Switch as Light helpers permanent?

Configuration
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1

Is there a way to make these permanent?
I have situation where I test multiple firmwares for a Zigbee coordinator and many times the z2m has to be restored from backup. This leads to loss of al Light helpers and I have to recreate them in the GUI.
Is there anything to make them stay even when underlying switch get removed in MQTT?

2

As an alternative, this still works (from my own config). It’s now unsupported though.

light:
  - platform: switch
    name: living_room_lamp
    entity_id: switch.living_room_lamp

The more longwinded way would be to make a template light.

More details here: Switch as Light - from yaml (Change device type - switch_as_x).

3

Vote for this feature: Request to add yaml option to manually configure helper "Change device type of a switch"

4

The FR section is about to be closed down, so these should now be logged on GitHub. I didn’t search: Someone might’ve logged this one already (there will be no migration of FRs from the forum).

5

I will add alternative solution that does exactly what I wanted for my use-case. In case you use Zigbee2MQTT, there is a piece of configuration that solves this without HA helpers via MQTT-HA discovery protocol:
Put this in the devices section of you configuration.yaml:

'0x54....':
  friendly_name: kitchen_switch_front_1
  homeassistant:
    device:
      suggested_area: Kitchen
    switch:
      type: light
      object_id: light
    light:
      name: Countertop LED
      icon: mdi:led-strip-variant
      state_value_template: '{{ value_json.state }}'

Source: Home Assistant | Zigbee2MQTT