Nope, a restart resets all my timers used in automations for example, which isn’t always what I’m after 
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Now we just need a reload integration for Almond…
Not that, asking Almond to reload something.
Cant find this solution.
How can i reload my configuration file without Restart?
Look in configuration/server control for what can be reloaded.
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A more generic remark on the reloading discussion:
Maybe I wouldn’t mind (not the case) reloading HA if it told me when a reload is required.
Now I’m setting up the system and do a restart when things are not working as expected.
Of course I should read the docs + do a training and learn all there is to know about HA but there’s already so much to learn. For new users it’s important to flatten the learning curve a bit and provide more guidance…
“Please click here to reload whatever-needs-to-be-restarted”
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How would Home Assistant know what you have changed in the config file though? It would need something like a file watcher service, which parsed the entire config file (and includes) every time it detected a change, and then compared what changed to it’s current loaded config. As for new users - I’m pretty sure the plan is to continue to migrate more and more stuff from the YAML config to the UI, so new users don’t have to touch YAML until they want to.
Go node red. It takes a couple of seconds for every restart. Main reason I moved to NR.
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Exactly. Instead of endlessly wait for obvious improvements, start using better tools which sport those features for years already.
But to make a justice, today HA offers reloading lot of things without need of restart. Yet year ago you needed to restart HA with every small change. Pity however it still reloads everything from a category/integration, not only changed entities.
Speaking about GUI approach. It’s great until covering all user needs. And it’s up to developer how flexible GUI is. Do you remember all those ghost entities, not possible to remove other way than digging in database files?
Node-Red is only for automations, you can’t create template sensors or configure integrations in Node-Red. HA Automations can be reloaded without requiring a restart, so I don’t see how suggesting Node-Red changes anything.
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You actually can create sensors in NR that show up in HA and they are more powerful in NR than the ones you can build in HA. You can update those sensors with a 2 seconds restart, and it just works. Regarding integrations, you can also configure integrations in NR (spotify, tado, lifx, broadlink to say a few…), but HA has the upper hand there by far.
TBH, you could actually build a smart home just using NR, it even has dashboard tools.
Besides all that, which I’m aware of, since I moved 98% of my yaml code to NR, I restart HA only a 2% of the times that I used to. Which means every minor change in some automation doesn’t require an HA restart, just 2 seconds and go on.
It is massively convenient.
In fact I went the NR route because I was building my smart home and by that time every restart supposed a risk of breaking my ZHA + conbee network, it was pretty unstable back then. Once every 10 restarts I had to repair the whole network because it broke.
Thankfully nowadays ZHA is way more stable but I can’t be thankful enough to that bug that let me to NR. It outweights yamling in so many ways.
You’re glossing over that you don’t need to restart HA when reloading automations which takes 2 seconds. You haven’t needed to do that in 2 years, other integrations are now getting the automation treatment. The building blocks are there for any integration to use, it just needs to be added to said integration. There’s even reload services that can do what @duittenb wants by combining it with file watcher and a notification. IMO node-red is over hyped and just adds one more point of failure, same with almost every other supplemental automation engine (except pyscript). The only benefit node-red has is the simplistic logical paths for people who can’t grasp code.
EDIT: Speaking of which, there’s a facebook post in the Home Assistant group complaining about Home Assistant. What’s the main complaint? Node red sometimes doesn’t connect to MQTT.
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Back then I didn’t rely on the reload thing tbh, it used to yield problems. I’m sure it has changed by now though.
Other benefits:
Little to no coding, therefore very minimized debugging through code, which sometimes took me literally hours.
Very visual. whenever something goes wrong you inmediatelly find the issue.
So yeah I guess NR is the choice for idiots like me who don’t like spending more time than needed to build their homes.
If you love going through endless seas of code, go yamling, you’ll enjoy your time there. For me the simpler the better. I want HA to be a hobby, not a full time job.
We shouldn’t go that route… HA has plenty problems on its own.
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I didn’t call you an idiot or anyone who uses it. I specified that the only benefit it provides is simplistic logical paths for people who can’t grasp code. Not everyone’s a coder and that isn’t a bad thing. But promoting Node-Red based on false pretenses like reloading should be avoided IMO because it adds nothing but confusion for beginners.
Are you a visual thinker? If yes, go Node-Red. If not, the built in automation is more than good enough.
I would heavily suggest Node Red, specially for beginners
and I can grasp code. I build almost my entire house in YAML before moving to NR just because I was scared of something new and oh my… was I wrong.
I would suggest every begginer to please go NR, no matter whether you coded before or not. It’s simpler by far. You need to learn a lot less and make way fewer mistakes and spend way less time to achieve the same results.
we just have different points of view Petro
But tbh I’m surprised that someone who has tried both still defends the need of YAMLing. To me is common sense than NR is better, way way better.
EDIT
I never said that. I just said that reloading my automation brought problems a couple of years ago. During a party certain effects would cripple and it wasn’t until I restarted that everything came back to normal. I guess it’s been fixed, but never trusted that reload thing back then, I never used it.
I’m 100% faster in yaml than node red and the flexibility is endless. I’ve only ran into one situation that can’t be solved easily in HA’s automation engine. Node red can’t do it either. I’ve used all the automation engines and yaml is by far my favorite, especially with traces. In node-red, I spent so much time dragging things around making it pretty instead of tackling the task at hand, writing the automation.
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little off-topic, what is it that you can’t do in NR?
EDIT
I didn’t know about traces, definetely a game changer for yaml. Before, it was a disgusting waste of time debugging something. It wasn’t there by the time I left 
It would be equivalent to a lambda function in python.
No idea what a lambda function is 