Improve Scene editor, allow scene edits without setting devices' states

Wish I could vote on this 100 times

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Yep, still needed

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New HA user here. I was sure that I was doing something wrong that all my devices were going crazy when I was editing a scene I created.
It makes sense if itā€™s just lights, but as soon as you start adding a vaccum cleaner, garage door or a sprinkler, this just doesnā€™t make sense. Hopefully it will be changed in the future.

Thanks!

really really need this feature, just been talking to others on the FB forum: lots of us can only tinker with our setups for an hour a day, without upsetting the family changing things that are in use!!

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Swap to YAML scenes, you can edit to your hearts content all day long.

Yes, I understand that itā€™s not in the UI, but you can edit scenes without enabling the scene that way.

No, I am not suggesting this as the solution for the thread, Iā€™m just suggesting this as a current path forward until the scene editor is updated.

No, I do not know if any work is being done on the scene editor.

The fact that HA has been around for a decade and this thread started 5 years ago yet there is still no way to edit a scene in the UI without triggering it is completely ridiculous. Pretty much a day 1 thing in every other home hub and makes HA not a viable option as a primary hub, at least for me.

Editing in StudioCode or File editor, it does not even auto-fill / auto suggest entity.

for e.g when type light.f (it should show list of light entities containing ā€˜fā€™)
it is very tiring to go copy the entity name and paste here everytime for each.

- id: "1719751703002"
  name: Family Room Scene
  entities:
    light.family_ceiling_lights:
      brightness_pct: 50
      color_temp_kelvin: 3010
      state: "on"

Scene editor should not be playing with ā€œliveā€ device settings by default. Scene editor should only interact with devices if something like ā€œpreview modeā€ is enabled.

Use case: Sometimes I just want to make a minor tweaks to the HVAC settings and the bouncing values at the thermostat tends to trigger a 10 minute protective shutdown of HVAC systems.

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Please, please fix this. For all the reasons that others have mentioned.

Scenes in HA really need a complete rehauling.

scene.create has a typical problem of losing it once restarted. It is not persistant.
There is no other way that the script can update the saved scene.

What I am trying to achieve?
On ā€˜Scene1ā€™ button press, save/update the selected entitiesā€™ states so it can be recalled next time.

Updating scenes via ā€˜Automation& Scenesā€™ is very difficult for non-technical users.
Also, non-admin users will have issues seeing all the scenes and being able to change everything.

Easy method to update the scene is: User has its mushroom-based user-friendly dashboard, he/she changes lights/fan/climate as wanted and then long presses the scene button on same dashboard which calls the script and update/save the scene.

HA really needs to redesign its core scene methodology.

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Agreedā€¦ When Iā€™ve had to go rename an entity, I just want to go clean up the scene to match the rename of the entity.
When I open the scene to edit, all the lights in the house go on.

For example, Iā€™m editing indoor Christmas light scene that involves recessed hue lights. (Itā€™s currently August). When I edit the indoor Christmas scene, The red and green colors that were previously in the scene are immediately replaced with the most recently used color of the entire recessed lights in the house. Mostly white but some blue. Itā€™s confusing and now looks like my Christmas scene is completely gone.

This would be such a game changer. It could be as simple as when you are editing a scene and you make changes, they are not applied unless you press the apply button. Alternatively there can be an auto apply toggle that can be disabled for scene editor.

Being able to make a simple change to an all off scene without turning off every light in the house would be ideal.

Scenes will become 100x more useful when this functionality is enabled.

Thanks!

This is mind blowing how long the devs have left this as is. Hubitat and Smartthings both allow you to edit a scene without turning everything on. How has this not been fixed / rewritten by now?

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Not everyone is a YAML wizard that can write up a new scene of a new device type by memory. It would take me 10x longer to write a scene for my HVAC controller in YAML than it is to go through the UI.

Iā€™m not arguing against the FR, Iā€™m telling you how to get what you want right now. The UI doesnā€™t have the functionality that you want and it doesnā€™t look like anyone is willing to pick up the changes. So your options are:

  1. Adapt to the current functionality.
  2. Use YAML.
  3. Wait an undetermined time for the UI to be updated.

Personally, I pick 2 because itā€™s really not as hard as youā€™re making it out to be. You can even make them in the UI, then modify them in yaml after the fact.

YAML is a good option because even if yo donā€™t know how to write it, ChatGPT will literally do it for you. But this is something that should still get fixed in the UI. No other smart hub turns on lights while editing scenes and I donā€™t understand who would have thought turning on the lights to edit a scene was a good idea in the first place lol.

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IMHO YAML is an option, but not a good one. Home Assistant is trying to appeal to a broader audience that is familiar with the concept of ā€œscenesā€ and what they should do coming from HomeKit etc. Scripts I can see as an alternative, but users will be confused + they wonā€™t be used by things like ā€œstateful scenesā€ (another big and important feature imho, essential for me coming from HomeKit).

I had a look at the YAML for three lights and the sheer number of lines present there was already too much to be a good alternative (saying that as a developer). Please please change that behavior! :slight_smile:

You donā€™t need to add all the options for yaml. Just the settings you need. I have multiple scenes that are just brightness and color, nothing else. Thatā€™s just 2 options.

Please re-think the current behaviour, itā€™s very annoying. I would use scripts instead but as far as I can see, they are not exposed to Google Home.

Yeah, well what everyone else said. Curious to see how much votes are needed to someone pick this up and change that annoying behaviour.

grafik

Plus others like WTH is there no way to create or edit scenes without realtime state changes?

grafik

So roughly 1.000 users explicitly said ā€œthe current behaviour is not optimalā€.

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