I understand, that for some users, making apps more human is important. So they prefer reading “4 minutes ago” or “yesterday”. But there are many occasions, where knowing the exact time is crucial.
As for example look at the screenshot above to see how not helpful is the information provided.
Other apps, if show relative time, allow examining absolute value while hovering over the former. Not in the HA.
Mentioned apps, allows also to chose between presentation mode: relative or absolute. Not in the HA.
I would like to have the option to see absolute values. For me, this way is more preferred than relative time. Why? Usually, if I need to look at this value, I must have serious reasons to do that. And in such cases the precision of the collected information is crucial.
Why a drop list in settings offers Year-Month-Day, but at the same time it shows an example in Year/Month/Day format? It seems the logbook is not compliant with these settings too.
Voted. Relative time stamps are stupid. In Home Assistant, on this forum, etc. I simply don’t know why developers don’t display both. A timestamp followed by relative.
No idea where this trend of relative time started but just like white space and flat design, it spread like wildfire and has decreased usability wherever it landed.
A master option to select “Relative” or “Exact” timestamps would be idea.
One should never have to perform an action in an interface to access critical data which is displayed.
Voted. I’m under no illusion that anyone in the dev team will care, but I have to agree this trend is annoying. Another case of designers designing to impress each other, and in the process making the product less usable.
Meanwhile other users want relative times instead of exact times. Remember, there’s more than just you and the 10 people voting for this. This has flip flopped back and forth many times now.
View the history graphs to get the exact time things changed.
The way I read the post, it was a request for an option, not a suggestion that it be changed for everyeone:
I think having that option would be a great idea. Hence the vote and the supporting post. Nobody said it should be changed for everyone.
I also think it’s dismissive to point to the number of votes (or the number of posts, in that other thread) as if those are the only users who feel that way. A very small fraction of HA users frequent this forum, and only a small fraction of those make the effort to post or vote on any given issue. That doesn’t mean they are the only ones who feel that way.
I don’t understand why there’s always so much push-back when anyone posts a suggestion for more options. I thought local control was a cornerstone of the HA philosophy.
I also think it’s combative to always go out of the way to claim “the dev’s are against the users”. So I guess you’ll have to deal with my comments just like I have to deal with yours.
For the record I also dislike this trend in modern UI design. Everyone has been doing it in the last ~15 years and I cannot understand why, except to hide some technical issues.
Never had I have a case where I would be shown a precise time and wished it said instead “2 hours ago”, but the opposite happens very regularly.
But the overlords in the biggest corporations have long ago decided this is the standard and so here we are.
I know a lot of systems where relative data is offered (even by default) but still, there is an option to switch to full date/time. Most if not all of them offer alternate forms in hovering popup (if you see relative time, hover shows precise time and vice-versa)
TBH I cannot recall single app I’m using daily, which is limited as HA is.
And I cannot find an answer on why it happens in HA. It’s not the first time devs picked something from the outer world, and then implemented it differently or partially.
I can’t get rid of the feeling that they are reinventing the wheel and learning from their own mistakes (pushing back users’ complaints during this process) instead of getting what others already did properly.
Time from the very beginning has been lacking in HA and even relative time isn’t fully rolled out in the UI everywhere. Things take time and HA is huge. I can guarantee you they would not turn down an option to format time. So all you’d have to do is start contributing, specifically to the frontend. It’s TS/JS which you said you develop in.
I said I had experience with many langages. JS is one of them.
I specialize in relational databases.
It doesn’t answer the question of why a dev introduces some feature and never finishes. And why the project owner has approved such a half-baked feature.
I would never let myself do that.
Those features were added by volunteers. I’m not sure why I need to keep repeating this fact to you. How can you get upset with random people who just add what they want?
This is something new. Since when everyone can add what he want to HA?
I thought any contribution is thoroughly reviewed. And I would expect, half-baked things should never be approved.
Anyone can add whatever they want and add as much of a new system as they want.
Things are reviewed, some things are discussed. Small changes like you’re asking would get put in really easily without a discussion as long as the feature does what the PR says it will do.
This is nothing outlandish, it’s how all open source works.
I really think you have this idea that HA is a small software. It is not. Features for new systems will be pointed and may not expand across the entire system. That’s not a bad thing, and it’s hardly something to always be upset about. Especially if you have the skills to contribute and make it better.
If anything can be added, impacting the whole userbase experience, without the chance of being caught if it’s wrong… then something is totally screwed up over here. And it’s not a consequence of open-source development.
HA would never get where it was if volunteers were required to apply a change to everything. Especially something like timestamps where the entire frontend would need to be updated. It’s outlandish to even think that.
It’s always easy to criticize. But remember that you’re criticizing the literal most popular open source software in existence. Which proves that the current process works well regardless if you don’t like how PRs are enforced on volunteers.
But it this particular case it’s not that they not applied that everywhere.
Actually
they removed absolute time format from everywhere (or almost everywhere). Somehow the dev was abble to reach all those places…
And no single place provides option to show either relative of absolute form. THis is where it’s not finished - such increment shouldn’t be accepted, becasause it impacts all users without giving option to stay with previous format.
