When I setup a new user account (not admin) they end up on the Overview dashboard but that dashboard is way, way too busy and may have information that a normal user shouldn’t have access to. It would be nice to be able to set the admin only flag on the Overview dashboard along with an admin settable option for the default dashboard for users.
Might I suggest a different way to think about it? Since 0.107 Multiple Dashboards have been possible. You can add one in Configuration > Lovelace Dashboads, or in YAML.
If you moved your Admin views over to a new Admin Dashboard, you could then reimagine the Overview as a simpler user interface. You can set the Admin Dashboard to require Admin privileges to view it.
P.S. I realize if you have configured your UI in the browser (instead of YAML), it will be tedious to copy your UI over. But, you can click “Show Code Editor” copy and paste all of the YAML code which you can then paste into a new Manual UI card block.
2 Likes
Yes, I’m aware of this option. But I still sort of believe that the Overview dashboard really is something that should be an Admin only thing, or at least allow a toggle.
Failing that, a way to force the default dashboard for certain users would be nice. My primary use case is that I’ve got a couple of short term rental properties and I’m working on trying to give the customers something that they can use for local property control of certain features, but I don’t want them having access to everything
1 Like
When you say overview dashboard, do you mean the first screen that opens by default when you go to HA? Like the default Lovelace view? Because that’s fully editable so you can show or hide whatever you want there.
Also based on your use case it seems like you might want to check out tileboard as a way to just provide a tablet or something and an interface specifically for it. Or you could check out browser mod which I believe gives you essentially full control over exactly what appears and happens when a particular device accesses ha.
I just looked over both of those and neither would server my needs.
I can’t use tileboard because my HA is internet exposed and they say not to use it on an HA that is exposed.
Browser mod while interesting is going to require too much management for me for my use case. I won’t know exactly what device is going to be doing what / when with my intended scenario.
My goal for the short term rentals is provide them a user / password combo that gets them into a property specific account. That password is going to be auto-rotated so that it doesn’t persist between tenants and will be provided to the tenant when they first get to the property.
The property account is going to have limited management over IoT features of the house and hopefully in the future give them a way to be able to open/close the garage doors from their phones so that I don’t have to provide remotes for them.
So, having a way to make sure that the dashboard someone gets is only what they are supposed to have is sort of vital to me. That’s why I want a way to flag the Overview as admin only. As it stands right now everyone that logs in has access to that dashboard. Yes, I can empty it stuff, but it’s common across all users.
I guess what I really want is a way to make dashboards only accessible to specific groups of users. Mostly because for the time being I’m not running an HA at each property but a single centralized one that is then connecting out to manage a SmartThings hub at each property. Maybe sometime in the future I’ll have an HA at each property, but then I’ll run into problems around the mobile app only knowing how to talk to a single HA instance without logging out / in at a different URL.
1 Like
just make another lovelace dashboard and set as default and not admin add all the config you want your tenents to see. . theu u as admin can open the url to the other one
failing that custom header maybe abot help based on user
Thread necromancy for a first post? Yeah, sure.
The docs aren’t super clear on this, but if you define a YAML dashboard in configuration.yaml with a non-existent file, it will be managed by Lovelace like the original default dashboard (it’s in an example in the docs).
I have a similar use case, where I wanted to allow some access to guest users, but still have the Home Assistant managed dashboard for my own use. I edited the default dashboard within the web UI to be what guests should have access to, then added this to my configuration.yaml:
lovelace:
mode: storage
dashboards:
lovelace-automatic-overview:
mode: yaml
title: Automatic Overview
filename: "null.yaml"
icon: mdi:tools
show_in_sidebar: true
require_admin: true
The “Automatic Overview” dashboard now gets new entities added and removed like the original default, but guests don’t have access to it.
3 Likes
That’s one way, though you could also have created a brand new lovelace dashboard that was admin only. They can be created with the auto entity setup without having to resort to the a yaml file for it.
One of my personal intents was to use Custom Header (now dead) to push certain users to certain default dashboards. However, with the death of Custom Header I don’t know of any plugins that have that ability 
I just encountered the behavior that despite having another dashboard as default, other (=normal) users would see the original lovelace dashboard. Quite strange…
The default dashboard is always visible. Make this your General population dashboard.
Create another dashboard with all your sensitive cards and set this to Administrator accounts only.
Which reminds me, I really wish that there was a way when creating a new dashboard to set it to create empty instead of in the default auto-generated mode. The default auto-generated dashboard takes 2 - 4 minutes to fully load on my system because I’ve got so many entities!
You need faster hardware. 
Thanks for the heads-up. Then it is weird that it disappeared in my admin account (the one where I chose another one as default), which I had assumed was the default behavior.
In any case, solved as you suggested - thanks!
Funny 
I’ve got a few hundred entities on my Pi4 8G thanks. Most of them are related to the 3 Z-Wave locks I’ve got and Keymaster. I’m aware I can configure them to not have all 30 slots defined, but I’m also doing some development for some other HA instances I’ll be building that need locks and several automations configured for them.
It would still be handy to just hit a button and get a new empty dashboard instead of having to deal with that pain just to then hit the edit button and take over management where I’m just going to toss the auto-generated anyway!
You can create an empty dashboard…
Unless I’m missing something, there’s no option when generating a new dashboard from the Lovelace dashboard management page. You generate a new dashboard and can set some basic parameters including if it’s shown in nav or is admin only, but there is no option to generate it empty, it always generates with the auto-configuration.
Sorry, you are right. For some reason I thought the function to add all devices automatically was something you choose when creating the dashboard rather than after once you decide to ‘take over control’. I just tested it out… for my i7 NUC it was instant so didn’t have to wait at all.
Agreed, this should be a toggle question when creating the dashboard initially.
This is how I do it… My default template will cator single dashboard, however each dashboard will consist multiple tab which only can be seem by different users. Which give multiple user access to different card.
My View
Multiple tab which each will have different view for different users
You should open a feature request.
Very neat trick.
If I understand correctly, it should also be possible to not point to an non-existant file, but instead to a file that contains the following (taken from the UI when trying to edit the dashboard):
title: Fancy Title
views:
- strategy:
type: original-states
It should have the same effect but is less “hacky”. I rather do not want to rely on the fact that to a non-existent file will always behave like that, or might throw an error at some point in the future.
Generally the yaml approach seems to be safest regarding changing the dashboard from the UI – this is not possible. Alternatively, for me it also worked to just create a new dashboard (under /config/lovelace/dashboards) that would behave like the default if it is not edited – but this dashboard can accidentally (hope not ) be altered through the UI.