More granularity on which sensors to show in HA vs. ESPHome Web vs. not at all

ESPHome
1

I often am in the situation where I have:

Sensors in the following categories:

  • Create entities in HA and show in ESP Web (e.g., key data)
  • Show ESP Web but don’t create entities (e.g., diagnostic or intermediate data)
  • Create entities but don’t show in Web (e.g., if there is another more detailed diagnostic entity in Web, I don’t need to show it again)

The tools one has are:

  • Set disabled_by_default: true (doesn’t create a recording entity in HA but still creates an entity)
  • Set internal: true (then shows neither in HA nor Web)
  • Don’t add a name (then show neither in HA or Web) – effectively the same as internal: true

It seems like we are missing one very basic option – something like ‘display_web’ that could be set to true or false and would override internal: true

Am I missing something?

2

I’ve always felt like the web UI piece is a bit of an afterthought. I have 50+ ESPHome devices I’ve built and have exactly two I’ve ever used it with, and remember there being limited options when I set them up years ago.

I think it’s just a matter of not that many people really using it (myself mostly included). I doubt there’s any reason other than no one has wanted your option bad enough to make it.

3

Not really. The best you can do currently is set include_internal: true on the web server, then use sorting groups to shuffle the entities you rarely look at to the end.

4

That’s too bad - I find the web interface very useful for monitoring individual esphome devices independent of HA. To me it’s very useful

5

I was very surprised to find out you cannot enable a disabled_by_default: true entity in the web server. And it won’t show the disabled_by_default: true entities that have been enabled in Home Assistant.

For instance, a mmWave presence sensor can expose well over 100 entities. Many of them disabled by default because somewhat advanced. But if you enable Zone 4 occupancy, you be able to monitor Zone 4 occupancy from the webserver. The fact there is no way of doing this properly is bonkers.

EDIT: I posted a FR