -f "$COOKIE_FILE" "$HEADER_FILE"

Save the file:

Press Ctrl+O then Enter to save
Press Ctrl+X to exit

Make the script executable:

chmod +x /config/scripts/unifi_led.sh

Step 4: Test the Script

Before integrating with Home Assistant, verify the script works:

# Turn LED off
/config/scripts/unifi_led.sh "YOUR_DEVICE_ID" "off"

# Turn LED on
/config/scripts/unifi_led.sh "YOUR_DEVICE_ID" "on"

Watch your access point. The LED should respond to each command.

Step 5: Configure Home Assistant

Add the Shell Command

Edit your Home Assistant configuration:

nano /config/configuration.yaml

Add the following (if you already have a shell_command: section, just add the line under it):

shell_command:
  unifi_ap_led: '/config/scripts/unifi_led.sh "{{ device_id }}" "{{ state }}"'

Save and exit.

Restart Home Assistant

The shell command integration requires a full restart to load:

Go to Settings > System > Restart (top right)
Wait for Home Assistant to come back online

Verify the Command is Available

Go to Developer Tools > Actions
Search for shell_command.unifi_ap_led
If it appears, the integration is working

Step 6: Create the Automations

Using the UI

Navigate to Settings > Automations & Scenes > Create Automation > Create new automation

Click the three dots (top right) > Edit in YAML and paste:

Automation 1: Turn LEDs off at night

alias: "AP LEDs off at night"
description: "Turn off UniFi AP LED rings at 10 PM"
trigger:
  - platform: time
    at: "22:00:00"
action:
  - service: shell_command.unifi_ap_led
    data:
      device_id: "YOUR_DEVICE_ID_1"
      state: "off"
  - service: shell_command.unifi_ap_led
    data:
      device_id: "YOUR_DEVICE_ID_2"
      state: "off"
mode: single

Automation 2: Turn LEDs on in the morning

alias: "AP LEDs on in morning"
description: "Turn on UniFi AP LED rings at 7 AM"
trigger:
  - platform: time
    at: "07:00:00"
action:
  - service: shell_command.unifi_ap_led
    data:
      device_id: "YOUR_DEVICE_ID_1"
      state: "on"
  - service: shell_command.unifi_ap_led
    data:
      device_id: "YOUR_DEVICE_ID_2"
      state: "on"
mode: single

Adjust the times and device IDs as needed. If you have only one AP, remove the second action block.

Alternative Triggers

Instead of fixed times, you could trigger based on:

Sunset/Sunrise:

trigger:
  - platform: sun
    event: sunset
    offset: "+00:30:00"  # 30 minutes after sunset

Based on another entity:

trigger:
  - platform: state
    entity_id: input_boolean.bedtime_mode
    to: "on"

LED Override States

The UniFi API accepts three values for led_override:

Value	Behavior
`on`	LED always on regardless of controller setting
`off`	LED always off regardless of controller setting
`default`	Follow the site-wide LED setting in UniFi Controller

Using default lets you revert to whatever you’ve configured in the UniFi interface.

Summary

By combining the UniFi Controller’s REST API with Home Assistant’s shell command integration, you can automate LED scheduling that isn’t natively supported. Once configured, the automations run silently in the background, giving you dark access points at night and visible status indicators during the day. Enjoy!