RFC: What are you using the old States UI for?

[balloob]

The States UI has been deprecated in Home Assistant 0.105. There has been some comments that people use this UI as a reference to see all their entities at once.

Creating this issue so that I can redirect people here from the blog post to see what use cases people have which are not covered by the states dev tool or the entity registry (with #4708 added).

[pergolafabio]

Maybe not related, but when I was working on my Lovelace design, if somehing was wrong configured, is didn't gave a parse error, but just flipped over to the states page... Not sure what's it's going todo now

[nickrout]

Maybe also not related, but I just switched over to the states ui for a bit of nostalgia.

Please junk it asap, it is effing ugly when compared to lovelace.

I do wonder though if there is confusion on the forum between the states ui and the states tab in developer tools.

[elwing00]

For me, the statesUI loads significantly faster than the states page (because I've hidden stuff probably), it also lets me see and control a new device when I haven't added it to my custom lovelace yet. Maybe if there's a way to have both a custom lovelace and the new lovelace default page (which I've yet to see because of my custom pages...)

[elmigbot]

My UI is very minimal. I don’t use it often, and it only contains a subset of entities. Instead, my automations take care of everything, which I believe is a common use case.

On the rare occasion I need to interact with an entity manually, and it’s not in my minimal interface, the States UI comes in handy. It always has everything I need. I use it so rarely, I don’t care it’s a bit disorganized, and not the prettiest.

I realize I can create an additional View that brings everything in automatically. So, I guess the States UI is just a crutch. It’s something I lean on, because I’d rather not spend time on a UI for which I hope not to use in the first place.

Maybe the answer is just to allow the all-entity lovelace View to remain functional next to the custom Views as noted above.

[iantrich]

@elmigbot but what does the UI provide that is not accessible from the Developer Tools -> States panel?

[elmigbot]

@iantrich Interaction. You can't turn on a light from the states panel.

[balloob]

You can if you press the (i) button in front of the entity ID. It will open more info.

[elmigbot]

Oh! Never noticed that. Although helpful, I don't think that tab is as user friendly as the States UI, especially on mobile. So between the two, I'll still long for the States UI (until I make my own lovelace one.)

[nickrout]

I think it is more handy as you can filter what you see.

On Fri, Feb 7, 2020, 07:16 elmigbot notifications@github.com wrote:

Oh! Never noticed that. Although helpful, I don't think that tab is as user friendly as the States UI, especially on mobile. So between the two, I'll still long for the States UI (until I make my own lovelace one.)

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[hanerd]

I find myself tending to use the states UI pretty heavily when adding new devices or tooling around with my lovelace config.

Perhaps more importantly as to why I use the states UI is why I don't use the states or entity registries.

~1) States UI automatically filters entities for me. For example, I use a lot of zwave. If I add a sensor, I look in the "zwave" for the zwave domain and I look at the badges to find the actual sensor. This is especially important if I don't know how the device will be added (zwave.homeseer) or (zwave.unknown). For the case of the unknowns, I have to find the zwave., get the node_id and then find the actual device that was entered. This is a lot of steps in the states tool. This would be relatively moot if the states panel filter handled multiple filters. It'd be even better if there were logical / collapsible groups around domains instead of just a list.~

~2) The states tool doesn't give me an easy way to expand attributes. It's all or nothing and when it's on the page scrolls for miles. When it's off, I have to scroll back to the top of the page (thus losing my spot). Even some sort of collapsible menu that opened the attributes for a single entity would be awesome.~

~3) The two items above could be resolved with the entity registry, however, the entity registry does not show the configured name so you can't find things. It's fine for media_player.spotify, but horrible for anything of which you'd have multiples. I have 35 Homeseer WD100+ entities in the entity registry that all have been painstakingly renamed, but all I see in the ER is a list of 35 Homeseer WD100+. That makes the ER completely useless to me.~

Well a ton of profanities just came out of my mouth here. To reaffirm my frustrations, I went to the ER in 105. It's changed way more than the release notes let on.

The "devices" tab handles my first two issues and the updated ER handles my last.

Oh man. "Devices" even offers to rename all sub-entities of a device when you rename it!

Death to the states UI!

EDIT:

TL;DR: Crotchety old man stuck in ways, doesn't realize new things make his life easier.

[balloob]

Have you seen device info and entity registry in 105?

[hanerd]

Have you seen device info and entity registry in 105?

I literally just did. I rescind my complaints about the entity registry.

😃

[dzungpv]

I use group for automation long time ago like this:

all_motion_sensor:
  name: All Motions
  view: true
  entities:
   - binary_sensor.motion_sensor_1
   - binary_sensor.motion_sensor_2
   - binary_sensor.motion_sensor_3
all_used_switches:
  name: All Use Switches
  view: true
  entities:
   - switch.1
   - switch.2
   - switch.3

I check when all_motion_sensor group off for about 30 minutes mean no one home and use turn_off service to turn_off some switch or light group.

So now it will remove, I think i must rewrite all it, but how easy for motion sensor group?

[iantrich]

@dzungpv groups are not being removed

[dzungpv]

@iantrich "Group Deprecated - Group configurations options, services and service options related to the old states UI are now deprecated and pending for removal in Home Assistant 0.107.0." I understand group will all remove because it is state UI element. @balloob It is right?

[nickrout]

@dzungpv Your posts are off topic for this issue.

However ONLY that part of groups that relate to the old states ui will disappear.

[markmonroy]

I've been setting up some automations and input booleans tied to Homekit sensors, and it's been useful for troubleshooting to go into the states ui and watch the input boolean switches turn on and off.

It's also helped me identify a few rogue entities with "Unknown" or null status that I wouldn't have otherwise noticed...for instance an iOS app sensor which had been superseded when I moved from the beta to the release.

Also it's just kind of fun to have a way to look at all my junk at once without explicitly including it in a Lovelace page. Cool to have it tucked away separate from the frontend.

[nickrout]

@markmonroy that is a good point, there can be advantages of "overview".

However this alleviated to some extent by being able to automatically add entities to lovelace these days. I say just add every new entity to a lovelace "everything" page.

[markmonroy]

Yeah...having some luck with auto-entities but still no way I can find to show all sensors as badges. Glances come close but aren't as useful at a..glance.

[SeanPM5]

Just a quick image explaining Developer Tools > States since these things are kinda easy to miss.

By default this page shows every entity on your system, and the information updates in real time. If you're interested in something specific you can use the "filter" fields (red boxes in my image) rather than scrolling through the entire list.

• For example if you were testing an input_boolean just type that into the "Filter entities" field to see only your input_booleans. Or even better type the name of the input_boolean to see just that one entity.
• You can also filter by state too. If you wanted to see things that might be broken you can type in "unknown" or "unavailable" into the "Filter states" field.
• And you can filter by more than one thing at a time. In my example image above I used two filters to show lights that were unavailable.

Although this page appears to be read-only at first glance, you can press the little "i" icon next to each entity to bring up the more info window where you can interact with it.

The interface is different, but you can do all of the same things as the old "States UI" from this page.

[markmonroy]

Thanks @SeanPM5, that is useful. In my particular example I was testing out a motion sensor about 20 ft away from the computer so it was handy to see the graphical sliders pop on and off; not sure if I'd be able to read the text.

Anyway, it's nitpicking, and removing it won't hamper my day-to-day experience. And I can make a maintenance tab of my Lovelace GUI that shows things in more or less the same way using the auto-entities card. It's not zero-effort like the existing tool, but we're all using this because we enjoy tinkering.

But I'll reiterate...the states-ui is kind of fun in some nerdy way. Like, if Lovelace was the front of my server rack, the states-ui is walking around to the back side to see how everything's wired together. :)

[balloob]

@markmonroy open the more info dialog from states panel and you can see the slider.

So it seems that most people use the states UI as a fallback to see all entities together with controls without having to configure a Lovelace tab with custom cards for it. Did I miss anything?

[kaijk]

I like the high density of the States UI badges. I can see 144 entities' states at once, generally for debugging purposes and can quickly scroll to the set I'm looking for. I find the lovelace Config pages, like Devices and Entities, for example, have too much white space (and states don't appear in their list views).

The dev/states page even with attributes hidden on the page don't show enough entities for my liking. I have created a page using auto-entities but have had trouble getting it to alphabetize entities correctly, and, again, there is a lot of white space in the list.

I find myself going back to the states UI to confirm what I see elsewhere. I see it as filling an administrative role in between the dev/states view and Lovelace views or config pages. Note that I'm on 0.104.2 so I haven't seen improvements that may have come later.

[nickrout]

Badges are available in Lovelace.

On Mon, Feb 10, 2020, 07:30 kaijk notifications@github.com wrote:

I like the high density of the States UI badges. I can see 144 entities' states at once, generally for debugging purposes and can quickly scroll to the set I'm looking for. I find the lovelace Config pages, like Devices and Entities, for example, have too much white space (and states don't appear in their list views).

The dev/states page even with attributes hidden on the page don't show enough entities for my liking. I have created a page using auto-entities but have had trouble getting it to alphabetize entities correctly, and, again, there is a lot of white space in the list.

I find myself going back to the states UI to confirm what I see elsewhere. I see it as filling an administrative role in between the dev/states view and Lovelace views or config pages. Note that I'm on 0.104.2 so I haven't seen improvements that may have come later.

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[markmonroy]

@nickrout Is there a way I can dynamically add all entities to a Lovelace page as badges (vs. hard coding them)? The auto-entities plugin works great for cards but I couldn't figure out how to do the same thing for badges.

[sirs2k]

Please don't take it away, I love seeing absolutely everything while trying to debug and connect new devices etc...

[tjorim]

I quickly want to see the newly added entities. In the old States UI these appear at the top as a badge. In LL there is the 'unused entities'-option, however, this list includes entities that are part of a group or person as well. It should not show these, definitely not when those groups or persons are added to the LL UI. (in fact, groups in other groups were shown on the old UI as well. This was one of the oldest open issues for quite some time: https://github.com/home-assistant/home-assistant/issues/2495. We should not make this mistake with LL again)

[BluGeni]

I use the states ui as a system page for anything i dont have the time to make in lovelace. For example, I can turn off automations from there. I can control things that usually never need to be controlled easily. Its somewhat organized so I see what I would like to put from there into a lovelace card.

[BluGeni]

Losing this and the group.alllautomations makes it hard to get/make a system view to control all automations. @balloob I saw your comment here about suggestions moving forward (https://github.com/home-assistant/home-assistant/pull/23789#issuecomment-575789133) - I dont find this an adequate solution for automations because I am adding them everyday. If there are alternatives for lovelace and all*, please let me know.

[balloob]

Have you seen the dedicated automations page in the config panel? 🙄

[BluGeni]

Yeah I have, and use it a lot. Wife and config panel do not mix unfortunately. Ill see what I can find to do the same thing for group.all_automations. Just out of curiosity, what is the reasoning for removing the states ui? Is there a lot of maintenance that goes into it or does it confuse new users? I just really like it to give me ideas on what data is collected and how its showed when designing my lovelace views/cards.

[BluGeni]

I have been trying to not use states ui today and have noticed the /config/entities pages does not have all my possible entities. An example would be wake_on_lan and my vacuum entities to name a couple. wake_on_lan at least shows up in the /lovelace/hass-unused-entities page. The only place I can find the vacuum is /developer-tools/state page and the /states page is the only place I can see how that card looks by default.

[SeanPM5]

Just out of curiosity, what is the reasoning for removing the states ui? Is there a lot of maintenance that goes into it or does it confuse new users?

Besides just maintenance, having two different user interfaces makes the documentation more confusing (especially to newcomers) and makes helping users more difficult since you always have to ask "are you using States or Lovelace?" etc.

I have been trying to not use states ui today and have noticed the /config/entities pages does not have all my possible entities.

That will likely change soon, this Entities page will display everything once this feature request https://github.com/home-assistant/home-assistant-polymer/issues/4708 gets implemented.

[markmonroy]

I think most people here are on board with deprecating the States UI as the default interface. As a new-ish user it never would have occurred to me to use it over Lovelace. But as a troubleshooting tool it's great. None of the alternatives being discussed here allow me to see all 72 of my states without scrolling or filtering or clicking.

I can recreate the cards in Lovelace, but so far I've had no luck figuring out how to dynamically generate badges.

[casperklein]

What I like about the old state UI is, that if an entity is not available (I have some of these, which are sometimes off), it's hidden.

Switching to Lovelace, I see a lot of these: "Entity not available: light.ambilight_tv" I know there are solutions for Lovelace, however there is no default setting for hiding all such entitys. Instead, afaik I have to configure filter for each entity.

[jschwalbe]

However this alleviated to some extent by being able to automatically add entities to lovelace these days. I say just add every new entity to a lovelace "everything" page.

I would like to have some example code that I could use to make another lovelace tab that basically replaces the states UI.

I frequently go to the /states/ URL when I'm adding something and forgot the name or just want to scroll thru all my entities for debugging purposes. I would be sad to see it gone if there's not a reliable lovelace drop-in replacement.

[balloob]

Thanks everyone for all the feedback. It's clear now how the old states UI is being used. We'll see if we can come up with a Lovelace-based alternative before sunsetting the states UI.

[Jeffrey-Wayers]

I would not upgrade when states is not available anymore. I am a relative new user for two months now and using Lovalace as my default UI but the purpose of the two are complete different for me. I see the Lovelace UI as the control/remote of my home and I like to keep it clean so my partner and guests could easily understand the interface without explaining everything. However, the states "UI" I use to check my devices, debugging, installing new ones and test automations.

The solution earlier given, to give Lovelace a states like alternative is not the right choice in my opinion because it would make my lovalace not as clean as it is now and it would "scare" my other users. I think we need to keep in mind that the ones programming there own homes are another target group as the ones using it (the family members).

I really believe if I didn't has the states UI, I would not had understand Home Assistant as quickly, as I did when I started with Home Assistant.

[JZ-SmartThings]

@balloob thanks for polling the users and not getting rid of an important feature. I use it exclusively for new entities that have no home (yet). So a Lovelace tab full of entities that are NOT on any Lovelace cards would suffice --- at least for my use-case.

[balloob]

@JZ-SmartThings Lovelace has an unused entities tab when you're in edit mode.

[JZ-SmartThings]

Thanks for the quick response @balloob! I just looked at that list again and it seems to be full of items that are not related to Lovelace --- like groups, views, weblinks from the configuration.yaml and camera devices (that are indeed on picture glance cards.

[FWSpider]

Maybe also not related, but I just switched over to the states ui for a bit of nostalgia.

Please junk it asap, it is effing ugly when compared to lovelace.

I do wonder though if there is confusion on the forum between the states ui and the states tab in developer tools.

I've only been deep in HA for a few months, and I was confused, thinking they were deprectating the tab and not the UI.

Personally I find the UI useful for troubleshooting in ways the Tab isn't as useful for. I'd never use it for UI and I'll live when it's gone, but I'd prefer it stay.

[balloob]

Don't worry… #4967