I think there are three years already since I started with HA, and got puzzled trying to add badges to a view which didn’t support them. Even nowadays, there are no details on which views support them on the Badges page.
Years have passed, I’ve migrated most of my views to Sidebars, and out of nowhere decided to change some battery graphs to badges. Now I see it states badges are not supported in my current view type, but then… why?
Is this just a matter of missing implementation? Is there a technical reason explaining why it’s not possible to add a row of badges to all views?
This feels like a very underrated feature, exactly because it’s rarely supported and people end up never using.
Back in the before times, there used to be posts here or on the FB group on a regular basis along the lines of “What are these random circles and how do I get rid of them”. It’s actually one of the first things I searched for on the forums when I started using HA.
In my opinion they have few redeeming qualities, other than the fact that maintain a reliable position, unlike cards when using Masonry view-type. Once you move to non-Masonry view-types the card order is more predictable, so Badges are less useful.
Compared to current options like chips cards, they are less flexible and kind of ugly. If you like the way they look and want to use non-Masonry view-types, use the custom Badges card.
I asked a similar question some time ago in a layout-card repo (which does not support badges) & got an opinion from Thomas that badges are probably being “phased out”:
Badges are phased out from automatically generated views, but they can still be added manually to the default views.
I chose not to include them in layout card because it would add too many options to place them in the right position
And this comment from Thomas Lovén is already 2 years old.
The point I wanted to bring with this post is:
A) they’re being phased out because no one uses? Then, why:
A.1) because there’s little awareness about them
A.2) because people really don’t care
A.3) because their support has always been lackluster in the first place?
B) or the phase out is because they’re hard to implement?
From a naive POV, as a web developer for the past 18 years, I really wonder how hard would it be to include a full-width row with round elements on the top of any dashboard.
@Didgeridrew it would be helpful if you elaborate in your opinion, instead of just posting a meme and walking away haha
My guess is that, following Minimalist and Mushroom, chips will be the next thing that will come to standard UI to replace badges. The Tile card is already inspired by them, so it is not unlikely chips will be next. You can place them anywhere in your layout (no such luck with badges). It would be a perfect addition in the new sections view.
This topic of “place chips/another card anywhere in the layout” also showed up in the GH issue posted earlier. This isn’t a solution for badges, since chips (and any other card) would follow the layout, and you would need to position them in between your cards. The only way to replicate the badge behavior with a standard card is a vertical card with the panel layout, which is a dirty workaround and very bad for further customization.
However, badges always show on a row on the top of your screen, regardless of how your columns are organized - hence my repetitive question of why is it hard to be implemented.
This is not an option with chips right now. And if it ever becomes available, well, then we could call that chip-badges haha (what would be welcome, since chips are indeed more versatile when talking about their contents).
I don’t think chips can be used to replicate badge behavior. But they serve a similar purpose, and are more versatile. Having then inside sections gives them contect that badges lack at the top of the page. So, like it or not, badges may become a thing of the past that is hard to replicate, unless e.g. the sections view will get support for a page header like construct.
I do not like tiles, chips etc.
They occupy plenty of space.
Do not want to have 5 huge cards on a screen; prefer to have tons of data on a screen.
I am not using badges on a top of a screen either. For me they are also not compact.
My choice - Entities card (incl. multiple-entity-row), graphs, buttons.
But badges are still a good and compact standard UI element; and their “topmost” placement could be very useful for many users.
To me, the fact that badges are not tied to any other card on the page is a benefit. Some key indicators in the top row, noticeable but not taking up a lot of space, has value.
As long as there’s an effective way to do something like that, it doesn’t have to be a badge in it’s current form. I’m OK with whatever the UI designers think is fashionable. I just don’t want to lose the existing functionality.
I came across this topic while searching for a method to display badges on a panel card. I’d like to have my map card as a panel view, with the badges still visible at the top. Does anyone know of a solution for this without using custom-cards?
