Inline Edit for entities (and other things)

Configuration
1

Is there an add-on (or method) to edit entities and devices inline in a table? at least some of the fields such as the name and area?

For cases where there are a lot of objects to rename, but they are not being renamed with a common pattern, so the CLI option isn’t probably as useful, it would be nice to just be able to edit some of the data right on the screen listing them.

2

Hi, and welcome!
First, are you new to HA or do you know it well? This will help to know what level of advice to give. As you’ve recently joined the Forum, I’m assuming new to HA but apollogies if I’m wrong.

3

Yup, new to HA, so I apologize if this is obvious somewhere. (I did try searching first, but perhaps I simply used the wrong keywords)

4

Quite likely because your original question is one that I’ve never seen. Take two steps back and describe just what is your goal.

5

Ok, so, I have added my power monitoring system (Brultech GEM) and network management (Unifi) to HA, and now have several hundred new entities in the system. But many of those have names that are not very useful. (Such as “GEM 1110733 channel 1 energy” or just showing a MAC address.). I know I can go into each one and edit the friendly name, but it would be nice to be able to just go down the table and edit the names in the cell like it was a spreadsheet. (Hopefully other attributes as well?).

I looked around and found suggestions for using the CLI to make mass changes, but in this case, there isn’t a pattern for the renamed entities to simply do a scripted rename.

Does that make more sense?

6

That feature doesn’t exist.

Two places where entities are listed but neither offers “in place” editing of their friendly_name.

  1. Settings → Devices & Services → Entities
  2. Developer tools → States

Full Disclosure

There are JSON files in a hidden .storage directory containing a lot of configuration data. One of the files contains the details of all entities (assuming they have a unique_id) including their friendly_name. The files are hidden because they’re not meant to be manually edited (especially not while Home Assistant is running and not without making a copy of the file). One tiny mistake in the JSON syntax, or configuration logic, and Home Assistant will be corrupted and fail to start.

1 Like
7

More. But do you mean to muck about in the database itself?
I wouldn’t- for two reasons.

  1. Make a simple error and your whole system is fracked.
  2. The database is dynamic and all of your surgery to it may be wiped out with an update, purge or restart.

That’s why the friendly name exists.

8

Thanks, and no, im not planning on mucking about in either the db or the hidden yaml/json files, but was hoping someone had done an add-on that allowed something like this.