There are quite a lot of controls I would like to use an On, Auto or Off switch for. Where I now have an Input_boolean for Auto (on or off), and another one for when auto is off: (manually On or Off).
I would like to have a switch with three options: On, Auto, Off, but it seems not there in HA.
What is your idea for a better solution? Perhaps with a Dropdown / input_select?
If you search for “three state switch” it will show requests dating back to 2017. In other words, there’s a long-standing interest in a switch entity with three states but no interest in implementing it because an input_select does the job. The usual complaint is that the input_select’s appearance in the UI is not like a switch but there’s not much that can be done about that (short of inventing some kind of special card).
The only alternative I can think of is to create three Input Booleans, displayed as buttons, and link them so they behave like “radio buttons” (only one of the three buttons can be on at any time).
After you follow up on Taras’ suggestion above, I’ve got a similar situation where a tri-state indicator was helpful. I coded it as an input_select helper with three options. I have an automation that switches the options as it runs (so I have a visual indication of where in the cycle it is).
In your case you can change the tap_action to a service call to input_select.select_next with cycle enabled and a tap will change from On to Auto to Off.
What if you create an input number with min 1 and max 3 as a slider.
What does that look like on a picture elements card.
You could just add a sensor to translate 1 → manual and so on.
Works very well. I then use the input_select state in automations without showing it in the front end.
One button toggles to three states, effectively.