Improve time picker for input_datetime

There are a couple of semi-related things which could probably still use some cleanup in the input_datetime which appeared this Fall… The first is that it’s a little awkward to fire a service call for both a change in the hour and the minute when setting a time. This potentially fires automations at unexpected times because an automation could match a time after you have changed the hour but before changing the minute. I think this could be cleaned up by having a single field for the time and then parsing it for hours/minutes/seconds instead of a separate hours and minutes field. This would also have the benefit of allowing the even more interesting improvement below.

The second thing is that although there is a calendar date picker there is not really a usable time picker, especially on mobile devices. Instead of time entry by text field it would be nice to have a clock face picker like https://weareoutman.github.io/clockpicker/ This would be especially useful for mobile devices but is also pretty convenient on PCs.

Agreed. Having a input_datetime is a great addition, but setting it is a pain in the rear! Especially on a mobile device.

I was looking for any suggestions for inputting time, had come across that clockpicker and was going to suggest it then realized that it had already been done. Do we just need a custom lovelace to use that clockpicker?

Any update on this, annoying how you have to put a time now,
I don’t know whi the datetime input, don’t use html5 input type time, on a mobile device (atleast on android i have( it whouod have worked great.

See this simple html tags

Date
https://www.w3schools.com/html/tryit.asp?filename=tryhtml_input_date

Time
https://www.w3schools.com/html/tryit.asp?filename=tryhtml_input_time

1 Like

Agree with the topic start. At this moment I am even using sliders (input_number) in the UI because they look better. 23.75 = 23:45, etc. But this workaround is not nice if you need a time range that crosses midnight. The slider will be min: 0 max: 23.75 step: 0.25 then, which has too many steps to work well on mobile devices’ UI.

+1

2023 and there still is no good time and date picker component yet :frowning: