Home Assistant has made so much (excellent) progress UI wise in the the past year, yet the default theme for some reason is still the same old Material 1 inspired, which nowadays looks very dated.
I realize it’s possible to use custom themes with HACS, and I do use one (Material Rounded), but I think out-of-the-box experience for new users should be important too, and in the looks and aesthetics department, it is somewhat lacking.
I love HA but I do think the default theme is dreadfully 90s / early 2000s. At least to me. Would be great if we could get a refresh
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Actually, it’s quite 2022, since that’s when it was modified the last time. And that’s when I installed my first theme, because I intensely disliked the changes they made to it.
Every time someone says “it looks so 90s/early 2000s” I wonder whether they have ever seen a piece of software from that period.
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Yeah, 90’s UI was really different, full of experimentation, colors, graphics, textures, custom skins everywhere. Not like HA at all.
This is 90s UI design:
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Changing theme is the easiest thing to do. There are tons of them out there, and you can make your own (or modify one). I modified one pretty soon after i started my HA, since i want my background to be totally black, so cards borders are not visible.
It’s quite impossible to make a theme to please all of us…
Point is: Home Assistant, its components, UI and UI elements look dated (and inconsistent) and needs a serious update to get up-to-date.
Some better themability would give people more options to make better themes. Right now, themes are not true themes (control look & feel, text, position of elements, etc), but a collection of changed CSS variables (limited styling).
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Indeed there are tons of themes out there, but they all look sort of the same and outdated due to the limited themability. Let’s be real: theming HA is not a thing. It’s rather hacking or styling. Theming is impossible.
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Yeah, that’s why i modified one myself, since i couldn’t find suitable for mee, too.
It would be really cool if there were a proper design system to start with, which could then be expanded modularly. There’s an outdated and, above all, incomplete Figma artifact that essentially only reflects the status quo at a certain point in time. The design strategy and the design principles are documented in a very fragmented way.
Based on such a design system, one could approach the UI architecture and then establish skinning and theming on a solid foundation.
I would start with a design system that could be implemented step by step based on a roadmap.
rounded corners are dead
Ehh… Really? Ever seen the latest Windows or office products? Not that I am a Micros… fan, btw… Bu they are quite widely used…
The genius of Home Assistant is that it is almost infinitely configurable. Of the thousands of installations, I dare say that no two are alike.
There are hundreds of custom integrations, hundreds of add-ons, hundreds, well maybe dozens of themes.
The default first light page can only work with what is in the core. No custom anything. The purpose is to give the user a taste of what they can do.
Wrong… it’s just that YOU don’t like them. That doesn’t make them “dead”. Personally i hate square corners.
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True… But why does that need to look outdated?
I’m not arguing the configurability nor the possibilities of HA. Just that the default UI, usability and theme-system (which isn’t a theme system, but hackish styling mechanism) is looking outdated and does not do any judgement to the possibilities. It does not reflect the overall quality of HA which is a pitty IMO.
So, design something using only what is installed with the system. No outside help- you can’t download anything. When done, put it into “Feature Requests”. If it’s adopted, we will call it the Stefan theme.
Well if we really want to get into just how dated the theme is, since Material 1 debuted in 2014, the design is lagging behind by a decade 
.
The subject of rounded corners was brought up and I personally do like how it looks in Mateial Rounded theme.
Honestly, I wouldn’t mind if Material Rounded theme was straight up copied, it looks great.
I mean, Home Assistant did previously incorporate a design element from custom integrations with the Tile card.
It looks like a remote control, which is fine if you’re using it that way. My dashboards are informational, which look better to me in a much different style.
And I dislike round corners like here:
and consider round avatars as stupidity blindly copied by everyone as a “modern trend”.
(round avatars only fit tombstones)
But I do not cry about it since I can easily customize it in HA.
A lot of ppl are missing the point here.
Yes you can customize.
Yes any OBJECTIVE observer will look at the DEFAULT look of a dashboard that all new users are greeted with and there should be nothing controversial in stating it looks dated. Very dated.
There is a huge difference between - I want the default theme to look perfect to my personal liking (impossible to ever accomplish) VS I want the default theme and hence default experience for a new user to look like it was designed this century. Alright alright I exaggerate before you all go crazy 
. Let’s say in the past 7-8 years.
The learning curve of HA is already super steep to ask newbies to go install custom themes day 1.
This isn’t about making the core nerd-dom here happy.
It’s about the default experience.
If you cannot see how horribly dated the default theme is then you are not objective.
I’m saying this as someone who has done extensive customizations and doing that work doesn’t bother me personally . But the post is very valid. HA default dashboard are dated. And don’t throw rotten tomatoes at me. The OP is right.
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