Should I rename my entities given the changes in 2025.11

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In the 2025.11 release, a new feature has been added to the tile card that I feel hints at an unpublished convention on how we should be naming entities in our HA instances. From this I could conclude that, to get on the same page as the HA dev team, I need to rename my entities. What do others think?

Let me explain:

The tile card now allows us to build the name appearing on a dashboard by combining the Entity, Device, Area and Floor attributes/names of an entity.

This could be good because, it might add dynamic functionality to a dashboard. That is, if I move a device from one area to another, say, then the dashboard can automatically update to display the new area for that device.

My concern is that this functionality kinda presupposes the way that we name entities. It may even be hinting that there is a ‘correct’ way to name entities.

I started my HA journey a few years ago - long before Floors, Labels and Categories were a thing. At that time, the only way to sort my list of entities was alphabetically. Because of this I named my entities like this:

Room Device Index

So for example, I have:

Bedroom 2 Table Light
Lounge Wall Light 4
Kitchen Ceiling Light 1
Bathroom Extractor Fan

By doing this, the alphabitically sorted list kept devices in the same area together.

In addition, entities have two names: a friendly name and a underlying entity name. The underlying entity name needs to be unique, so adding the room name as a prefix was useful. I would then make the friendly name the same, but without underscores and with capital letters.

The fearure in the tile card suggests that my entities (from above) should now have the friendly names:

Table Light
Wall Light 4
Ceiling Light 1
Extractor Fan

Presumably, no suggestion is being made about the underlying entity names so:

bedroom_2_table_light
lounge_wall_light_4
kitchen_ceiling_light_1
bathroom_extractor_fan

are still okay.

Of course, if I do use a tile card then I don’t have to insert my entity name - I can just put in whatever free text I like. But I wonder if I’m not moving in the same direction as what the devs are thinking?

I have thousands of entities so, I’m not even sure how I would begin to rename them.

Is there anything in the docs that suggests how the devs believe that entities should be named?

Am I over thinking this? Should I not worry? Or, do I need to get with the program?

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I don’t think they’re “hinting that there is a ‘correct’ way to name entities.”… I think they’re just trying to make it easier to use the available context data. It’s likely that the recent survey showed that most users have been naming things similar to how you have been naming them, because the entity context wasn’t previously available in the frontend.

In addition to the changes to Tile cards, more context has been added to automation Actions this month. And there is work being done to make a more contextual way to create triggers.

Personally, I’m not planning on renaming all my entities anytime soon, but I’ve already stopped adding context to names for new entities whenever possible.

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