I was looking for a sensor to display the uptime (or last restart time) of home assistant, but discovered it is not enabled by default.
There is an extra intergration that provides it (here: Uptime - Home Assistant ) but shouldn’t this be enabled by default?
Everything is an integration in HA
Negative. There are those of us who prefer ONLY the things we use on by default. It reduces attack surface area and workload.
For every integration there will be someone for whom it makes sense to ‘just turn it on by default’ but then imagine if that happens every time.
But it’s just uptime, you say… And honestly, some people really don’t care about the uptime on thier HA box. (count me among them I deal with highly available systems l day every day… My home automation platform is not that important and I don’t need the headache.) They just care if it’s working…
Combined with, every time it’s done (make it default) it makes the default install juuuuust a little more difficult to troubleshoot and secure. No.
Instead we should be striving to only turn on what’s absolutely necessary to function, and guide users through discoverability and install (because off by default doesn’t have to mean not offered by default) If instead a - to borrow a phrase form Microsoft - Out of Box Experience (they call it OOBE) guided users through setting up the things they wanted I could get behind it. But no don’t ‘just turn it on’