WTH - notifications are so hard to set up in HA

Month of "What the heck?!"
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1

I just want to select devices from a dropdown and customize a message. Instead, I have to create notification groups oddly through YAML (even though there is a notify helper group type that doesn’t work).

THEN I need to track down the device IDs, which are hidden for some reason from the UI. Instead I have to track them down somewhere in the developer tools or a script. Once that happens, notifications aren’t even automatically added to the logbook, but disappear.

Otherwise, the default notify.notify action sends a message to a random, but even the docs say not to use this default behavior.

2

Please search the forum before posting. Duplicate

3

It does work for notify entities just like the other group helpers work for their respective entity types.

5

Closed as a duplicate. Please vote and comment at the link above.