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
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:
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Indeed there are tons of themes out there, but they all look sort of the same and outdated due to the limited themability.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 There’s an outdated and, above all, incomplete Figma artifact that essentially only reflects the status quo at a certain point in time.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.