So after all this back and forth, I agree with @petro. The way the system works now is by design and not an “issue” normally.
However, as stated above, any change to this normal behavior should be considered a feature request or an enhancement. This is why I submitted such a feature request. There are more than one way to skin a cat. Sure this feature request would create another way to skin said cat, but in my eyes it’s a little more prominent or user friendly. If anyone feels the same way, feel free to vote for my feature request. If you don’t feel like there needs to be a change, then feel free to carry on and you do you. That’s what’s awesome about a voting system. It doesn’t force anyone to do anything, it just highlights or emphasizes a suggestion which can be followed or ignored. It’s a request, not a demand.
As a least worst workaround I have now done the following:
Get the user_id’s from the users in the People → user setting in HA
configuration.yaml:
person:
- name: Michel
id: michel
user_id: 012345678901234567XXX
device_trackers:
- device_tracker.michel_XXXXX
- device_tracker.michel_YYYYY
- name: Linda
id: linda
user_id: 012345678901234567XXX
device_trackers:
- device_tracker.linda_XXXXXX
- device_tracker.linda_YYYYYY
Remove the persons in the UI and reboot.
This no longer “automagically” adds unwanted device trackers to your persons.
The only disadvantage I was able to find is that you can no longer edit persons in the Home Assistant UI.
For now I can live with that.
Transferring ownership doesn’t seem to be an available task in the UI or changing it’s username. However, it can be done offline pretty easily if you are comfortable editing .storage files.
I just did this myself. You can create a new user with admin privilege’s. After you do that, shut down home assistant. Open config\.storage\auth, find the auth line for this new user. Will look like this if you named it admin:
Anyway as Edwin said, perhaps the main issue here is that without knowing the inner machinations of the code, one might see the post-hoc re-addition of devices to a user as unexpected behavior: the very existence of the tracking dialog leads one to expect the user to be in control.
Thanks to those who posted explanations & workarounds.
Not correct. When I install the mobile app on multiple mobile devices, I do expect HA to track the location of each of the devices, but not to use the location of all three devices to try determining my location.
@Edwin_D: I had similar issue, but no longer after coming to this. Even though I didn’t recall allowing specific devices to have their location displayed, it was the case (and seemed to be appear around August 2022).
@petro stated the solution, but it is further up on this feed. You can find that solution here. After completing a restart, the devices remain no longer tracked.
Just in case anyone actually wants to re-enable the tracking of a device. Go to SETTINGS > DEVICES & SERVICES > DEVICES (tab) > type in your device name, click on Diagnostic (as well as Entities not shown) and find the entity that is listed device_tracker.DEVICE_NAME.
Its still hugely irritating that I have to spend time working around unwanted behaviour. The whole point of HA for me is do stuff I can’t remember or have time to do myself. Today I’m in the office, my hot water has been on and my Neato has repeated started. My 2nd phone stays at home by my bed, and I did re-auth last thing yesterday. So todays shenanigans was to be expected and could have been avoided - if I didn’t have so many other things going on in my life.
The ‘define person in yaml’ work around didn’t work for me when I did have time to mess around with it when this post lit up a few months ago.
I am the OP, I hoped there’d be a simple solution I didn’t have the skills to sort myself - but there isn’t.
LOL how is it that you think it would track your location without tracking the device that you are logged into? Is there now an HA implant? Think objectively for just a moment about what you just said.
Further, I think this behavior is exactly as it should be. For the record. Not here to debate or argue it, just providing an alternate point of view.
I took the time to read through this post, mainly because one I started I could not believe that this was such an issue for some people.
This is very simple. While the very small minority clearly does not expect this behavior, I can tell you the large majority would. Especially the new users who want to do as little setup as possible.
For those who don’t want it on their iMac desktop… why are you clicking YES to allow your location to be tracked? For the ones crying because they use the same login between them and their wife… the solution is simple, just create an account for your wife. It’s better that way anyways because you can restrict her from accidentally clicking around by mistake and changing something.
For the rest… whether you expected it or not, you now know what the behavior is. The fix takes literally 5s of your life where you go into your person and click the little x and it is now no longer tracked by your person entity. The time and effort you’ve put in to crying on here for 90+ posts is already significantly more time and effort than a lifetime of just removing the device tracker from your person entity would have taken.
