WTH: Timers would be more useful if the remaining/set time where numerical instead of an attribute

Month of "What the heck?!"
1

By changing the remaining/set time of a timer to a numerical input it would be easy to configure the runtime from Lovelace and also allow for adding time. The general behavior of the helper could stay the same but would expose this one setting in addition. Doing so should not break old dashboards and automations as the underlying actions and values are still present.

Having a slider to configure how long for eg. a motorized window should open for would be extremely useful but can currently only be done with a lot of yaml. Also this method would not show the remaining time on the slider and if this functionality is also coded into the yaml it won’t return to its default state once the end was reached with out more helpers and more yaml.

2

It’s not a number because it would count down and pollute the database with each numerical change.

3

That might be true but I stand by the idea that a time with adjustable length would be far more useful than the current fixed length.
One option to fix the database cluttering could be to only update the database once the timer is paused.

4

You can still alter the duration of the timer via a service call. You just can’t do it while it’s running.