Mobile app update breaking changes?

[vaderag]

It is possible, bute that I’ve ever given it any concern before…
I’m still not really sure why the old way of handling the notification couldn’t remain viable for a period… When we launch breaking changes (which is very rare) at work this is a necessity (for a long period as well, but that’s enterprise software for you), and we give much warning, and many details on the fixes

@MRobi

This is the EXACT kind of response that gives HA a bad name when its talked about on any other home automation forum. HA is putting a focus on simplifying things, moving this to the UI, etc… to help attract new users. But when these users have questions, the answer from a dev is “Check the GitHub PR”?? Like, come on! Not everybody is going to even know what Github is, what PR stands for, or what the hell they’re looking at in the thousands of lines of code that may be in a PR. This is the exact opposite of what HA is trying to accomplish.

Ultimately, whatever the reason or intention this has been handled badly. As pointed out above, it’s a terrible experience for a new and existing user and counter to what HA is trying to do. I came over from a commercial system because I wanted to build stability… That’s already been scuppered and I’m less than a month into my HA journey
Thankfully for the most part I’m a competent coder, am beginning to understand YAML (despite accusations to the contrary above) and am genuinely spending time learning - I’ll get it fixed when I’m back from my holiday, but it’s a week without things I wanted to know while away

But the biggest problem for me is that knowing how things work and being confident in how I set things up now only seems to be half the battle … all of this only helps if we’re WARNED of breaking changes and ADVISED clearly of what they are and HOW to fix them . Otherwise things break through no fault of my own

[Hellis81]

@finity

I wonder if it’s possible to turn off auto-updates on a per app basis?

Yes that is possible. At least on my phone and all androids I have owned. Perhaps it has changed but I don’t believe so.

[Hellis81]

@vaderag

I’m still not really sure why the old way of handling the notification couldn’t remain viable for a period…

It has remained for a long period in my opinion.

I like this change, I really do. The old way was very confusing when you make complex notifications.
(using command or intents)
Why was title, message and tag part of the intent notifications.
Which makes more sense “channel” or “intent_package_name” when you are trying to send an intent?

Back when notifications started it was just notifications. Then came the command notifications, and I can’t blame the developers because I know I have done the same, and probably many of you too, you use what you already have and try to adapt the code.
And then when you add more and more features and all of the sudden you realize that you have crammed too much in to what was not really meant for it in the beginning and you get a breaking change because you need to rename and reorganize.

[finity]

It wasn’t the breaking change that was the issue. I get why the change was made.

It was the lack of prior communication that the breaking change was coming on an app that the typical user auto-updates.

And I believe what @vaderag was saying is that it may have been possible (and seems as it was from the posts above) to maintain both ways of configuration for a while before removing the older way. This is done for pretty much every other aspect of HA and why it wasn’t done here is a mystery.

@Hellis81

Yes that is possible.

Thanks I’ll have to look into how to do that.

[Hellis81]

@finity

And I believe what @vaderag was saying is that it may have been possible (and seems as it was from the posts above) to maintain both ways of configuration for a while before removing the older way. This is done for pretty much every other aspect of HA and why it wasn’t done here is a mystery

There are a lot of changes that happen over night in HA.
But the communication is better for those changes, agree on that.

I don’t see where it was mentioned to keep both formats. I see this though:

@dshokouhi

Due to the nature of htis change it was not feasible to support both formats so it was decided to make it a one time breaking change to keep the parameter names in line with everything else

[finity]

@dshokouhi

Due to the nature of htis change it was not feasible to support both formats

Oops.

I was obviously wrong about that.

[finity]

Another breaking change I literally just found is that the way that bluetooth devices are reported has changed.

They used to say just the MAC address. Now they report the MAC address along with the connection name in parenthesis.

I couldn’t figure out why my garage door automations weren’t working and it was because this condition check was failing.

[Koal4]

I can understand some of the frustrations. I had the same!
Friday I had the idea to make some TTS notifications for some of my reminders/system. I spent a lot of time fiddling around with it in Node Red. I’m no experienced user and especially not a coder but am willing to learn it if that improves my personal skills.

But only to find out the next day everything is broken again while it worked was a bit of annoyance. And the funny thing is I wasn’t aware that the companion app received an update. By coincidence when I opened it I saw it.

Maybe it’s an idea, especially with breaking changes, to also receive a notification in Home Assistant itself?

I thought I would be done quickly by changing the parameters (see above) with the new parameters name but also that didn’t worked. Apparently the order was also incorrect. But it didn’t caught my attention because it used to work (but maybe that is just my lack of coding skills).

[Hellis81]

You could do something like this:

alias: Notify new app version
description: ""
mode: single
trigger:
  - platform: state
    entity_id:
      - sensor.andreas_current_version
condition: []
action:
  - service: notify.notify
    data:
      message: New mobile app version is installed on phone
      title: New Home Assistant app version

[finity]

@Koal4

Maybe it’s an idea, especially with breaking changes, to also receive a notification in Home Assistant itself?

That’s a really good idea.

@Hellis81

You could do something like this

I didn’t even realize that sensor existed.

Thanks for the solution.

[Beer17HWAM]

I can’t find a working automation example script. Who can put a working HA automation script in this post to only send a TTS text notification to an android phone?

[Beer17HWAM]

In my eyes it’s ridiculous to change this TTS behavior just with an Home assistant app update. It’s quite normal to updates phone apps. Now all my TTS Command won’t work. My complete alarm system is working with command from out of node-red. I’m on vacation and I can’t even repair it now. Downgrading my app is also not an option because I tuned a lot of notification channels on the phone which a gone after downgrading. I think is really a bad action, just change TTS thing and not keeping it downwards compatible. I am mad about this.

[Beer17HWAM]

I cannot find a Home assistant automation TTS script. Just to send a TTS to a smartphone. Please put a yaml example for HA in this post.

[calisro (Rob)]

I think this portion of the docs is what you need?

automation:
  - alias: "Notify of Motion TTS alarm"
    trigger:
      ...
    action:
      - service: notify.mobile_app_<your_device_id_here>
        data:
          message: TTS
          data:
            tts_text: "Motion has been detected"
            media_stream: "alarm_stream"

[Hellis81]

Come on…
Just open the docs and search.

Home Assistant Companion Docs

[Beer17HWAM]

Thank you. I got it working from HA now. Now I need to change all my node-red flows.

[Koal4]

That’s nice.
But they should make it default and show a changelog. Afterall their motto is to simplify things for new/not advanced users, right?

Anyway for now I will use this.

[Hellis81]

@Koal4

But they should make it default and show a changelog

"command_high_accuracy_mode" notification not working correctly in 2022.8.0-full

This is the screen you see after updating the app on the phone and starting the app. [Screenshot_20220828-205245]

[Koal4]

???

I meant in Home Assistant. My suggestion was give a notification when there is companion update in Home Assistant as well along with the changelog (i know it shows in the companion app). But would like to see it in home assistant as well. Reading from the desktop (where I mainly use home assistant) is much better then a cropped version from the phone

[HasQT (Has)]

I saw the changelog title, just as I hit the screen and vanquished the changelog…
I wasn’t really concentrating at the time and didn’t realise it was a changelog for the app.

So I would be supportive of a general notification to home assistant to say the app has updated.