Was there a release note about this? I might’ve missed it. But it’s gone now, and with the insteon_local component being sucked into the insteon component, it seems to have really messed up all the naming. Now all my insteon components are named {insteon device component}_2. Normally this wouldn’t be terrible as I could go into entity_registry.yaml and delete all the old insteon components, restart, and the {insteon device component}_2 would come up as {insteon_device} instead. Or I could click on the name with the new GUI interface for entities and simply rename it.
But now entity_registry.yaml is gone and so has the GUI renaming interface. Uh… that’s a pretty big break. Now all my automations are messed up because they got renamed due to the insteon migration, and it’s cascaded into so many others things (scripts, MQTT published statues, Homekit integration, even the basic GUI items).
What happened, and where can I go to edit the entity registry now? Also the entire page for the entity_registry documentation has gone poof; it was previously here: https://www.home-assistant.io/docs/configuration/entity-registry/ It’s literally been in HA for only six months (version .63 was its much heralded release). Searching the forums doesn’t show much debate or mention of it being suddenly killed off. It’s incredibly useful for maintaining proper entity IDs. What the heck happened?
I found, a few releases ago, a bug in regard to the entity registry and the GUI editor for the entity registry. It seems that, if some how the entity id in the registry file ends up with a capital letter, the GUI no longer recognizes it as editable via the registry and so doesn’t provide the edit icon.
I saw it with MQTT sensors, but it makes sense that it would affect other entity types too. And, while I only had an issue with capital letters, I’m sure anything different from what is displayed in dev-state would cause this same problem.
The Docs indicate that the new registry file (.storage/core.entity_registry) shouldn’t be edited by hand. But, in order to find a workable solution for you, I think you may have to. It’s worth a shot at least. Stop HASS, look at the format of it to get an idea of what you’re changing (it’s in JSON not YAML), make your changes, and see what happens. Worst case, I imagine you can delete the file (save a backup just in case) and then all the registry items will be created with their default names… and then it’s up to you to run everywhere and rename them back to what they should be… which is probably tedious, especially through the GUI.
Well that sucks. I mean according to the release notes it supposedly works in the GUI, but where exactly? Clicking on an entity either in the regular interface or the entity ID listing dev tool doesn’t bring up the old “rename” interface / pop up. Is that a problem with my local install? Does that work for anyone else?
I’ll have to try it in another browser and look at the core entity file when I’m back in front of a terminal.
EDIT: turn out that if you do anything with the entity ID in a customization file like customization.yaml, the entity ID editor does not function in the GUI. This is… not very intuitive. At the very least it should spit out a warning that this entity is customized in a YAML file, and needs to be edited there. This of course doesn’t help with the actual entity registry editing, which if I wanted to do that, I’d have to remove the entity from the customization file, reload HA, change the entity ID, then edit the customization file again to re-add the entity, and do a final reload. Note that this won’t even work in my situation where I have colliding entity IDs in the registry that is no longer editable.
I think HA is an amazing piece of software and I’ve used it for a long time now. This is the first time that I want to shake someone by the shoulders and ask if they were thinking about the VERY COMMON OCCURRENCE of trying to fix entity ID collisions. What are we supposed to do now when we have entity IDs stuck in the registry that are dead? I’m fine if we have to do it in the GUI, but there’s no GUI interface to fix them.
One more update: Turns out the name is because of the naming convention for the new insteon component. the _2 part means the device is part of Insteon group 2 (something I never use).
That’s tangential though; you can’t rename the entity, nor does the entity show up anywhere in the entity registry in .storage/*. Guess I’m stuck with this forced-upon me nomenclature.
That suggests that the Insteon component doesn’t support unique IDs, which is required for the entity registry. The answer to that is to raise an issue for the developer of the component to fix that (if it’s possible).
This is probably a newbie mistake, but I have made it and need to fix this.
I was renaming entities and accidentally used a capital letter in the Entity ID. Now that the entity register file is not accessible, how do I edit this. The edit icon is not available any longer, likely due to the incorrect format now it has a capital letter, and also I can not use the entity in any YAML files, be them scripts or automations due to the capital letter.
If someone can point me in the right direction, that would be good.
Edit:
I was using the GUI to rename entities and I am using HASS.IO - latest release.
There’s certainly been some pains associated with it, but I can really see the value once it’s stabilized. This is coming from a heavy ZWave user that has had to rename and fiddle with renaming ALL of my entity names at least five times over the two years I’ve been using HomeAssistant.
EDIT: turn out that if you do anything with the entity ID in a customization file like customization.yaml , the entity ID editor does not function in the GUI
Oddly, the opposite seems to be happening for me. The editor appears to be making changes to my customize.yaml (adding friendly_names), and I’m also getting an error in the GUI that my customize.yaml is not properly included in my configuration.yaml (…but it is). I thought new changes are supposed to go into .storage/*.json?
I actually just want to change the real z-wave node name, having added some nodes last night (after 0.77 upgrade). When I use the GUI to change the name (even if it worked), it doesn’t seem to be attempting to rename in underlying z-wave config.
I would file a bug but I’m too confused about how it’s supposed to be working at this point. Possibly (to some extent) I’m seeing expected behavior … but changelog is a bit to brief to know what’s going on.
This change has left me more confused than any other in my 2.5 year history with HA.
I am also mourning the loss of the entity registry - it seemed like a gift has been snatched away from me!
However, the most recent Home Assistant Podcast features Paulus discussing his motives for the removal (or more accurately the relocation) of said gift.
I was enlightened after listening.
most can be edited directly in the GUI - click on the entity, click on the cog (top right of pop-out panel), and there you have the name and entity ID for you to edit.
Again, Paulus’ interview on the podcast explains why not all entites are currently editable in this way. so if there’s no cog on the entity pop-out panel, i think it’ll just be a matter of time.
Ok but that’s a bad idea. Before this, I’ve had everything in a non visible file. Now this being done via frontent, every user can edit names and mess up my setup. Even by accident.
The biggest thing I’m struggling with is the ability to name things at the open-zwave level… I’ve added several new sensors (with 6 sensors each) and it’s very cumbersome to map each piece to a new entity… not to mention the enumerated, duplicated names always still sit there underneath … it feels very disorganized to me.
Before this, I’ve had everything in a non visible file. Now this being done via frontent, every user can edit names and mess up my setup. Even by accident.
The new auth system and upcoming permissions system will fix that. It was already possible with the old entity_registry.yaml file to rename things from the frontend. It was made a little more hidden because there were often issues of people hand editing it with HA still running and either corrupting it or wondering why their changes didn’t stick after HA overwrote it. It can technically still be hand edited, it’s just a JSON file now instead of YAML.
