My config, automations, customisations and even Lovelace are a big mess at the moment.
Currently half of my integrations are configured in the UI, and the rest are in the configuration.yaml file. I noticed that in the latest update in the Configuration > General tab, it gives me this option:
What does this mean? How else am I meant to store the rest of my configuration that is not available through the Integrations tab?
It is also a similar story for my automations. My “system” automations are stored in automations_old.yaml so that they cannot be edited through the UI, yet they still show up in the automations editor to be able to turn on and off. How do I remove them to create a clean view of only relevant automations. Should I add them through the automations editor to make it cleaner and more future-proof?
Customization is even worse. Half of the customisations are stored in the customize.yaml file, some are in the UI customise editor and the rest are customised through Lovelace. What is the best option looking forward to customise my entities? Most of the customisations are just simple icon changes, name changes and some sensors changing device_class and unit_of_measurement. How do I remove “system” entities from the customisation UI as it looks very messy at the moment with all the behind the scenes entities?
Should I use the yaml files anymore for automations, customisation and even configuration(if possible) or just completely migrate to UI configurator? I just feel that right now the UI isn’t powerful enough to access all the power of Home Assistant, but I know it will get better in the future and thats why I can’t make a decision.
I’d love to hear everyones opinion and the way that they store their Home Assistant configuration.
This is the new core config onboarding. If you don’t have items under the core config ( homeassistant: ) in your configuration.yaml file it will provide a nice GUI to set name, location, timezone etc…
It has nothing to do with discovered integrations or manually configured devices.
Can’t help you with the automations editor. I don’t use it.
I use names/entity id’s that help me know what I’m referring to when manually creating automations and scripts. For entities that don’t support name: or friendly_name: or icon: I set these in the customization section. For use in the front end I sometimes simplify these names. e.g I have a lot of temperature sensors so to distinguish which one is which I name them Room Name Sensor Type. In the front end in a card that has the room name in the title I use lovelace to drop the redundant information and make the display cleaner.
Not sure what you are referring to here. Can you clarify with a screen shot?
This is a matter of personal preference. I don’t find the automation editor capable enough for my liking and I don’t like the way it mangles YAML from human readable to alphabetical order. So I don’t use it.
For example I have an input select to change channels on both of my TV’s. This requires a light which triggers a few harmony actions and the light is turned on by an automation when the input select changes:
I don’t really want to see this in my customisation as they are just things in the background. Am I able to keep these entities somewhere where they will only be available in a yaml file and not show up in the UI at all?
Thats fine but will I be more future proof by using the UI? Will Home Assistant eventually move away from yaml editing, or will I always have the option to edit with a yaml?
Are you talking about the drop down box to select an entity_id in the configuration / customisation section?
If so, no there is no way to edit that list. It is purposefully a list of everything you can customise. To help you navigate a large list, if you type a letter it will jump to the first device beginning with that letter.
I have cards for each room and set the friendly name for many sensors to Sensor Type which gives the same end result as you in the frontend with an entity e.g. Temperature.
Disadvantage of this approach is that when I create dynamically filtered cards using the Auto Entities card to show for example sensors above a certain temperature, I have multiple entitles called Temperature without knowing which room it is.
It would be ideal to use your approach for room cards by removing redundant information there and use the full Room Sensor Type friendly name for Auto Entities cards.
Is there some way to hide that part of the GUI alltogether since i have it configured manually?
I would prefer to have direct access to the reload / restart buttons rather than having to scroll down every time. Or at least move the map GUI under the reload config part.
Not important, was just wondering
