I’ve been away from HA for a few years as I got frustrated by breaking changes - anyway, I’ve been using Hubitat Hubs for a few years now and one thing they have got right (along with excellent radios in the C8 Series) is the unique identifier system for Devices.
Say I have an Aeotec TriSensor (Z-Wave), It has a device name, a device label and a unique “Device Network ID” - I can change the label to whatever I like whenever I like without breaking any dashboards or automations, because the “Device Network ID” is the unique identifier. I can even rename the “Device Name” if I want to, but most users will simply leave it as whatever the driver name at time of install, as Labels are the primary text based identifiers. eg
One other benefit of using a true Unique ID for devices is being able to easily replace like for like devices by swapping the Unique ID’s. eg say your Motion Sensor dies (assuming it isnt Z-Wave which has this function baked in), you can install the new one, set it up, and use a utility to swap the devices (Hubitat provides one built in for this purpose) and not break any dashboards or automations.
If I try to rename something in HA, I get this sub-optimal behaviour:
I think my proposal would greatly improve the usability of HA, especially for Noobs.