Alerts vs notifications?

Hi,

I am getting started with HA. I would like to get notified/alerted in certain circumstances, e.g. if windows are left open for too long, humidity levels are excessive, a water leak sensor triggers etc.

Now I am wondering how to best do this. There are notifications, which can be configured in quite a bit of detail (cf. Introduction | Home Assistant Companion Docs).

There also is the Alert integration (Alert - Home Assistant).

I am wondering what exactly the Alerts have as a distinguishing feature. They can trigger in intervals, but other than that I don’t understand how they are different from notifications. Plus, they need to be configured in YAML as far as I can see, while notifications are easier to use in the GUI.

Is the Alert integration slowly steering towards deprecation?

No.

It will probably be moved to the UI one day.

Yes this is the basic difference:

Saves having to automate a done message too.

Thank you. Good to know. Better accessibility through the GUI would surely be welcome for many use cases.