It seems strange to hide Automations in the settings menu, rather than having its own menu item.
One of the main purposes for Home Assistant is to create or run automations so it would make sense for this to exist in its own right as a main menu item, rather than a layer down in the settings.
Yeah but then you would add scripts, scenes and a dozen other things. Would soon get messy.
And if you really want to customise the side menu to add shortcuts to settings you often use you can:
No third party resources required. This is all done with core functionality of the panel_custom integration.
There are some examples here: Sidebar Shortcuts: Customizing the HA Sidebar - SmartHomeScene
I would keep it as it is - automations, scripts, scenes, blueprints still all being one item - but there could definitely be a sidebar item maybe called routines or something. For new people. Especially coming from an alternative home automation platform be that a dedicated hardware one, or something like Google Home / Alexa etc. You don’t typically have to delve in to settings to get to create a routine on those platforms. And since automations etc are a big part of Home Assistant, it does make sense for them to be more prominent.
That’s my 2C anyway.
That’s great that it is possible, but my point is that for most new users it should be a bit more obvious and visible. Editing YAML to make it so is a bit much for core functionality.
Why shouldn’t Scripts and Scenes get the same treatment?
What about helpers?
They are all equally important to beginners.
Some sort of structure is needed due to the quantity of menu items.