No aliases for things exposed to Alexa but could we have an alternative name?

Feature Requests
1

I’m envious of Google Home users in one area: things exposed to Google Home can be given aliases.

Whilst the inability to use aliases with Alexa is a shortcoming of Alexa and not HA, I wonder if a compromise could be achieved?

The way I name things in HA is usually intended to help with organising things in HA. For example, all my things have names that start with an area and then continue with a device and then perhaps some sub-device. An example would be ‘Lounge Table Light Left’.

I would like to be able to specify the name that gets exposed to Alexa. Is this thoretically possible? An example is this: I have a number of scripts that cause my TV to tune to different program channels. These scripts are called:

  • Lounge TV BBC1
  • Lounge TV BBC News
  • Lounge TV Sky News
  • etc.

The nameing causes all the scripts to appear together in the list of scripts within HA.

However, I don’t want to have to say, ‘Alexa, turn on Lounge TV BBC 1,’ I just want to say, ‘Alexa, turn on BBC 1’.

It would be great if I could pass the ‘Lounge TV BBC1’ script to Alexa as just ‘BBC1’.

2

you can configure the “cloud:” integration to customize the name exposed to Alexa. I use it quite a bit.

But then again I configure my cloud integration via yaml so I’m not sure if that’s available to users who use the UI.

here is an example of my config:

cloud:
  alexa:
    filter:
      exclude_domains:
        - group
        - camera
        - automation
        - sensor
        - binary_sensor
        - alert
       
    entity_config:
      input_boolean.lc_front_porch_light_automation_master:
        name: Porch Light Automations
      input_boolean.tank_cleaning:
        name: Tank Cleaning Mode
      input_boolean.north_gd_announce_enabled:
        name: Garage Door Announcements
      light.mbr_lamp:
        name: Master Bedroom Lamp
      light.wled_fireplace:
        name: Fireplace Lights
      light.wled_kitchen_appliance_cabinet:
        name: Appliance Light
1 Like
3

Thanks @finity , I’ll take a look.

4

Sorry @finity , do you know where in the documentation I can find an explanation of the configuration you have given an example of?

5
1 Like
6

Just to mention - for anyone else interested in this - you can change the name of a thing in the Alexa app.

I found this solution more acceptable as I wasn’t keen on moving away from the nice new UI (for managing entities exposed to voice assistants) to a yaml approach.

7

I was coming here to say the same thing!

I have a lamp in Home Assistant called “Living Room Corner Lamp” for naming convention consistency but in Alexa, it is “Corner Lamp” for simplicity.

1 Like