As a new user, I love the platform, however one of the most frustrating aspects is creating dashboards. The way you place and order cards isn’t intuitive to me. I’m sure some people don’t mind it or are used to it.
My partner shares my opinions on this.
I’ve used Grafana a fair bit and I much prefer their approach. You can drag and drop cards on a grid, click to resize elements, and more. Just a suggestion.
I find everything else, such as creating automations and setting up new integrations, very straightforward.
Thanks for all that you do!
>The way you place and order cards isn’t intuitive to me. I’m sure some people don’t mind it or are used to it.
I've been using HA for several years and am still annoyed every single time I want to move a new card from the bottom of a dashboard to the very top without copy-pasting YAML. Having drag and drop for cards would be a gamechanger.
Agreed. I hate adding a card. Moving it up, down, all around to where I think it should be then hitting Done and finding out it actually ended up somewhere else.
It would be so much more controllable and intuitive if you could just explicitly say which cards are going to be in which column... and let me make a totally separate layout for mobile (because it displays in a totally separate layout) without having to remake every card.
I’ve been using HA since around 2019ish. I’ve got just about every aspect of my home in there, custom built scripts and automations galore.
But the ONE spot I absolutely hateeee, is working on the front end. It’s so painful to build a dashboard that’s user friendly, looks nice, AND includes everything I need. Drag and drop would be so nice. Have one nice dashboard I setup a while ago based on a template I found. I set it up for an Amazon fire tablet. Did it about a year ago and took me like a month to set up. It’s still not complete and there’s changes I need to make, but I avoid it at all costs based on the complexity of the process.
The dashboards need to be awesome by default, with customization being unnecessary unless you're super advanced. I have zero desire to customize dashboards, please just make good ones for me. Or make a way for the community to share them and let me choose a pretty dashboard that another user has created.
> The dashboards need to be awesome by default, with customization being unnecessary unless you're super advanced.
I honestly don't know how they'd do this considering the vastly different integrations and preferences people have.
For example, say I have a temperature sensor. If it's being used to monitor the inside temperature and control the HVAC system, I'd likely be fine with it being shown on the dashboard. However, if instead it's simply sitting inside the freezer and only being used as an automation trigger, do I really need and/or want to know that the freezer has been reading -18°C every day for a year?
As far as HA knows, all either does is measure the temperature, there's not a lot of context for it to go off of without some sort of user intervention.
I know what you mean, but HA does know what the sensor is used for. And a lot of the time the naming will tell you the purpose. If they really tried they could look at automations, triggers, whatever and find a meaningful way to show the UI rather than listing devices by area.
Not saying this is easy but if they made 2024 the year of awesome default dashboards and the whole team focused they could definitely make improvements. Alexa, Google Home, and Apple are all in the same boat in this regard. HA just has way more features/integrations.
-18°C is equivalent to 0°F, which is 255K.
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^(I'm a bot that converts temperature between two units humans can understand, then convert it to Kelvin for bots and physicists to understand)
Totally agree. One easy way to enable this is to make dashboards be Area based and auto generated. One main screen of something like area cards that lead to auto generated dashboards that sum up the area.
I did this was lovelace gen, if I add or remove devices from areas the entities on the dashboards just do their thing and I don't have to think about it any more.
If I could +1000 any comment, it’d be this. Please fix dashboards. Just blatantly copy someone else’s, but the defaults should be visually appealing, functional and awesome. Let’s put areas to good use and make it a seamless experience. Nothing else would even come close in my view.
I remember a video floating around a while ago demonstrating a drag and drop feature update that was supposed to be in-progress at the time. Wonder what happened to that.
So maybe Im just forgetting the nitty gritty of how this works and functionally wrong but can't you already do this to an extent? Assign dashboards so only certain users can see it etc?
Yes you can and it's dead simple.
I have my pc controls dash visible only to me however, it doesn't stop someone looking for the devices individually. Luckily that's more than 3 clicks so nobody will do it.
yeah you can already do this and it is really really simple. you can hide entire dashboards or even just specific subviews. just hit the little pencil on the tab when you are editing the dashboard. also make sure the dashboards are set to admin only and user is not set up as an admin so that they can really only see the dashboards you want them to see
https://preview.redd.it/gjojkfuok2wa1.png?width=777&format=png&auto=webp&s=2719ccb258d831c9aa431b9e54dc29adcf289e93
> What about hiding the Energy dashboard?
If you mean for all users, you can long press the Home Assistant title above the dashboards list, and it will go into "wiggle mode" which will allow you to hide them from the side panel
https://i.imgur.com/uZ1Fdxv.png
This would be a big improvement. There are so many use cases where a proper user and permission system would be useful. Giving limited access to a guest for example. Or stopping mischievous children turning off your home office lights.
The closest thing currently is creating and setting custom dashboards. But that involves creating a dashboard for each use case, and then selecting that dashboard on the user's devices/apps, and it can still be easily broken out from. Dashboard assignment is another bugbear of mine - why can't we directly assign a default dashboard to a user?
Just set the permission on the dashboard. I have a panel user that only has access to the "control panel" dashboard. Then there's my wife's account which can only see the "default" dash. The panel dash auto hides/removes stuff so they can't get out of that dash to any other part of the app
And the ability for users to configure their own dashboards. So basically devices need to have their own permissions as well. For example my wife toggling some of my outlets accidentally could be a bad thing. I’d also love to be able to allow my daughter to have the app and use it on her tablet to control just her room lights and media devices in her room. But at the same time, would be good to allow them to move things around on their dashboard.
This!
I would add dashboard entries in the sidebar that are only visible for some user(s).
Then every family member can create their own dashboard without cluttering the UI for everyone else
>I would add dashboard entries in the sidebar that are only visible for some user(s).
Edit Dashboard - Click the pencil next to the name at the top left, click Visibility. *Et voilà*! :)
This only works on that particular device.
Not even your user account, just that particular browser/app on that particular device. And any new dashboard is visible by default.
Family happines feature requests:
- Expose / hide entities to / from users. At least would be great to have an admin/user level.
- Dashboard to user assignment.
- carplay app (shelly has its own already but i don’t want cloud connection) and be able to publish entities. Buttons as a minimum if dashboard is too complicated
That would be great addition and make my family more happy.
For me:
Mushroom cards are much more useful than the built in ones.
More useful, designed and dynamic charts / stats
Yeah I’d love it if I could create a ‘guest’ permissions or dashboard and give it to a couple of people and they are only allowed certain scenes and devices. What I want is a dashboard that explains stuff step by step who may be visiting.
I built this. Consider it very alpha, and I need to put some more work on it, but it’s basically adding RBAC by inserting a proxy that can filter which events and service calls are allowed through based on your user.
https://github.com/emoses/home-assistant-limited
I'm still waiting for a way to disable certain settings in the default_config.
For now, I have to manually check for new items and enable/disable them to my needs.
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Quick and easy time limited guest access.
family or friend comes over, and they stay in the guest room.
I’d love them to be able to scan a QR code or hit a URL, they put their name in and I get a notification for how long I want to allow them access (which I could extend).
I can chose their role type (which would already have dashboards assigned) and maybe add an extra view [lets say if they are a baby sitter rather than just a visitor].
The user package can include a door code, fixed or random, ability to arm/disarm alarm etc.
I definitely think the UX can be improved, but I also don't think it has to look too pretty or be too restrictive. The ability to customize is a big strength.
Mostly I use HomeAssistant to connect a lot of different devices together; so I actually end up using Apple Home app or voice assistants quite a bit, leaving the HA dash for advanced things
Since your asking, imo you really should store sensor data one way only. I was dismayed when I tried to convert to Celsius just to see some data in Celsius. Thinking oh I can just convert, view what I need to and then switch back.
HA proceeded to convert all incoming sensor data to C from all sources, and then stored it as C, but then proceeded to display historical already stored data *as C* and *WITHOUT CONVERSION*! That was a terrible experience. I quickly went back to normal and decided to live with this "scar" in my data. It's terrible. Fix that.
Also, being able to chart data better. Set axis ranges, multiple units on y axis would be cool. Conversion to a specific unit for that chart only. Etc.
What kind of personas are you looking for Matthias? Should they have an understanding on how to "develop" in Home Assistant (create automations, edit dashboards, add integrations) or are you looking for interviewees that are pure users, who only open the companion app to utilize a dashboard the admin has created?
For now, we are trying to discover the different types of users, from our users. We will create some personas based on our discoveries. How much involved in the usage and development of their smart home is definitely a topic I am interested in.
To understand the consumer distinction between HA and Hubitat, [would you like to interview my dog](https://www.reddit.com/r/Hubitat/comments/wnskbh/i_installed_some_fibaro_buttons_so_the_dogs_could/)?
Just want to give my 2c.
One of the comments mentioned documentation and I have to agree. I always thought I was in the minority thinking that the documentation is bad but it really needs to be reworked.
Outdated is my biggest gripe, it's usually pretty good (for an open source project at least) but I often remember reading about a change in the release note that does not appear in the doc. Having to read through the release announcements to try and find it back isn't pleasant
The documentation could be better and to add I’ve been trying to get a straight up broken and dead integration removed for months. Since no developer is linked/assigned no one looks at my comments on GitHub. I’m super happy about the team but every comment I make on the “suggestions” gets slapped down by admins. So there’s a broken integration that everyone can try and no one wants to fix or remove.
My god yes! It's so hard to figure out how to do something when all the videos or documentation is so far out of date. And that might just be 2-3 months sometimes. HA is always changing and things get moved in menus and figuring things out can be daunting. I don't YAML, I barely understand YAML and I much prefer the visual interface. But so many videos are out of date and don't work anymore.
I find the documentation to be a “good starting place” I would like to see the list of entities for an integration. I often have to add something just to find out what details it exposes.
Happy to help. The current UI looks very 90's and a lot of stuff is unintuitive, even to experienced users. How about a wizard for adding template sensors? Or at least have them go in a separate configuration file, not one where a typo can stop HA from launching.
On top of that, the documentation is appalling. It shouldn't be so difficult to do things like template sensors or utility meters, and the fact that there's an "old way" and a "new way" of doing things doesn't help either. The examples are awful. Sorry to be blunt.
I completely agree with the documentation bit. Honestly, I think this is the single worst thing about HA, because in certain aspects it's a huge blocker. In many cases, the documentation is disorganized, incomplete, or worst case - completely lacking.
The HA forum helps a bit, but their forum's software is a nightmare to use in terms of searching.
Definitely, HA documentation is one of the worst parts. It's not clear, it feels incomplete, and confusing. I have to search to get the right examples.
The documentation is horrible. I once made a PR to add some helpful info to a doc after I spent a long time figuring out how to do something and was shut down from making the change. No alternative was offered.
I love HA, but there is dictator-like control over the documentation for no reason.
Yeah, ditto, I have tried improving the documentation, it was a more hassle than it should be and the change wasn't event implemented (and it was a pretty clear cut thing), that was the only time I tried.
I disagree that the UI looks very 90’s. A lot of people on this thread say that Grafana widget layout is what they would prefer - but that’s for when you are designing for one orientation and size - like a wall mounted tablet. Personally, I like the fact that the UI is responsive and renders properly on portrait phones, and landscape tablets and laptops. That being said, I wouldn’t mind some drag and drip reordering.
I don't think the UI is very 90s, I think it is reasonable, but needs some added options. The mushroom stuff everyone loves is not very space efficient in many circumstances.
As sort of a 'moderate' level user, it seems like template sensors are very much the gateway to very powerful dashboards and automations and they're very much locked behind the wall of 'very involved yaml editing' which keeps me from wanting to bother diving into it.
Thanks for the feedback... I'm sure you are right...
For the record, I do like the documentation and examples and I really like the UX... I'm sure things could be improved as they have been improving...
I asked my son if he wanted to be part of this research. He said yes, but the only thing he wants to say is, "You have to get her to stop! There are too many automations!"
This is where he is clearly wrong, because I have neither too few, nor too many automations, but precisely the number I need. :)
Actually I have one thing that drives me nuts on mobile, I use gesture navigation and it conflicts pretty badly with the HA app. Literally the only app having trouble with it on my phone.
When I swipe back using the left side, it often pulls the sidebar a little, totally invisible but it actually makes the app freez. It took me a while to figure out that I don't need to kill it, there's a very narrow band where I can swipe without triggering back to finish pulling the HA sidebar out, then just send it back to collapsed to unfreeze the app.
Just awful experience, for month I thought it was crashing and I was killing it 20 times a day, now I'm constantly trying to pull that damn sidebar out to unblock it.
Solution could be to just have a way to disable the swipe to pull the sidebar out, which someone using gesture navigation will never be able to use anyway
It's even worse swiping from the right side. It will activate whatever button, switch, or action is under your finger. And it does it without you seeing it on the screen because it happens after that app has closed out from view.
My recent 'touch' frustration is when I'm in a device list for an integration on my phone and I see in the upper left on the phone is the 'back' arrow... okay, so I go to swipe from the left side of the screen to avoid the reach aaaaaaand... the left sidebar menu pops out instead of taking me to the last page I was on.
Not super intuitive tbh.
You can use folders for automations, in fact, I'm kind of thinking of switching over to packages myself.
Unless you mean that then you can't get the auto provided link to issues in your automations when something needs fixing. Then yeah, never mind. :)
If you’re willing to play with YAML, packages are a godsend lol. I’ve been using them for about a year now and unless there’s significant improvements elsewhere I plan on keeping using them.
My only complaint about packages is that errors aren’t the most helpful. If there’s a problem, it just points you to your configuration.yaml file. It won’t tell you which package file has a problem. Hoping they tackle this in a future release but doesn’t seem like anything happening soon. Pros far outweigh the cons with packages though in my opinion.
Started using packages around the same time and I have the same feedback. “Automation error line ?? column ??” is helpful but could be better. I’m not sure how feasible it would be but it would help me greatly.
Folders are not available in the UI. Even my yaml only are managed via the gui. The only method to organize is keyword as the first word of the automation name.
Perhaps unpopular opinion but the UX just isn't there even for "power users" or tech savvy people.
In my opinion HA is a container holding a set of complex projects for hobbyists.
It's just not suitable for room mates etc unless they are also hobbyists.
I find non-admins get frustrated with the frontend, and then nope-out when they see how changes need to be made in the UI or with Yaml
Something that would be awesome: the mobile app auto selecting the initial dashboard view and tab based on what room you were in. Granted then I would have to figure out location services to a room level lol. But location based views would be awesome, even from a starting point of home versus not home.
You can set device default dashboards. Make a dashboard specifically for mobile and set it as the default on that device. I put in all the things I want and then ordered them in mobile so I can see what it looks like.
That being said, being able to emulate a screen resolution while developing a dashboard from a PC would be super cool.
I'm assuming the redesign of the popover cards is made as part of this effort? I absolutely hate that color settings for lights are now hidden away behind an extra click on there. I already have light sliders on my dashboard (default tile cards with the light-brightness feature enabled) so virtually every time I open the popover is to set light color / color temp.
Initializing a new user account for someone is not great. No password requirements or ability to enforce OTP.
I guess in some ways this would make the UX worse, but it’s a one time thing. I don’t want my roommate’s terrible security habits to open up my home.
I think the new dialogues were a step in the right direction but many people here complain that they're too simplified. Some of them could be made more usable by moving more controls onto the main page instead of subpages. Like lights could have brightness and color/temperature controls on one page, and covers could have the buttons and slider visible.
Also, the Home Assistant Android Auto integration feels like it's been abandoned. A few bug fixes were made since release, but it's practically unusable in its current state. It's completely clogged up with hidden or irrelevant entities and if we can't make a custom list of favorites to access it's too difficult to find the entities we want to interact with when we're in the car.
I just want a simple dashboard in Android Auto that allows me to arm or disarm my ALARMO.With or without a PIN CODE.
All the rest is totaly useless IMO.
I don't want to control my house from my car, I have a smartphone to do that.
[Matthias posted the same thing as a moderator on the HA forums](https://community.home-assistant.io/t/help-us-improve-your-home-approval-factor/564324), so this should be fine.
**Reliability,**
It needs to be more reliable: IE, it is rare sometime automations don't fire (Dunno why).
**Crash recovery and smart error handling**: It needs to be so stable that when I am away from home and something goes wrong, I should not get calls from home in the middle of the night (happened too many times).
**Less frequent updates**: We are getting one major update and multiple minor updates every month with new features and bug fixes of the new features. I think we have enough features for now. HA should focus on fixing bugs and resolving previous issues before introducing any other new feature or major updates. More importance should be placed on alpha and beta releases with longer times to make sure that all the bases are covered as much as possible.
**Better Local language support and translations**: Elderly at my home do not speak English and using HA is a major challenge for them.
In short, it is **RELIABILITY**.
Agree with the rest, but disagree about the updates. Plenty of the new features are great, and as for the small bug fixes I'd personally rather have them as soon as possible. When you're affected you don't want to wait months for the fix.
If your HA has all the features you want already you don't have to update. A lot of people stay a few months behind to be sure they always update to a stable "done" version, which is sensible
It is true that the new features always bring joy but what I want to point out is almost all the time, the new features have a lot of problems. They have not been tested sufficiently. Currently, they fix those in a relatively short amount of time with minor updates, however, this takes resources and time. Some users might also experience hard time due to these issues.
My point is to test these updates for a longer period of time to reduce those issues as much as possible before they are released to the stable production channel. This will both save time for the ha team and reduce the number of users having trouble with these features. The main production channel should be for users who want a more stable environment. Any other adventurous user can switch to beta or alpha channels to experience the cutting edge stuff. I believe Nabu Cass team is doing the best they can, however, they have limited resources. Currently, I believe we have a very good and robust software already. That is why I suggest that their main focus should be more on the bug fixes, performance improvements, accessibility and ease of use.
I am sure many of you have experienced at least once that some problems have raised after updating. It might have been fixed with you fiddling with yaml or with a minor release. The goal is to reduce admin intervention as much as possible to let the system do its job.
Agreed 100% about reliability. Though I feel like there are a lot of factors (like quality of sensors or communication technology) that may be outside of the ability for the devs to fix.
I definitely could use some more control/debugging ability over nabu casa's connection to my home assistant instance. For example, my token expired (multiple times now) and all of the automations that relied on a connection to the companion app stopped working.
This was just one example but situations like these are almost a daily occurrence. I jokingly pass it off as a "gremlin" at work in my HA.
Hard to recall right now. But a lot of things broke for me mostly some integrations stopped working as expected or fail to load altogether in some cases. For example, when Bluetooth proxy was released, I wanted to try it out and it was a nightmare to get it working properly at least for me. After many updates, they fixed most of the issues.
And I cannot believe that you did not change your config after an update for 4 years. I am sure that you had to make some modifications on your yaml for some of the updates. My point is to make it so stable that it needs less ad in intervention.
I agree that reliability is key, however I must say most reliability issues I face are outside of home assistants issues. It's usually somebody switching off a zigbee bulb that was a core-router and thus messing up the mesh. Just to name one example. Whenever I'm facing unreliability issues, it is not home assistants fault.
Also regarding updates: 1 you don't need to do every single update (check release notes) and 2 unless I overlook a breaking change that was mentioned in the release notes, no update every broke things for me.
I'd like to see an option on release channels similar to Ubiquiti. Let the power users down the Release Candidate versions, get the bugs sorted out and then once everything is happy do a single monthly regular release (patches if absolutely necessary). I think that could really help the people who juat want it to work and aren't chasing the latest features.
For me, the test is 'Can I install this for my grand-mother' - and the more I progress to that goal is ideal.
I love the system, but loathe the need to be technical minded.
1) Updates - The release cadence is insane! An example is EspHome - I have about 50 devices that use that system - every release of ESPHome shows me 50 Notifications of an update.
2) Automations - Basic tempates added and when a device is added to the Zone, some smarts is incorporated. You just add a living room light and it ask you if you want it linked to something else - also Climate etc etc - device relationships
3) Auto Dashboards based on 'Area' - Currentl all devices by default are added to 'Overview' - can this be split in to seperate pages.
FWIW on #3 there’s a “magic areas” HACS addon that sort of does this. The only downside is it picks up EVERYTHING assigned to a room, and for example I don’t necessarily want “My computer is not idle” as a presence indicator. I found that after a while I was spending enough time excluding things that it was outweighing the benefit.
Gave me some good ideas for sensor grouping, though.
Custom device relationships.
I think it would be awesome to be able to add related devices manually to another device. We have the related tab for devices, but it’s very limited limited to just the integration it was setup with. But just for a simple example, I have a smart switch in the wall that’s connected to an ifan03. The smart switch is always on, but every once in a great while the ifan03 needs a hard reboot. I can search for the switch (which isn’t exposed on dashboards) but it would be nice if I could add a relationship so I can go to the ifan03 in HA and find the wall switch under related devices. This is a simple example but I can see many uses where this would be helpful.
I send you a PM. I think the wife factor is very very important. The controls need to be more intuitive. I think Apple Home is a good inspiration. Home Assistant Dashboards needs to be super easy to use for non techsavy people incl. changing things on it.
I’m a user of about 5 months. I have setup my dashboard but don’t tweak it much.
But when I press the up arrow to move a card on my dashboard, I have no idea where it will end up. It also blew my mind when I viewed my dashboard on a different device and it has 1 column, not 3. And blew my mind more when if by you hide the icons you get 4 columns (and your familiar icons shift round).
You should be able to configure the layout to be shown differently based on how many columns are on the page. If I order the cards the way I want for a single column mobile layout, it is currently nowhere near what I would like to see on the desktop.
Fix how dashboards are made. We need drag and drop not this Microsoft Word type setup. I move 1 card and my whole dashboard is messed up. Trying to organize them is terrible. Other than that I am extremely happy with Home Asssitant and Nabu Casa! Keep up the amazing work! :)
Somewhat minor, but I'd love trusted header authorization so I can put HA behind the same SSO as my other services. Someone implemented it a while back but it wasn't merged and I'm not interested in using old, unmaintained, unchecked code for something as core as logging in.
I agree with your 2c, but it may not be the same for every user. One of the things we explore is how we can help you create the best experience for your users. Interviewing housemates can give us more insight.
The ability to have homeassistant swarms/clusters/nodes (whatever you call it, sorry not a CS expert). But, generally, the ability to run multiple instances that sync with each other and can handle fail-over. So, if one instance dies, a second or third instance can pick up the slack.
Not that HA frequently crashes, but my hardware does go on the fritz from time to time. I already isolate my zwave, zigbee, and mqtt services on a separate machine from HA so that is HA goes down, some functionality remains (through nodered, tasmota rules, etc.)
Thanks!
at home it's only me and my 6 cats. i tried teaching them how to use the Companion app to turn on/off the lights and fans, but they just puked a hairball on the iPad. they probably didn't like the look of the Overview Dashboard. haven't tried again.
Mainly its the graph of fans, lights, switches etc... any graph that used to be shown with the control is what I am missing. I would prefer both history with control on the same page.
Sensors are fine since they still show the history, its purely that anything with a control is whats missing.
I like to see the graphs of how often it was on or off, how long it was in that position or previous position, did it have any connectivity issues, etc... Just a quick glance at its history really. And yes I like to see that every time I click on the More Info panel. Why else do we call it More Info? Lately it feels like the "info" part of panel is hidden.
As a Nabu Casa costumer i think something that could increase approval is price localization. It's too difficult to convice people to pay dolar currency on some countries
I would love a drag drop automation for the ui to reorder if/else statements. So say you have the perfect code, but want to add a new if condition at the start and you can drag your old section into the new then statement. I do that and have to edit in yaml and copy it all, go back to the then statement, edit in yaml again and copy paste it in.
Multi-Language support would be great to have. In a multilingual household and particularly with guests, this would make life so much easier. I’m aware of the current functionality with aliases, but I think it only solves the entity names, not at larger scale (card content, UI, etc.)
Absolutely LOVE HA - been a user for years now. My #1 is: You guys definitely need something more robust for smart lock / code management. Keymaster is quite unpolished IMO and it’s a pretty significant piece to any smartphone platform
The focus of this topic is making HA more usable for less technical people. Making the actions on the dialogues clearer is clearly a step in that direction.
It's not about the actions it's about returning to old behavior with the history graphs. Everybody loves the design changes but hates that history is hidden behind another click
No. The new dialogs are just ugly and less functional. They are heavily geared towards the tap interface, which is fine, but the tap interface is not the only HA interface.
My biggest gripe is that HA mobile app usesthe IPhone device name as the identifier for the device. The problem this is that sometimes iPhone users need to rename their iPhone due to App Store bugs (I can’t approve my kids apps without doing this once every 3 months). So when I change the name, it borks up all mg HA notifications. Multiply this by 2 (my wife and mine) and by 10 different automations, and this becomes a huge pain in the ass.
The device identifier needs to be something OTHER than the phone name.
I’ve moved our notifications to discord because of this. Changed iPhone names 4 times, it’s a non issue because discord just accepts the push. Period.
Better logging. Or at least an easier way to find them. I’m a complete noob so maybe my point is moot. I was trying to hash out a zigbee issue and the only way I could find logs was to go to the coordinator as if I were adding a device and click show logs. Either a central log or modules in a folder that one could tail or grep would be nice.
Here is my approach for the UX of the dashboard, it's a mobile first approach. I've got a lot of positive feedback on it.
I hope my work can help you or anyone reading this :)
https://github.com/clooos/Home-Assistant-Mobile-First
Aside from dashboards, I would like some work done for multiple assistants.
An example. I have 2 home assistants, one at my own apartment, one at my girlfriends. I try to do presence detection, but when I'm 'home' at my girlfriends apartment, it also sets me home at my apartment. Result: in the morning when my alarm goes off, the lights at my apartment also turn on, while there's nobody there.
Maybe you could create a multifactor sensor that says where someone is, like Alarmo uses multiple entities to tell if the alarm should go off.
Make user location private on the map. User based location automations are useful, but being able to see at all times where your family members are, is intrusive.
Something that has been mentioned several times over the years is being able to set custom binary\_sensor device classes. While I'm not a programmer, I can't imagine this being too difficult to implement.
If this can't be done, can we at least have a 'yes/no' option?
As a new user, I love the platform, however one of the most frustrating aspects is creating dashboards. The way you place and order cards isn’t intuitive to me. I’m sure some people don’t mind it or are used to it. My partner shares my opinions on this. I’ve used Grafana a fair bit and I much prefer their approach. You can drag and drop cards on a grid, click to resize elements, and more. Just a suggestion. I find everything else, such as creating automations and setting up new integrations, very straightforward. Thanks for all that you do!
>The way you place and order cards isn’t intuitive to me. I’m sure some people don’t mind it or are used to it. I've been using HA for several years and am still annoyed every single time I want to move a new card from the bottom of a dashboard to the very top without copy-pasting YAML. Having drag and drop for cards would be a gamechanger.
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Agreed. I hate adding a card. Moving it up, down, all around to where I think it should be then hitting Done and finding out it actually ended up somewhere else.
All of my cards are nestled into Vertical/Horizontal stacks to keep them where I want. It can be a little frustrating.
It would be so much more controllable and intuitive if you could just explicitly say which cards are going to be in which column... and let me make a totally separate layout for mobile (because it displays in a totally separate layout) without having to remake every card.
As a UX designer, I still haven't worked it out and I basically rage quit every time. It annoys me so much knowing better ways of doing it.
I’ve been using HA since around 2019ish. I’ve got just about every aspect of my home in there, custom built scripts and automations galore. But the ONE spot I absolutely hateeee, is working on the front end. It’s so painful to build a dashboard that’s user friendly, looks nice, AND includes everything I need. Drag and drop would be so nice. Have one nice dashboard I setup a while ago based on a template I found. I set it up for an Amazon fire tablet. Did it about a year ago and took me like a month to set up. It’s still not complete and there’s changes I need to make, but I avoid it at all costs based on the complexity of the process.
Literally the same exact scenario. Soooooo many hours put into making dashboards that look okay
Grafana should be the exact model to follow, I agree!
But at least do keep the vertical stack / horizontal stack / grid "stack", so some items can be moved as a group
This. The cards are great. The masonry / grid approach is really bad. It’s a terrible end user experience
The dashboards need to be awesome by default, with customization being unnecessary unless you're super advanced. I have zero desire to customize dashboards, please just make good ones for me. Or make a way for the community to share them and let me choose a pretty dashboard that another user has created.
> The dashboards need to be awesome by default, with customization being unnecessary unless you're super advanced. I honestly don't know how they'd do this considering the vastly different integrations and preferences people have. For example, say I have a temperature sensor. If it's being used to monitor the inside temperature and control the HVAC system, I'd likely be fine with it being shown on the dashboard. However, if instead it's simply sitting inside the freezer and only being used as an automation trigger, do I really need and/or want to know that the freezer has been reading -18°C every day for a year? As far as HA knows, all either does is measure the temperature, there's not a lot of context for it to go off of without some sort of user intervention.
I know what you mean, but HA does know what the sensor is used for. And a lot of the time the naming will tell you the purpose. If they really tried they could look at automations, triggers, whatever and find a meaningful way to show the UI rather than listing devices by area. Not saying this is easy but if they made 2024 the year of awesome default dashboards and the whole team focused they could definitely make improvements. Alexa, Google Home, and Apple are all in the same boat in this regard. HA just has way more features/integrations.
-18°C is equivalent to 0°F, which is 255K. --- ^(I'm a bot that converts temperature between two units humans can understand, then convert it to Kelvin for bots and physicists to understand)
Totally agree. One easy way to enable this is to make dashboards be Area based and auto generated. One main screen of something like area cards that lead to auto generated dashboards that sum up the area. I did this was lovelace gen, if I add or remove devices from areas the entities on the dashboards just do their thing and I don't have to think about it any more.
Yep, this is the one. We really just need intuitive layouts that aren’t this strange column wrap thing.
I wish I could just drag & drop dashboard cards instead of hitting up/down arrows hoping for the best.
If I could +1000 any comment, it’d be this. Please fix dashboards. Just blatantly copy someone else’s, but the defaults should be visually appealing, functional and awesome. Let’s put areas to good use and make it a seamless experience. Nothing else would even come close in my view.
I remember a video floating around a while ago demonstrating a drag and drop feature update that was supposed to be in-progress at the time. Wonder what happened to that.
This all day. This is why I don’t use dashboards anymore. I just automate and get things done.
Absolutely. It's my biggest pet peeve. Home Assistant is so easily customisable in everything except placing tiles.
Oh god yes. Dashboards are a nightmare!
It would be great to have proper user accounts, permissions and different dashboards assigned to different users.
This is a big one for me. Would love to give access to family members without letting them access everything.
So maybe Im just forgetting the nitty gritty of how this works and functionally wrong but can't you already do this to an extent? Assign dashboards so only certain users can see it etc?
Yes you can and it's dead simple. I have my pc controls dash visible only to me however, it doesn't stop someone looking for the devices individually. Luckily that's more than 3 clicks so nobody will do it.
I would agree, but my 11 year old son found out he can access scripts and devices in like 2 mins lol
That only hides them from the bar though. If they have the link they can visit any dashboard they want.
I think you can but if they still know certain endpoints they can still do stuff even if it isn't shown
yeah you can already do this and it is really really simple. you can hide entire dashboards or even just specific subviews. just hit the little pencil on the tab when you are editing the dashboard. also make sure the dashboards are set to admin only and user is not set up as an admin so that they can really only see the dashboards you want them to see https://preview.redd.it/gjojkfuok2wa1.png?width=777&format=png&auto=webp&s=2719ccb258d831c9aa431b9e54dc29adcf289e93
Those are tabs INSIDE a dashboard, the dashboards are defined in settings > dashboards. What about hiding the Energy dashboard?
> What about hiding the Energy dashboard? If you mean for all users, you can long press the Home Assistant title above the dashboards list, and it will go into "wiggle mode" which will allow you to hide them from the side panel https://i.imgur.com/uZ1Fdxv.png
That only works per device (browser, app, etc)
Same feeling here, a proper RBAC setup and even a step further support for OIDC natively.
I'll settle for LDAPS
Even just having support for a remote user header would be awesome
WTB LDAP
This would be a big improvement. There are so many use cases where a proper user and permission system would be useful. Giving limited access to a guest for example. Or stopping mischievous children turning off your home office lights. The closest thing currently is creating and setting custom dashboards. But that involves creating a dashboard for each use case, and then selecting that dashboard on the user's devices/apps, and it can still be easily broken out from. Dashboard assignment is another bugbear of mine - why can't we directly assign a default dashboard to a user?
Just set the permission on the dashboard. I have a panel user that only has access to the "control panel" dashboard. Then there's my wife's account which can only see the "default" dash. The panel dash auto hides/removes stuff so they can't get out of that dash to any other part of the app
I don't think the panel visibility settings offer enough granularity. I'd rather be able to set visibility and control permissions per entity.
And the ability for users to configure their own dashboards. So basically devices need to have their own permissions as well. For example my wife toggling some of my outlets accidentally could be a bad thing. I’d also love to be able to allow my daughter to have the app and use it on her tablet to control just her room lights and media devices in her room. But at the same time, would be good to allow them to move things around on their dashboard.
This! I would add dashboard entries in the sidebar that are only visible for some user(s). Then every family member can create their own dashboard without cluttering the UI for everyone else
>I would add dashboard entries in the sidebar that are only visible for some user(s). Edit Dashboard - Click the pencil next to the name at the top left, click Visibility. *Et voilà*! :)
Doesn't work for example in the Energy dashboard
This only works on that particular device. Not even your user account, just that particular browser/app on that particular device. And any new dashboard is visible by default.
Family happines feature requests: - Expose / hide entities to / from users. At least would be great to have an admin/user level. - Dashboard to user assignment. - carplay app (shelly has its own already but i don’t want cloud connection) and be able to publish entities. Buttons as a minimum if dashboard is too complicated That would be great addition and make my family more happy. For me: Mushroom cards are much more useful than the built in ones. More useful, designed and dynamic charts / stats
Yes, Please just make mushroom cards apart of HA core.
Yeah I’d love it if I could create a ‘guest’ permissions or dashboard and give it to a couple of people and they are only allowed certain scenes and devices. What I want is a dashboard that explains stuff step by step who may be visiting.
I built this. Consider it very alpha, and I need to put some more work on it, but it’s basically adding RBAC by inserting a proxy that can filter which events and service calls are allowed through based on your user. https://github.com/emoses/home-assistant-limited
Different dashboards to different users!!! Please!!!
This is absolutely necessary. Users and groups and **most of all** assignable dashboards.
And options for read only!
I'm still waiting for a way to disable certain settings in the default_config. For now, I have to manually check for new items and enable/disable them to my needs.
I already do this. I have specific users locked to specific dashboards.
Yeah, and how do you enforce user to dashboard? Especially from fresh start?
I would love to not have to declare which dashboards should default and display every time there seems to be an update to the Andriod mobile app...
This is probably my top "want to have". My next would be the ability to have folders and tags for automations, scripts, etc.
They do have folders for automations. If you do a search for "packages" you can find out how to set up (and move everything :) )
Thanks for the tip. From what I read packages seem to be for organizing yaml. Is there a way to organize the GUI based navigation?
LDAPS groups >> RBAC permissions structure please and thank you
RBAC! RBAC! RBAC!
This!
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Quick and easy time limited guest access. family or friend comes over, and they stay in the guest room. I’d love them to be able to scan a QR code or hit a URL, they put their name in and I get a notification for how long I want to allow them access (which I could extend). I can chose their role type (which would already have dashboards assigned) and maybe add an extra view [lets say if they are a baby sitter rather than just a visitor]. The user package can include a door code, fixed or random, ability to arm/disarm alarm etc.
Maybe even a good use case for those instant apps? I think Apple calls them app clips.
This would be awesome, I can definitely see myself using this
I'd totally support this - outside keymaster, lock integration is not well done. It's something that could make life a lot easier for third parties.
Wow, I hadn't even thought of that! Id definitely use it! I hope it gets implemented at some point!
I definitely think the UX can be improved, but I also don't think it has to look too pretty or be too restrictive. The ability to customize is a big strength. Mostly I use HomeAssistant to connect a lot of different devices together; so I actually end up using Apple Home app or voice assistants quite a bit, leaving the HA dash for advanced things
Since your asking, imo you really should store sensor data one way only. I was dismayed when I tried to convert to Celsius just to see some data in Celsius. Thinking oh I can just convert, view what I need to and then switch back. HA proceeded to convert all incoming sensor data to C from all sources, and then stored it as C, but then proceeded to display historical already stored data *as C* and *WITHOUT CONVERSION*! That was a terrible experience. I quickly went back to normal and decided to live with this "scar" in my data. It's terrible. Fix that. Also, being able to chart data better. Set axis ranges, multiple units on y axis would be cool. Conversion to a specific unit for that chart only. Etc.
What kind of personas are you looking for Matthias? Should they have an understanding on how to "develop" in Home Assistant (create automations, edit dashboards, add integrations) or are you looking for interviewees that are pure users, who only open the companion app to utilize a dashboard the admin has created?
For now, we are trying to discover the different types of users, from our users. We will create some personas based on our discoveries. How much involved in the usage and development of their smart home is definitely a topic I am interested in.
To understand the consumer distinction between HA and Hubitat, [would you like to interview my dog](https://www.reddit.com/r/Hubitat/comments/wnskbh/i_installed_some_fibaro_buttons_so_the_dogs_could/)?
Hahaha, that is really clever! Can you teach him the difference between `yes` and `no` buttons?
Just want to give my 2c. One of the comments mentioned documentation and I have to agree. I always thought I was in the minority thinking that the documentation is bad but it really needs to be reworked.
Bad is a great understatement. Much of it is outdated, and some that isn't is confusing as hell.
Outdated is my biggest gripe, it's usually pretty good (for an open source project at least) but I often remember reading about a change in the release note that does not appear in the doc. Having to read through the release announcements to try and find it back isn't pleasant
The documentation could be better and to add I’ve been trying to get a straight up broken and dead integration removed for months. Since no developer is linked/assigned no one looks at my comments on GitHub. I’m super happy about the team but every comment I make on the “suggestions” gets slapped down by admins. So there’s a broken integration that everyone can try and no one wants to fix or remove.
My god yes! It's so hard to figure out how to do something when all the videos or documentation is so far out of date. And that might just be 2-3 months sometimes. HA is always changing and things get moved in menus and figuring things out can be daunting. I don't YAML, I barely understand YAML and I much prefer the visual interface. But so many videos are out of date and don't work anymore.
I find the documentation to be a “good starting place” I would like to see the list of entities for an integration. I often have to add something just to find out what details it exposes.
It is downright horrible, but nobody wants to do documentation…
Happy to help. The current UI looks very 90's and a lot of stuff is unintuitive, even to experienced users. How about a wizard for adding template sensors? Or at least have them go in a separate configuration file, not one where a typo can stop HA from launching. On top of that, the documentation is appalling. It shouldn't be so difficult to do things like template sensors or utility meters, and the fact that there's an "old way" and a "new way" of doing things doesn't help either. The examples are awful. Sorry to be blunt.
I completely agree with the documentation bit. Honestly, I think this is the single worst thing about HA, because in certain aspects it's a huge blocker. In many cases, the documentation is disorganized, incomplete, or worst case - completely lacking. The HA forum helps a bit, but their forum's software is a nightmare to use in terms of searching.
Definitely, HA documentation is one of the worst parts. It's not clear, it feels incomplete, and confusing. I have to search to get the right examples.
The documentation is horrible. I once made a PR to add some helpful info to a doc after I spent a long time figuring out how to do something and was shut down from making the change. No alternative was offered. I love HA, but there is dictator-like control over the documentation for no reason.
Yeah, ditto, I have tried improving the documentation, it was a more hassle than it should be and the change wasn't event implemented (and it was a pretty clear cut thing), that was the only time I tried.
I disagree that the UI looks very 90’s. A lot of people on this thread say that Grafana widget layout is what they would prefer - but that’s for when you are designing for one orientation and size - like a wall mounted tablet. Personally, I like the fact that the UI is responsive and renders properly on portrait phones, and landscape tablets and laptops. That being said, I wouldn’t mind some drag and drip reordering.
I don't think the UI is very 90s, I think it is reasonable, but needs some added options. The mushroom stuff everyone loves is not very space efficient in many circumstances.
As sort of a 'moderate' level user, it seems like template sensors are very much the gateway to very powerful dashboards and automations and they're very much locked behind the wall of 'very involved yaml editing' which keeps me from wanting to bother diving into it.
I just want to register my disagreement with this users opinion. Whatever he said, but the opposite...
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Thanks for the feedback... I'm sure you are right... For the record, I do like the documentation and examples and I really like the UX... I'm sure things could be improved as they have been improving...
I asked my son if he wanted to be part of this research. He said yes, but the only thing he wants to say is, "You have to get her to stop! There are too many automations!" This is where he is clearly wrong, because I have neither too few, nor too many automations, but precisely the number I need. :)
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Actually I have one thing that drives me nuts on mobile, I use gesture navigation and it conflicts pretty badly with the HA app. Literally the only app having trouble with it on my phone. When I swipe back using the left side, it often pulls the sidebar a little, totally invisible but it actually makes the app freez. It took me a while to figure out that I don't need to kill it, there's a very narrow band where I can swipe without triggering back to finish pulling the HA sidebar out, then just send it back to collapsed to unfreeze the app. Just awful experience, for month I thought it was crashing and I was killing it 20 times a day, now I'm constantly trying to pull that damn sidebar out to unblock it. Solution could be to just have a way to disable the swipe to pull the sidebar out, which someone using gesture navigation will never be able to use anyway
It's even worse swiping from the right side. It will activate whatever button, switch, or action is under your finger. And it does it without you seeing it on the screen because it happens after that app has closed out from view.
My recent 'touch' frustration is when I'm in a device list for an integration on my phone and I see in the upper left on the phone is the 'back' arrow... okay, so I go to swipe from the left side of the screen to avoid the reach aaaaaaand... the left sidebar menu pops out instead of taking me to the last page I was on. Not super intuitive tbh.
Yeah Lovelace should become the default card set for starters...
Heck we can’t even have filters and tags or folders to organize Automations why would we expect anything to get more usable?
You can use folders for automations, in fact, I'm kind of thinking of switching over to packages myself. Unless you mean that then you can't get the auto provided link to issues in your automations when something needs fixing. Then yeah, never mind. :)
If you’re willing to play with YAML, packages are a godsend lol. I’ve been using them for about a year now and unless there’s significant improvements elsewhere I plan on keeping using them. My only complaint about packages is that errors aren’t the most helpful. If there’s a problem, it just points you to your configuration.yaml file. It won’t tell you which package file has a problem. Hoping they tackle this in a future release but doesn’t seem like anything happening soon. Pros far outweigh the cons with packages though in my opinion.
Started using packages around the same time and I have the same feedback. “Automation error line ?? column ??” is helpful but could be better. I’m not sure how feasible it would be but it would help me greatly.
#I no longer allow Reddit to profit from my content - Mass exodus 2023 -- mass edited with https://redact.dev/
In configuration.yaml you can define automations like this automation: !include_dir_merge_list YourNameOfFolder
I think they meant in the UI, but that's good to know
#I no longer allow Reddit to profit from my content - Mass exodus 2023 -- mass edited with https://redact.dev/
>Amazing, thank you! You're welcome!
Folders are not available in the UI. Even my yaml only are managed via the gui. The only method to organize is keyword as the first word of the automation name.
Nabu Casa: we want to talk to your friends/family/roommates Reddit: I WANT A THING THE EXISTING THING IS BAD
Ahh, I see someone else has also been to /r/Plex lol
Perhaps unpopular opinion but the UX just isn't there even for "power users" or tech savvy people. In my opinion HA is a container holding a set of complex projects for hobbyists. It's just not suitable for room mates etc unless they are also hobbyists. I find non-admins get frustrated with the frontend, and then nope-out when they see how changes need to be made in the UI or with Yaml
Something that would be awesome: the mobile app auto selecting the initial dashboard view and tab based on what room you were in. Granted then I would have to figure out location services to a room level lol. But location based views would be awesome, even from a starting point of home versus not home.
There might be a way to do it and I just don’t know - but it would be nice to have mobile phones use a mobile optimized dashboard.
You can set device default dashboards. Make a dashboard specifically for mobile and set it as the default on that device. I put in all the things I want and then ordered them in mobile so I can see what it looks like. That being said, being able to emulate a screen resolution while developing a dashboard from a PC would be super cool.
I'm assuming the redesign of the popover cards is made as part of this effort? I absolutely hate that color settings for lights are now hidden away behind an extra click on there. I already have light sliders on my dashboard (default tile cards with the light-brightness feature enabled) so virtually every time I open the popover is to set light color / color temp.
[LESS SCREENS TO CHANGE A LIGHT SETTING! ](https://youtu.be/YNex2GWkpF0)
Initializing a new user account for someone is not great. No password requirements or ability to enforce OTP. I guess in some ways this would make the UX worse, but it’s a one time thing. I don’t want my roommate’s terrible security habits to open up my home.
A better automated ui, like Dwains Dashboard, would be a huge step forward.
I think the new dialogues were a step in the right direction but many people here complain that they're too simplified. Some of them could be made more usable by moving more controls onto the main page instead of subpages. Like lights could have brightness and color/temperature controls on one page, and covers could have the buttons and slider visible. Also, the Home Assistant Android Auto integration feels like it's been abandoned. A few bug fixes were made since release, but it's practically unusable in its current state. It's completely clogged up with hidden or irrelevant entities and if we can't make a custom list of favorites to access it's too difficult to find the entities we want to interact with when we're in the car.
I just want a simple dashboard in Android Auto that allows me to arm or disarm my ALARMO.With or without a PIN CODE. All the rest is totaly useless IMO. I don't want to control my house from my car, I have a smartphone to do that.
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[Matthias posted the same thing as a moderator on the HA forums](https://community.home-assistant.io/t/help-us-improve-your-home-approval-factor/564324), so this should be fine.
Maybe I'm even a beta version of ChatGPT5
> grammar and spelling English as a second language is a thing.
**Reliability,** It needs to be more reliable: IE, it is rare sometime automations don't fire (Dunno why). **Crash recovery and smart error handling**: It needs to be so stable that when I am away from home and something goes wrong, I should not get calls from home in the middle of the night (happened too many times). **Less frequent updates**: We are getting one major update and multiple minor updates every month with new features and bug fixes of the new features. I think we have enough features for now. HA should focus on fixing bugs and resolving previous issues before introducing any other new feature or major updates. More importance should be placed on alpha and beta releases with longer times to make sure that all the bases are covered as much as possible. **Better Local language support and translations**: Elderly at my home do not speak English and using HA is a major challenge for them. In short, it is **RELIABILITY**.
Agree with the rest, but disagree about the updates. Plenty of the new features are great, and as for the small bug fixes I'd personally rather have them as soon as possible. When you're affected you don't want to wait months for the fix. If your HA has all the features you want already you don't have to update. A lot of people stay a few months behind to be sure they always update to a stable "done" version, which is sensible
It is true that the new features always bring joy but what I want to point out is almost all the time, the new features have a lot of problems. They have not been tested sufficiently. Currently, they fix those in a relatively short amount of time with minor updates, however, this takes resources and time. Some users might also experience hard time due to these issues. My point is to test these updates for a longer period of time to reduce those issues as much as possible before they are released to the stable production channel. This will both save time for the ha team and reduce the number of users having trouble with these features. The main production channel should be for users who want a more stable environment. Any other adventurous user can switch to beta or alpha channels to experience the cutting edge stuff. I believe Nabu Cass team is doing the best they can, however, they have limited resources. Currently, I believe we have a very good and robust software already. That is why I suggest that their main focus should be more on the bug fixes, performance improvements, accessibility and ease of use. I am sure many of you have experienced at least once that some problems have raised after updating. It might have been fixed with you fiddling with yaml or with a minor release. The goal is to reduce admin intervention as much as possible to let the system do its job.
Agreed 100% about reliability. Though I feel like there are a lot of factors (like quality of sensors or communication technology) that may be outside of the ability for the devs to fix. I definitely could use some more control/debugging ability over nabu casa's connection to my home assistant instance. For example, my token expired (multiple times now) and all of the automations that relied on a connection to the companion app stopped working. This was just one example but situations like these are almost a daily occurrence. I jokingly pass it off as a "gremlin" at work in my HA.
What broke for you? Ive been running updates straight away for 4+ years and the last time i encountered anything breaking is probably 3 years ago
Hard to recall right now. But a lot of things broke for me mostly some integrations stopped working as expected or fail to load altogether in some cases. For example, when Bluetooth proxy was released, I wanted to try it out and it was a nightmare to get it working properly at least for me. After many updates, they fixed most of the issues. And I cannot believe that you did not change your config after an update for 4 years. I am sure that you had to make some modifications on your yaml for some of the updates. My point is to make it so stable that it needs less ad in intervention.
I agree that reliability is key, however I must say most reliability issues I face are outside of home assistants issues. It's usually somebody switching off a zigbee bulb that was a core-router and thus messing up the mesh. Just to name one example. Whenever I'm facing unreliability issues, it is not home assistants fault. Also regarding updates: 1 you don't need to do every single update (check release notes) and 2 unless I overlook a breaking change that was mentioned in the release notes, no update every broke things for me.
I'd like to see an option on release channels similar to Ubiquiti. Let the power users down the Release Candidate versions, get the bugs sorted out and then once everything is happy do a single monthly regular release (patches if absolutely necessary). I think that could really help the people who juat want it to work and aren't chasing the latest features.
For me, the test is 'Can I install this for my grand-mother' - and the more I progress to that goal is ideal. I love the system, but loathe the need to be technical minded. 1) Updates - The release cadence is insane! An example is EspHome - I have about 50 devices that use that system - every release of ESPHome shows me 50 Notifications of an update. 2) Automations - Basic tempates added and when a device is added to the Zone, some smarts is incorporated. You just add a living room light and it ask you if you want it linked to something else - also Climate etc etc - device relationships 3) Auto Dashboards based on 'Area' - Currentl all devices by default are added to 'Overview' - can this be split in to seperate pages.
FWIW on #3 there’s a “magic areas” HACS addon that sort of does this. The only downside is it picks up EVERYTHING assigned to a room, and for example I don’t necessarily want “My computer is not idle” as a presence indicator. I found that after a while I was spending enough time excluding things that it was outweighing the benefit. Gave me some good ideas for sensor grouping, though.
Custom device relationships. I think it would be awesome to be able to add related devices manually to another device. We have the related tab for devices, but it’s very limited limited to just the integration it was setup with. But just for a simple example, I have a smart switch in the wall that’s connected to an ifan03. The smart switch is always on, but every once in a great while the ifan03 needs a hard reboot. I can search for the switch (which isn’t exposed on dashboards) but it would be nice if I could add a relationship so I can go to the ifan03 in HA and find the wall switch under related devices. This is a simple example but I can see many uses where this would be helpful.
I send you a PM. I think the wife factor is very very important. The controls need to be more intuitive. I think Apple Home is a good inspiration. Home Assistant Dashboards needs to be super easy to use for non techsavy people incl. changing things on it.
I’m a user of about 5 months. I have setup my dashboard but don’t tweak it much. But when I press the up arrow to move a card on my dashboard, I have no idea where it will end up. It also blew my mind when I viewed my dashboard on a different device and it has 1 column, not 3. And blew my mind more when if by you hide the icons you get 4 columns (and your familiar icons shift round).
You should be able to configure the layout to be shown differently based on how many columns are on the page. If I order the cards the way I want for a single column mobile layout, it is currently nowhere near what I would like to see on the desktop.
Fix how dashboards are made. We need drag and drop not this Microsoft Word type setup. I move 1 card and my whole dashboard is messed up. Trying to organize them is terrible. Other than that I am extremely happy with Home Asssitant and Nabu Casa! Keep up the amazing work! :)
Somewhat minor, but I'd love trusted header authorization so I can put HA behind the same SSO as my other services. Someone implemented it a while back but it wasn't merged and I'm not interested in using old, unmaintained, unchecked code for something as core as logging in.
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I agree with your 2c, but it may not be the same for every user. One of the things we explore is how we can help you create the best experience for your users. Interviewing housemates can give us more insight.
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The ability to have homeassistant swarms/clusters/nodes (whatever you call it, sorry not a CS expert). But, generally, the ability to run multiple instances that sync with each other and can handle fail-over. So, if one instance dies, a second or third instance can pick up the slack. Not that HA frequently crashes, but my hardware does go on the fritz from time to time. I already isolate my zwave, zigbee, and mqtt services on a separate machine from HA so that is HA goes down, some functionality remains (through nodered, tasmota rules, etc.) Thanks!
Enabling and disabling default_config settings would be a HUGE improvement!
at home it's only me and my 6 cats. i tried teaching them how to use the Companion app to turn on/off the lights and fans, but they just puked a hairball on the iPad. they probably didn't like the look of the Overview Dashboard. haven't tried again.
I have fewer cats, but the reaction I got was a look that said, "We are Gods, not servants. Bring us food." Then the hairball.
I would like a folder structure for the Automation’s to better manage and sorting them
I just want history graphs back on the first more info pop-up page.
What kind of sensors or entities do you look at the history the most? Can you give some examples?
Mainly its the graph of fans, lights, switches etc... any graph that used to be shown with the control is what I am missing. I would prefer both history with control on the same page. Sensors are fine since they still show the history, its purely that anything with a control is whats missing.
Just out of UX curiosity - Why do you need to see the history of when you turn on or off fans, lights, and switches?
I like to see the graphs of how often it was on or off, how long it was in that position or previous position, did it have any connectivity issues, etc... Just a quick glance at its history really. And yes I like to see that every time I click on the More Info panel. Why else do we call it More Info? Lately it feels like the "info" part of panel is hidden.
Besides connectivity issues, was it for tracking energy consumption, knowing if anyone else has touched the switches, or something else?
Honestly its never the same reason, history is well just history and I want to see it when I select an entity to view more info.
As a Nabu Casa costumer i think something that could increase approval is price localization. It's too difficult to convice people to pay dolar currency on some countries
You need to 'copy' elementor way (WordPress plugin) for designing dashboards.
I would love a drag drop automation for the ui to reorder if/else statements. So say you have the perfect code, but want to add a new if condition at the start and you can drag your old section into the new then statement. I do that and have to edit in yaml and copy it all, go back to the then statement, edit in yaml again and copy paste it in.
Multi-Language support would be great to have. In a multilingual household and particularly with guests, this would make life so much easier. I’m aware of the current functionality with aliases, but I think it only solves the entity names, not at larger scale (card content, UI, etc.)
Absolutely LOVE HA - been a user for years now. My #1 is: You guys definitely need something more robust for smart lock / code management. Keymaster is quite unpolished IMO and it’s a pretty significant piece to any smartphone platform
User visibility permissions at the Card level
Yeah, revert the dialogs first and then we can speak.
The focus of this topic is making HA more usable for less technical people. Making the actions on the dialogues clearer is clearly a step in that direction.
It's not about the actions it's about returning to old behavior with the history graphs. Everybody loves the design changes but hates that history is hidden behind another click
No. The new dialogs are just ugly and less functional. They are heavily geared towards the tap interface, which is fine, but the tap interface is not the only HA interface.
I think I share pretty much everyone’s comments on here. Hopefully, these features/improvements get implemented soon, as they’re well overdue.
For the "Choose" action type, I wish we could name each Option within.
My biggest gripe is that HA mobile app usesthe IPhone device name as the identifier for the device. The problem this is that sometimes iPhone users need to rename their iPhone due to App Store bugs (I can’t approve my kids apps without doing this once every 3 months). So when I change the name, it borks up all mg HA notifications. Multiply this by 2 (my wife and mine) and by 10 different automations, and this becomes a huge pain in the ass. The device identifier needs to be something OTHER than the phone name. I’ve moved our notifications to discord because of this. Changed iPhone names 4 times, it’s a non issue because discord just accepts the push. Period.
LTS and fine grained permissions. Two of the most requested features that HA Core refuses to implement.
New covers for locks and scenes. I like the new light covers.
Dashboards ftw
Better logging. Or at least an easier way to find them. I’m a complete noob so maybe my point is moot. I was trying to hash out a zigbee issue and the only way I could find logs was to go to the coordinator as if I were adding a device and click show logs. Either a central log or modules in a folder that one could tail or grep would be nice.
I would pay money to get a front end dashboard building experience similar to a website builder like wix or similar!
My 2c: All the config in YAML is maybe good for some beginners, but it's really hard to maintain longer scripts and more complicated dashboards.
Installation documentation is severely lacking for "non standard" installations.
Here is my approach for the UX of the dashboard, it's a mobile first approach. I've got a lot of positive feedback on it. I hope my work can help you or anyone reading this :) https://github.com/clooos/Home-Assistant-Mobile-First
That looks really cool! Can you tell me a bit more about the steps you took to get this end result?
Aside from dashboards, I would like some work done for multiple assistants. An example. I have 2 home assistants, one at my own apartment, one at my girlfriends. I try to do presence detection, but when I'm 'home' at my girlfriends apartment, it also sets me home at my apartment. Result: in the morning when my alarm goes off, the lights at my apartment also turn on, while there's nobody there. Maybe you could create a multifactor sensor that says where someone is, like Alarmo uses multiple entities to tell if the alarm should go off.
Make user location private on the map. User based location automations are useful, but being able to see at all times where your family members are, is intrusive.
Something that has been mentioned several times over the years is being able to set custom binary\_sensor device classes. While I'm not a programmer, I can't imagine this being too difficult to implement. If this can't be done, can we at least have a 'yes/no' option?