How to move automations from yaml to UI

Configuration
1

Hi,
I’d like moving from ‘yaml way’ to ‘UI way’ .
More preciasly i’d like moving all my automations i’ve made via yaml files to UI automations .
How can i do it ? (i hoppe i’ll not have to re-create each one , one by one)

thanks for your help
sorry for my poor english writting

2

I can see mine in both UI and YAML and that is if you add an ID to each automation, it will become visible in the UI. Example :

- id: Bobby charging
  alias: bobby charging
  trigger:
    - platform: state
      entity_id: vacuum.xiaomi_vacuum_cleaner
      to: 'docked'
  action:
    - service: notify.mobile_app_rene_s_iphone_11
      data:
        title: 'Bobby'
        message: in base and charging.

in the UI it looks like this and allows you to edit from the frontend:

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If you do not give it an ID, you will see it cannot:

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Hope this helps!

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5

thanks for your answer ;
i’ve already alias for each of them, but it doen’t allow me to edit my automations from UI ;

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6

I think @Piggyback meant the “id” rather than “alias” (was that a typo ?)
Your automation looks OK (except, shouldn’t time pattern be ‘/0’ - not sure without looking it up)
Where do you store your automations? Did you read @finity 's post about different storage locations and the weird behaviour it sometimes causes ?
I didn’t read it in detail as I don’t use the AE (I know I should as most newbies will be using it, so to help them … ) but finity is here most days and may elucidate for you.

I thought that ‘new uptake’ = ‘GUI’ , ‘more experienced’ - > ‘hand drawn’ as the options are more flexible. You are the first I’ve seen transitioning the other way.

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7

thanks! yes. typo and corrected it now.

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8

Just make one automation with the UI editor, copy all your other automations in the same file (with text editor) in same format, mind the unique id being unique and finally delete all other automation related yaml files that are not necessary anymore.

When done, use the reload automations service to refresh the ui. Should be now visible in the ui and editable.

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9

after reading “https://www.home-assistant.io/blog/2020/04/14/the-future-of-yaml/” i understood (?) that it could be a good idea to move to the “UI way” of doing things in HA.
but perhaps due to my poor english speaking i didn’t understand well …

10

Why ?

The ui creates yaml, HA then reads the yaml, so the resultant yaml will always be read, no matter if it was hand crafted or from the UI.

The only difference would be perhaps being able to edit it later in the ui. But why would you need to, if it already works ? But if you need to modify the automation, you already have the means to do that.

The choice is yours though, do whatever you want to, I’d wait till finity can tell you what you need to do to get the best of both worlds

:+1:

Edit: or just do as @taikapanu suggests, it will take a while though

1 Like
11

first thank you.

I did almost what you said (i made 1 automation from UI …) so i got an automations.yaml file , but before going further , i move this file to config/automation where all my other automation files are , as in my configuratio.yaml file :
automation: !include_dir_merge_list automation/
but i can’t edit the automation form UI.

so i’ll have to do all what you said : put all my automations in the config/automations.yaml file .

i do that , following the reading of “https://www.home-assistant.io/blog/2020/04/14/the-future-of-yaml/”

12

The question really is if you want to be able to edit automations from the ui. If you are comfortable of using the method you had and like to have automations distributed over different yaml files I would stick to that.

If you move to UI method you basically gain two things. Automations can be edited from the UI and the automation reload service is done automatically after editing.

For now I don’t see other benefits. Noteworthy is also that in ui method all your automations are in the same yaml file. There are no grouping or gategorizing from the ui. (But naming them in same manner).

I have no idea what are future development plans for the ui.

Your linked post does not really affect automations but rather components that are defined in configuration.yaml versus integrations page in ui.

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13

I didn’t know that !

It seems that HA is catching up with Taras’s proposal of about 10 months ago.

But it follows that it would not support packages (yet !)

14

I got nothing to add to @taikapanu’s replies above except to make another note that, in addition to the editor creating a “monolithic” automations.yaml file, it also conveniently (sarcasm) strips all of the comments from that file, as well.

If you don’t absolutely have to switch things to the UI editor then I wouldn’t switch.

There is almost nothing to be gained and a lot of conveniences to be lost.

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