ZHA can not remove device

mrakar · December 16, 2020, 5:53pm

I have latest version od HA/ZHA and recently added Sonoff zigbee bridge (tasmotized to use it with ZHA).

I have managed to add my sensors except for Xiaomi button (WXJG01LM), according to the compatibility list it should work ok.

When I start discovery, latest HA/ZHA discovers my button, I got message “starting interview”, but whatever I do and regardless of the pressing of the button to keep it alive it simply does not pair with my bridge.

I can see it in devices:

But no other information is visible and I do not see how can I remove it from the list or do anything else with it (I have searched the forum and found very vague reference to zha.remove but I do not see how to use it). At some point I got the device there, but nothing else was visible (other devices have some properties exposed), I clicked “remove” and from that point on I only have screen as seen above.

Any ideas what to do?

p.s. I guess that when I got my device paired without entities that is actually correct setup (and should filter device and event), but I can not repeat that anymore

brandont · December 16, 2020, 9:05pm

You can use zha.remove in the Developer Tools. You’ll need to pass the ieee argument but that should remove the device from the controller.

mrakar · December 16, 2020, 9:23pm

is there some guide on how to actually use zha.remove (screenshot, link to wiki or anything), my google search does not return anything solid on how to actually use it

thank you

brandont · December 16, 2020, 11:07pm

Sure… Here is mine:

You can get the ieee from the device info:

mrakar · December 17, 2020, 7:57am

thanks, this clarified removal process, but what happens when in description of your device you do not have all of this data?

see my first screenshot, it shows a device, but not identifying info

when I try to pair, I get to this screen, but that is that, after pairing process completes (likely times out), I still get my first window, device is shown, but no identifying addresses or characteristics

Capture

mrakar · December 28, 2020, 6:45pm

so, i could not find solution to deleting my device, but in other thread I have found a way to finish interview with my xiaomi button

solution is here:

solution is that we need to keep pressing pairing button in order to finish interview (not to button itself, but pairing button/hole)

SafetyThird · October 5, 2022, 9:30am

Just wanted to drop a thank you in here, I couldn’t find a way to do this but eventually my googling brought me to your answer, which worked first time. Much appreciated.

homy33 · March 2, 2024, 10:29pm

ZHA is very difficult to work with. There is no way to remove a device via the Integration, as the “Remove” link is missing. I tried it via services, but that did not work (at least not via brandont screenshot method). It keeps adding a “data” parameter.

I want to move all my SONOFF devices from ZHA, because they just keep failing. Nightmare to work with in ZHA. When I use Zigbee2mqtt all my other SONOFF devices work flawlessly. ZHA always has issues. Not sure what the problem is, but it seems to be buggy.

homy33 · March 2, 2024, 10:37pm

I figured out how to remove devices in ZHA in 2024 (Brandons method will not work!!)

See screenshot:

Not sure why this keeps changing??? Also, why on earth does the integration not have a remove link? Is that so difficult to do? Having to do this via script everytime is kind a ridiculous. Given the fact that so many buttons keep loosing connections, one has to manually remove devices every month multiple times.

sparkydave · March 6, 2024, 12:46am

Ummm.

ncksol · April 12, 2024, 11:30am

My hue light got stuck in the middle of initialisation. Now it sits in ZHA as some generic zigbee device. No “remove” option like on the screenshot above, zha.remove doesn’t do anything either…
Might have to completely reset ZHA

nathanCFD · June 26, 2024, 5:56pm

I too have a device that failed during interview but shows up in ZHA. But, no Zigbee info to get the ieee, no remove button, no entities. Not sure how to get rid of it.

aruffell · October 17, 2024, 5:59pm

Anyone found a way to delete a zigbee device that has no ieee address? I even tried deleting it from the registry but my edit gets reverted.

nigelpercy · October 30, 2024, 9:40am

I have the same issue. I will be very interested in a solution.

Krebstar2000 · October 31, 2024, 1:01am

Same issue, there is no IEEE address. They are orphaned devices. I updated to the latest OS and core…

tobias_sc · November 13, 2024, 4:38am

Hey,
I’ve found the IEEE address in the visualization of my Zigbee-Map: http://homeassistant.local:8123/config/zha/visualization

pikatoste · May 21, 2025, 7:56pm

I have exactly the same problem.

There is no way to get the IEEE address. I returned the product for a long time.

aruffell · August 10, 2025, 2:48pm

Reviving old post, but this may help others in the same situation:

For the past year I had a device with no entities and no IEEE address. A couple weeks ago ZHA started crashing HA so once I narrowed down the issue to ZHA I figured I’d get rid of that ghost device once and for all just in case it had something to do with the crashes.

While I was able to remove the registry entry for the device before, it seemed to just come back, and that was because I was not stopping core first.

At the console prompt of HA (in my case the console tab of the Proxmox VM running HA), I keyed in core stop and once it completed, I opened the file core.device_registry located in \config\.storage using notepad++. I searched for the device name which I had named delete_me to ensure it would be unique, and found one entry:

{“area_id”:null,“config_entries”:[“e0fd134a747d05f00a6f8059dfa4c955”],“config_entries_subentries”:{“e0fd134a747d05f00a6f8059dfa4c955”:[null]},“configuration_url”:null,“connections”:[[“zigbee”,“ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff”]],“created_at”:“1970-01-01T00:00:00+00:00”,“disabled_by”:null,“entry_type”:null,“hw_version”:null,“id”:“dd220851c1bda41d0e13ff4e4f4a56be”,“identifiers”:[[“zha”,“ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff”]],“labels”:,“manufacturer”:“unk_manufacturer”,“model”:“unk_model”,“model_id”:null,“modified_at”:“2025-08-10T13:57:53.210168+00:00”,“name_by_user”:“delete_me”,“name”:“unk_manufacturer unk_model”,“primary_config_entry”:null,“serial_number”:null,“sw_version”:null,“via_device_id”:null},

I deleted this entry being careful not to mess up anything else. I saved the file, and restarted HA Core by keying in core restart in the console. The device was finally gone and did not come back.

If you are going to attempt this, please be sure to back up the core.device_registry file to a safe location before editing it so if you happen to mess something up you can just replace the file.

I also took a peek at zigbee.zb using DB Browser application and did not find an entry for ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff so I don’t believe there is anything there to remove.

(Edited for clarity)

omar10wahab · August 11, 2025, 2:02am

Bro after leaving that thing sitting for years, youve finally saved me. I was able to search the file you mentioned after i added the device to a blank script and saving it. I then went to the script.yaml page and was able to get a entity id that i used to search the core.device_registry file and found the device. I am running HA on a pi 4 and just used the default file editor and deleted the whole line with that device. restarted HA and its gone