I’m creating this post to raise awareness for newcomers because it seems that many people have issues finding entities on their system.
If you are not finding an entity in the entity list in your devices or integration, chances are you can find it in the developer tools → states page. In fact, most YAML configured entities will show up here, but will not show up in an integration page.
Why not “fix” that to give a better experience to new comers? I.e. ensure you don’t need to go to something called “Developer Tools” in order to see all the entities in your system. This suggestion is purely about increasing appeal and reducing usability friction. Otherwise checking in Dev Tools is admittedly pretty simple.
You can see all entities in every entity list. 9 times out of 10 a new user doesn’t understand the difference between an entity and a device and they are just looking at devices.
This is something that won’t change until all yaml integrations are moved into the UI.
I always thought that was what the devices and entities tabs were for after going to devices & services. That or searching for entities using the shortcut keys.
e = bring up a search bar to search for any entity
c = quick navigation, I use this a lot as there can be a lot of mouse clicks to get to one place or another
Regardless, both have helped me save a little time, hopefully it will be useful to some new users reading this as I thought it was magic when I accidentally hit the e key one day. As far as I know this only works in a browser and not the mobile app but please let me know if I am mistaken.
The e shortcut opens up the same screen as the at the top-right of a dashboard. Thus, on mobile, use the top-right ... button > Search
However, shortcut caveat: if your last click was on the sidebar, pressing e will focus on the Energy dashboard button, if you have that enabled
HA needs some help and improvements on the shortcut topic haha
Well I was wrong about mobile shortcuts, at least for Android. For Android (I don’t think this works with iOS, Google it, there may be a different way). When you have the HA companion app open swipe down with 3 fingers and it brings up the quick navigation shortcut. If you do 2 backspaces, it turns into the entity searchbar. Not the most convenient shortcut but it works great if you need to jump from one area to the next without 5 plus clicks.
Thank you. Is there anyway to export the entire entity list. Or some way to get to just the entity list so that I can copy paste it? I want to feed the information into GPTs new memory feature so I can create automations on prompt without having to provide the entity names.
Quick question, why are themes and add ons considered a device? At least they show up in setting > drives and integrations> then clicking on the devices tab. I understand that possibly everything that is installed has to exist in HA has to be an entity or device. Just seems odd that you have custom themes installed in HACs listed as devices. On the other hand there are always more entities than devices so putting them there adds to that. Just curious.
Also, about the android shortcut. Simply press the “>” with no quotes to switch to the non entity filter. Not sure how I missed that when originally posting above.
I meant when clicking the devices tab (at the bottom of the android app) .It’s at the top in a desktop browser, along with entities and helpers. It clearly has add-ons, custom cards and custom themes from HAC’s listed when no filter is applied in the Devices tab. Not the main integration page you go to after clicking on devices and services (I guess technically actions now) from the main settings menu.
Ah, yes. So what’s going on there is that Hacks creates a device per extension and that device is used to host the update entity that lets you update that extension.
I am referring more to, when you start building automations in the gui and go back later to review you often see things like this:
device_id: 75887b41474e0a17ef4c7a528d3c6b11
entity_id: fdf1f4f6c68df0f6cbad0e32aed127b3
Going to “Developer Tools → States or Settings → Devices & Services → Entities” and looking at the device, there is no device or entity id that matches this. All I see is the entity id for the name I set, not the alphanumerical identification ids.
To make it easier, first would be to understand what these *_ids: really mean. I would love to be able to search for the ID (using e in the developer tools section) and paste in either and the system tell me which device it is.
There is absolutely no way we could have interpreted that meaning from your post.
Those ids are there to enable easier replacing of devices, but yes I avoid them as they are meaningless to me. I use entity ids and if I need to replace a device I do this: Adding new devices and replacing devices
icon.
at the top-right of a dashboard. Thus, on mobile, use the top-right 
