I have had the homekit bridge working for 1 week now and all is well except I would like to update the names of my switches to make it easier to view on the homekit side.
For example, I had a switch called switch.living_room . From the ha ui, I renamed it living_room.switch but it has not updated to this name in homekit.
What do I need to do to make homekit aware of entity name changes from the HA side of things?
Thanks.
BTW I tried doing an accessory reset but it did not work:
Resetting accessories
You may use the service homekit.reset_accessory with one or more entity_ids to reset accessories whose configuration may have changed. This can be useful when changing a media_player’s device class to tv, linking a battery, or whenever Home Assistant adds support for new HomeKit features to existing entities.
On earlier versions of Home Assistant, you can reset accessories by removing the entity from HomeKit (via filter) and then re-adding the accessory.
With either strategy, the accessory will behave as if it’s the first time the accessory has been set up, so you will need to restore the name, group, room, scene, and/or automation settings.
Did you change just the entity ID, or did you also change the Entity Name? If you change the Entity Name, it should sync to HomeKit pretty quickly. I’ve done this several times, and it has always reflected the change within a second or two without needing to make any other changes.
Alternatively, you can also change the alias on the HomeKit side. Open the Home app in iOS, hold press the sensor, there should be a gear in the bottom right corner, click the gear to see the sensors settings page. From there you can change the name “user friendly” name in HomeKit.
I am changing the safe name from the ui. If I change the entity id won’t that screw up all my automations?
What if I remove the bridge and then reinstall it…seems like that is what they were saying if the first way doesn’t work.
No, I wasn’t suggesting you change the entity id, as that’s not necessary. The way your original post was worded, it seemed like it might be possible that you were changing the entity id instead of the name (switch.living_room read as more of an entity id to me).
Though I will say, the last time I changed an entity id, there was a popup offering to update automations and scripts. That being said, you shouldn’t need to change the entity id.
You can try removing and reconnecting the bridge, but I’m not sure if that’ll resolve your issue. Though I would say, if your plan is to use Siri with HomeKit to control your devices, you should probably go with a more user friendly name like “Livingroom Switch”, as I’m not sure how Siri would handle “livingroom.switch”. But if you really want to use that name in Home Assistant, you can still give it a different name in HomeKit.
Sorry I was extremally distracted by a docker upgrade that caused some issues. It was on generic linux so I went ahead and migrated over to the hassio under proxmox version.
I was not aware friendly names could be that “friendly” with space between letters. As long as I can change the names on the homekit side that is good enough for me. I am trying to make the homekit side as easy as I can for a family member that doesn’t get along with technology.
But I will say homekit really works well. Apple tv acts like a router so we can access it from anywhere.
Thanks again.
You can change the name in the “Home” app to a friendlier name… that would avoid all the hassle of messing with those very important values in HA and potentially messing up other things going on
Yea it works! Homekit also works with areas something HA is still working on so win win for me.
