Cannot edit home zone

crazyelectron · July 6, 2025, 8:54am

Having some issues with overwriting default Home zone settings (I want to change the radius and icon) using YAML configuration, and not add a duplicate home zone, I found this thread.

Adding my zone definitions creates two home zones, the default one and the specified one in zones.yaml:

- name: Thuis
  latitude: !secret home_latitude
  longitude: !secret home_longitude
  radius: 30
  icon: mdi:account-multiple
- name: Werk
  latitude: !secret work_latitude
  longitude: !secret work_longitude
  radius: 80
  icon: mdi:office-building

I also named the HA instance the same:

homeassistant:
  instance_name: Thuis
  ...

But the result is one zone named Werk two zones named Thuis. The default home zone with a house icon and a second home zone with the specified icon. The first is editable only when internal_url and external_url are absent (what is the relationship?).

The documentation mentions you can override default home zone settings, but that does not work IRL. Instead it creates a second home zone.

Is there a way to change parameters of the default home zone through YAML configuration without creating a duplicate zone?

It seems a bit weird that removing the internal_url and external_url parameters would make the zones editable.
BTW, the internal_url and external_url parameters mentioned in this thread as being depricated

seem to be still valid parameters as described in the Home Assistant Core documentation, under the homeassistant section of configuration.yaml.

UPDATE: When selecting English as the Home Assistant language during initial setup and naming the instance (under homeassistant:) and the home zone in zones.yaml all Home, there is only one (editable) home zone with the icon as specified in my zones file.
When selecting Netherlands during initial setup and naming everything Dutch (Thuis is the Dutch word for Home) I end up with two home zones both named Thuis, one editable. So, it seems language related for which I will create an issue on GitHub.

ShadowFist · July 6, 2025, 9:35am

Lots of things to address, so let me try to tackle them one at a time:

Is there any particular reason why you’re insisting on creating zones in yaml? The whole scope of this thread was to be easily able to edit the home zone using the GUI. Try that, because it’s much simpler.
Like you just discovered, you cannot simply add a zone named home in zones.yaml. It will be treated like a duplicate and cause issues because zone.home already exists.
The “old” way to edit the home zone was using customize, but that’s redundant now since you can simply use the GUI which lets you visualise the radius in the map. While you’re there, you can simply add your work location without needing zones.yaml at all.
The icon for Home zone cannot be changed, not even via customize. Don’t ask me why, but it seems to be hardcoded. You can change the icons for any other zone though.
internal_url and external_url parameters were indeed deprecated for yaml and migrated to the GUI some time back. Not sure why they are still listed in the docs - it might be an oversight.

Basically, what I’m saying is: Delete zones.yaml & internal/external url in your config.yaml file & restart HA (after making sure that urls are defined in network settings page). Everything you need is available via the interface.

EDIT: saw your update. It seems to be a language issue indeed, but I’m not sure if it’s a bug. The docs tell you to use:

homeassistant:
  name: Home

but you seem to be using:

homeassistant:
  instance_name: Thuis

crazyelectron · July 6, 2025, 10:22am

Actually, it is documented that you can override the default home zone. And as long as you use the (hardcoded?) English name for the zone (Home) you can override it with a configuration file. I just tested that with a fresh install where I choose the English language during setup and left the home location default (Amsterdam). The zones.yaml included as part of the initial setup pulled from my GitHub repo when deploying the container does override the default home zone icon and after a restart of HA it also picks up the right location and locks the zone (non-editable) in the UI.

I am not going to discus reasons for using configuration files, but will say that having elaborate version control of your past and current configuration with git repo’s and options to add and remove/clean-up stuff has clear benefits (even over backups), aka IaC. I know HA is heading towards a (mostly) YAML-free future, but until then…

Actually, it can as I just tested.

ShadowFist:

EDIT: saw your update. It seems to be a language issue indeed, but I’m not sure if it’s a bug. The docs tell you to use:
homeassistant:
  name: Home
but you seem to be using:
homeassistant:
  instance_name: Thuis

Well, that was a copy error on my side. The actual content is:

homeassistant:
  name: !secret instance_name

which I manually change for this post the wrong way to show the issue with the language.

BTW, as a new HA user I very much appreciate the support in this forum by people like you.

ShadowFist · July 6, 2025, 2:51pm

You’re right about that, sorry. Thought it was hardcoded because it’s hidden in the UI and I can’t seem to recall it working via customize. Looks like setting it in the zones.yaml file lets you override the icon properly.

Cool, do whatever suits you best. Hopefully your concerns will be addressed in the github issue.