This entity does not have a unique ID, therefore its settings cannot be managed from the UI

Configuration
21

Probably. :slight_smile:

22

Iā€™m in the same boat but with lights. ā€œYou need to configure the entity id in configuration.yamlā€ is not clear for me neither.

My config:

light:
  - platform: nanoleaf
    host: 192.168.86.47
    token: cjDXfXG73AgY5zIi
23

Thereā€™s now an FAQ entry explaining it.

The TL/DR is that you canā€™t change the entity_id in the UI for something you add with YAML.

Generally speaking, with the YAML, the name (see here) will be used to form the entity_id. So that nanoleaf if youā€™ve given it the name Banana stand youā€™ll end up with an entity called light.banana_stand.

1 Like
24

I understand this.

But its strange that you cant give a unique Id to something like a light. Basically you cant even add this to a room.

For something as capable as home assistant, its strange that I cant add a light to a room :frowning:

25

Adding non-device entities to areas has had initial support for some entities. Wider support will follow when any developer feels like adding support. When thatā€™ll beā€¦ :man_shrugging:

1 Like
26

Yeah I get it lol, thanks

So I guess my question is, what happens if I create a new group in the group.yaml that is the same as one of these already created groups?

Iā€™m not really willing to test it, because I donā€™t want a broken HA. But if someone could just tell me if thatā€™s how you do it, would be grateful :slight_smile:

27

Groups are areas are different.

Groups can be found in groups.yaml and you canā€™t create duplicates. Areas are only found in the UI.

As always, if you make any change to your YAML run a command line config check to ensure you havenā€™t broken anything.

28

Thanks for that.

Ok thatā€™s helpful, so what I mean then is, If I have a group and an area with the same name. You just get two, say, Living Rooms in your dashboard? One a group, one an area.

If you have entities that cant have unique IDs, like Nanoleafs or Yamaha receivers or 1000 other things. You will need to create a group for that in the yamal find all the entity IDs and add them ect (annoying when you have 20 devices in a room) and then delete the area.

29

Well, you can just take control of your UI and make it look however you want itā€¦

30

You could also theroetically edit and see areas in .storage, but theyā€™re meant to be edited using the UI.

1 Like
31

LOL yes, if you have the 20 to 50 hours to learn how, Iā€™ve done a bit of that.

Donā€™t get me wrong, I love HA, Its so powerful, but so time consuming.

Anyway, thank you :slight_smile: I have a better idea of how that works now :slight_smile:

1 Like
32

Top right corner, the three dot menu. Itā€™ll start with your UI looking just like it currently does, and you can use the UI to edit it.

It should take you considerably less than 20 hours to learn how, though it may well take 20 hours or more for you to be happy with it :stuck_out_tongue:

1 Like
33

This whole situation is rather idiotic. You have added an icon picker to make it easy to choose an icon for a given entity and even made a big deal about it, but sadly, it is of little use when you run into these ā€œThis entity does not have a unique ID, therefore its settings cannot be managed from the UIā€ types of errors.

Am I the only one who sees how stupid this whole situation is? In any case, I guess I better pull out the old icon charts and fire up a text editor so that I can change a few iconsā€¦

2 Likes
34

So, feel free to step up and help develop HA - adding the feature to all the integrations. Thereā€™s some 1.9K integrations, of which more than half donā€™t support the entity registry. Iā€™m sure it wonā€™t take you long to change that?

This is just a side effect of the pace of change of HA. New features come in and old integrations donā€™t support them. The entity registry is just one of many things there, though itā€™s a big one.

35

Iā€™m getting this same error for two lights that I just relinked through the smart life app. Iā€™ve never configured these lights in configuration.yaml, so is there a way to delete and re-add them so they get a unique ID?

36

Iā€™m having this error after installing Dwaynes dashboard. In my case is an entity called " . " (dot). How can I find this entity to fix the YALM?

37

I just started having this problem too:

This entity (ā€˜.ā€™) does not have a unique ID, therefore its settings cannot be managed from the UI.

I donā€™t recall changing anything before this message started appearing, and Iā€™m not clear which entity is referred to here. I do customize my UI through YAML rather than the UI, and I have a good-size /config/configuration.yaml file. (though I donā€™t have Dwayneā€™s Dashboard).

38

mqtt:
sensor:
- name: ā€œKliima_RH1ā€
unique_id: Kliima_RH1

1 Like
39

April 2024 - I came to this page because of exactly the same confusion as the initial poster (over 4 years ago) so I would definitely be in favour of this PR.

40

Were it not that the text is only partly right and also partly wrong. Yes, for yaml created sensors most stuff can be configured in yaml. But as specified in the docs about the specific sensor, you can assign the unique id in most yaml sensors (except the legacy format template sensors). So set the unique id in your yaml and you can use the dialog. That is way more useful, because you can then for instance assign areas, which is not possible in yaml.

And if it is an integration creating the sensor, thereā€™s not much you can do other then urge the developer to fix it, or use the customize integration to change some of them.