Sharing a Debug Trace

The debug trace is one of the most useful sources of information you can provide when asking for help with automations or scripts that aren’t working the way you expect. It provides a complete copy of the automation’s configuration as well as details about what happened during a run of the automation.

An automation’s traces can be accessed through the Automation Editor by clicking the “Traces” button at the top right:

The Traces menu allows you to navigate through previous runs of the automation and provides both graphical and textual data about everything that occurred during each run. However, much of the information is spread across an array of tabs and sharing all of it through screenshots is tedious for both parties.

Instead, you can download the .json file of the trace by clicking the 3-dot expansion menu at the top right, and selecting “Download trace”.

Once you have downloaded the file you can open it in a text editor then copy/paste it into your post (making sure to format it properly) or you can upload the file to a share site like https://dpaste.org/.

Before posting make sure you have obfuscated any personal information that you don’t want shared with the entire internet.


Related Documentation:

Home Assistant Doc - Automations - Traces

This topic is part of the community-driven cookbook where you can find other topics you might be interested in or might like to contribute to.

Related Cookbook articles:

Format your code in forum posts

Question Guideline #13: Share the logs

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