Currently replacing a device, a bulb, switch, etc. is a huge pain of adding, renaming, copy and pasting, etc. And then trying to verify all your scripts, cards, and Automations are still functioning.
Would be awesome if there was an option on a device or entity, where you could click ‘replace’ and it would bring up a list of devices that you could pick from. It would give it the exact entity names and then It would then rename or delete the old one.
This would be a great idea, I had that in Indigo and it made things much easier to replace.
Really? Surely you only have to change the entity id of the new device to match the old one, and you’re done? Or are you using device ids in your automations? 
This.
Don’t use device actions in automations unless there isn’t any another way to refer to something. Instead use states with entity id’s. Then when you have to replace a device. Rename it to the same name as the old one make sure the entity Id’s match and voila it’s the old device right down to the recorder and history.
Ive got to replace a fan switch tomorrow, I plan to join it with the same name and it’s the same device so the entities should match… I won’t have to edit anything.
Closing as a duplicate please vote and comment here: