Working in theatre, all lighting control consoles have a Live and a Blind feature. In Live, change are reflected in real time. In Blind, changes are made to the scenes without affecting what is happening on stage. Would it be an easier build to start with a “Blind” feature for editing only? So once you’ve created the scene live, the data exists so it could be easier to just build an “edit” flow that occurs when clicking an existing Scene that happens in Blind. Could be a first step toward changing how the entire Scene Creation system works.
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I would also like to put down a vote for this. I like the suggestion @jsp196 made. Maybe start all edits in “Blind” mode and have a selector for with a button to show “Live” preview.
Edit: One problem that I run into in particular is that when I edit a scene and something in that scene is unavailable, the entry for that item gets overwritten with the state being marked “unavailable”. Since I can see this being such a big head ache I decided to write a script that monitors the scenes.yaml file for changes and attempts to recover entities marked as “unavailable” from a backup. It’s not a perfect solution but it might be worth a try if you’re worried about that issue like I am. Here’s a link in case anyone’s interested: https://github.com/cchaz003/HASS_SceneFixer
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Adding to the chorus here, this is unintuitive and I’m guessing takes most end users by surprise.
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More fuel to the fire.
I created my first scene a few days ago to try and migrate away from Amazon scenes.
I was surprised when I was able to add a list of things, but then seemingly not change their states., I spent half a day trying to understand why nobody explained how to create a scene and couple an automation to change the states.
I went back into the scene editor this morning and, lo and behold, every light in my house turned off. Nobody explained how to couple a scene with an automation because well, the scene is the control and it is edited with live states.
No other smarthome product handles scenes similarly because it leaves users surprised, in the dark, and with upset cohabitators.
E.g. touchless faucet controls as offered by Honeywell and some other companies. I cannot imagine leaving a faucet running the entire time just to edit a scene. It’s wasteful.
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I don’t have much new to add except to say that yes, this is very surprising when you first encounter it and really, really annoying even once you understand what’s happening. In my case I was setting up my first two scenes, one for lowering all the shades in the evening and another for raising them in the morning. Suffice it to say that before I realized what was happening, I accidentally fired one of these while the other one was already running. Chaos ensued. Fortunately, no damage done, but many of the cases described elsewhere in this thread are cases in which the consequences are a bit more serious. It doesn’t seems like this should be a very difficult fix.
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I’m fairly new to HA and I generally like it! Also the scene editor is very nice because it makes scene editing more convenient than YAML, imo. However, after being an issue/request for more than 3 years, with 255 votes as of now, I want to stress the need for this feature. The use cases are evident, numerous examples can be found in this thread.
I know, what frenck stated back in 2019 in the related GitHub issue:
I can assure you, it is not a simple effort. The states are snapshotted from the running state engine. This feature you are asking for is a tremendous amount of work.
This is more than 3 years ago, so maybe it became easier to implement a solution? Is there any more detailed dev discussion about this matter (except for this dev thread)?
At the very least, the UI should display a warning that editing a scene will trigger it.
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Yeah this is very annoying… editing a morning scene in the evening is a pain now… all covers opening up. A setting to put it in live view or not will be the solution. Default should be off.
It’s also weird because the automation won’t fire right away when you edit it. Or a script or whatever.
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I was about to submit this same request. We have scenes to set (and reset) the lights and white noise machine for our kid’s naps and bedtime, so I have to be careful not to edit the “wake up” scene while he’s sleeping.
I will add my vote to implement a Preview/Test toggle in the UI to give us the option of seeing changes we make in real time or not.
Two other convenience factors if possible would be a toggle to “Grab current state” and if that toggle is off, a secondary toggle “Default on” becomes active. If the “Grab” toggle is on, then as we add entities to the scene, they are added in their current state (the current behavior). If the “Grab” toggle is off, entities will be added in a state dictated by the secondary toggle: either on or off. If the Preview toggle were off, the entities wouldn’t actually get turned on or off as added, just appear that way in the UI.
If I’m adding a lot of entities to a scene that I want in a different state than current, this set up would be a nice time saver. Thanks.
I just voted for this as well for the same reason. Tonight it was the skylights popping open when the temp outside was just below freezing. Spousal Approval Factor hit the same level as the temperature. I have also had the experience others have had when the lights go out unexpectedly. This is not only an inconvenience, but can be a safety hazard.
Thank you.
Agreed. I also vote for this to be fixed. I have 70+ lights and modifying the ‘Lights Off’ scene is crazy.
I edit a scene that includes blinds to edit a light or anything else and my blinds start opening and closing, some are battery powered too! It’s crazy lol!
Would love to see this implemented
Someone must have some serious (as in, seek-therapy levels of) fixation on how this editor should operate.
I mean, if I were the author and saw this much pushback against my chosen mode, I’d have to rethink it fast - FAST! But hey, I’m not the author. Who knows what kind of repressed trauma they’re dealing with?
Otherwise, they’d have long ago changed it, right?!
Yes, this NEEDS to be done, the way it currently works is both annoying and silly
I just signed up to comment in this topic. Please fix this asap! Super annoying!
Hi there!
Totally agree that a “do not trigger the scene when editing” is one of the main next big feature we are all waiting for (since 2019 maybe).
I have no dev competencies to help with this BUT, if you really need to edit a scene without triggering it, you can do it directly in the scenes.yaml file (just a reminder).
Yaml is not so complicated to understand and copy-paste-modify is a good way to begin.
This is the only way I found to keep my home automation alive in the family… because my sons or my wife will not deal no more with a “good night” or “turn off everything” during a remote meeting or a online gaming or worse, during a Paw Patrol Episode !
+1 we need this!
But I also understand this requires (a lot of) fundamental changes to Home Assistant.
It make it hard to maintain my Smart Home in the middle of the night, when the rest of the family is sleeping.
Hello
I am also in favor of disabling this.
I wanted to create my “good night” scene and suddenly my computer had no more power 
I’d like to add my +1 for this as well. Been using HASS for 8+ months now and I have to wait until no ones home to edit things like “good night” and have all of the lights turn off… It’s not the worst thing in the world but it would be very useful.
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