Advantages of using customize.yaml?

Configuration
1

Hello,

Am I misunderstanding the purpose of this card?

I’m trying to understand what the advantages of using customize.yaml vs changing the entity itself directly? In other-words, if changing an entities friendly name from “A” to “B” in customize.yaml changes it globally, why not just change it within the entity itself directly?

I’m trying to change an entity friendly name for one specific lovelace card only, without changing it globally, is this possible with customize.yaml? The lovelace card is using auto-entities so I don’t believe I can change it dynamically within card itself.

2

Cards are only ui items. This is a configuration.

Some entities cannot be managed through the ui if they were added in yaml. To customize those, use customize.yaml.

No, customize.yaml is global. It’s the yaml eqivalent of changing the entity via the ui.

3

That makes sense, I didn’t think about items added directly to the configuration file.

With auto-entities am I basically stuck then? Is there a way to change the friendly name with a template?

4

You can change the friendly name with a template but it’s still global. The only way to change it in the frontend and not the backend is to change it on the card displayed in the UI. I don’t believe you can do this with auto-entities. You may be able to do it with auto-entities and a custom card.

5

customize.yaml can also be used to add custom fields to an entity, just to point out what I consider the main use-case.

@Magnetic - Depending on what type of entity you’re dealing with, could you just create a sensor with the name you want that tracks the state of the main entity?