After I upgraded I can’t figure out how to rename entities. I would prefer to rename via a configuration file but can’t find any. Does this exist? This is what I have tried:
On the states tab I clicked this icon:
If I select it on the customization tab there is no option to rename the entity:
How do I rename an entity id?!
I assume you are using Hassio. Go to the Hassio panel and enable the SAMBA add-on. Take heed of the security warnings especially if your router has UPnP enabled.
Then from your computer navigate to the \\hassio share and look for config/configuration.yaml
In this file look for entries under binary_sensor:
Only entities with a unique ID have the option to be renamed in the frontend.
And the “unique ID” mentioned above only applies to certain device types. Zwave, zigbee, media players are ones that mine has it apply to. There are others but those are the ones I know of.
Is “unique ID” different than “entity_id” ? My term usage may be wrong but I’m talking about the name that is used when writing automations in automations.yaml which is ‘binary_sensor.living_room_motion’ which is what I am trying to change. For example in the automation file it would look like:
trigger:
platform: numeric_state
entity_id: binary_sensor.living_room_motion
I don’t remember how I set that name in the first place but I thought it was in the GUI. I searched all the *.yaml files and found no reference to it.
Those two terms are generally accepted to be the same.
Most times the entity_id is automatically created from different factors depending on the domain/device. Most of the time you can’t really change the entity_id but can only change the friendly name. using the entity registry (or now using the GUI) allows you to change the entity_id of select devices.
For changing the name of a binary sensor that didn’t get created automatically (ex template binary sensor) you can only change the name by changing the name of the binary sensor in your config yaml.
as an example from the docs:
binary_sensor:
- platform: template
sensors:
sun_up:
friendly_name: "Sun is up"
value_template: >-
in this case the sensor entity_id will be ‘binary_sensor.sun_up’.
unique_id is a thing set by the platform, to say that it can be certain it can identify that exact device. For example, Z-Wave devices have a Node ID that’s unique, devices on an IP network have a unique MAC address. Other components don’t have that, either because there’s no way of doing that, or because the developer hasn’t updated it. An example of a unique_id may be 2-72057594076282880 or 4a809b5b-5071-498b-ab3e-7ad83b53d37d
entity_id is created by Home Assistant for every entity. It is unique, but only because Home Assistant forces that. Without the support of the component, it can’t tell if light.master_bath is a specific device, or just some light.
The developer docs explain it a bit more.
Where is the entity registry located in .79.* ? I had read it is located in the same directory as configuration.yaml and automation.yaml etc. but I do not see it in there.
It’s been relocated to the .storage folder and is now called core.entity_registry and is supposed to officially be uneditable.
And @Tinkerer, thanks for that bit of clarification on the unique_id. I forgot that the unique_id was a term used in the entity registry.