Notify groups from UI not working

[renssies]

The problem

Is was excited to see notify groups in the list of helpers in the UI on 2024.8. However the notify group helper seems to be broken?

When I tied to create a notify group from the UI the list of entities is empty and states "No matching entities found". While I don't have any notify entities, I do have a number of notify actions (previously called services).

If I manually enter these notify "actions" and create the group, then it is saved. However the group does not appear under the actions (previously called services), while groups made in yaml do appear under actions. Using the notify.notify action with the target being the group results in "Failed to perform the action notify.notify. Unknown error"

What version of Home Assistant Core has the issue?

core-2024.8.1

What was the last working version of Home Assistant Core?

No response

What type of installation are you running?

Home Assistant Container

Integration causing the issue

No response

Link to integration documentation on our website

https://www.home-assistant.io/integrations/group

Diagnostics information

No response

Example YAML snippet

No response

Anything in the logs that might be useful for us?

No response

Additional information

No response

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[Rick-van-Dam]

I can confirm iam seeing the same behavior here. Seems its simply not in a working state yet.

[giinuu]

Can also confirm this issue happens for me, 2024.8.1

No obvious log errors, no failing requests or JS console errors.

[joostlek]

Please note that it's intended to group notify entities and that the majority of notify implementations still use notify services. For the services you still have to use the YAML groups

[Rick-van-Dam]

Please note that it's intended to group notify entities and that the majority of notify implementations still use notify services. For the services you still have to use the YAML groups

Ok didn't knew that.

Seems like the mobile homeassistant app only exposes services and no entities. So I guess that's changing soonish?

[joostlek]

There has been no action taken yet to start the migration, but they will eventually be migrated to the new notify entities yes

[giinuu]

I wonder if it is currently worth linking a note to the dev blog into the help section around notify groups, I can certainly see why there is confusion around this currently with the same naming convention.

E.g. something placed in this section;

https://www.home-assistant.io/integrations/group#notify-entity-groups

About

https://developers.home-assistant.io/blog/2024/04/10/new-notify-entity-platform/

[Morphy99]

There has been no action taken yet to start the migration, but they will eventually be migrated to the new notify entities yes

Is there any way to track progress on this as I'd like to be able to edit notify groups in the UI as well? I can't see any open issues on the companion github

[oerix]

Any update on this please? Kind of strange that this has been merged to stable build as incomplete.

[Salo79]

I am having the same issue. Any updates on that issue?

[felipemcarli]

I am having the same issue

[vcdx71]

Why not allow notify services as well until at least the mobile apps and HTML 5 are migrated?

[maslyankov]

Anyone has any news on this WTH topic?

[USER19464727]

When I try to add a Notify group it only lists my thermostats...

[bickerdyke]

Would be great to have the mobile app working with UI groups. (Especially as I can't get the notify services for the app to work)

[yasminshendrik]

3 more months and nothing has changed there. Why does a grouping feature exist when there is nothing that can be grouped into it? Would have thought that mobile apps would be on the top of the priority list when adding notification features, but that's just me...

[issue-triage-workflows[bot]]

There hasn't been any activity on this issue recently. Due to the high number of incoming GitHub notifications, we have to clean some of the old issues, as many of them have already been resolved with the latest updates. Please make sure to update to the latest Home Assistant version and check if that solves the issue. Let us know if that works for you by adding a comment 👍 This issue has now been marked as stale and will be closed if no further activity occurs. Thank you for your contributions.

[maslyankov]

Still an issue.

[hydrakus88]

Any updates on this issue?

[Morphy99]

Still an issue in 2025.10.3 I can create a notify group in the UI but I have no entities available to add to it. HA companion is set up on 3 x phones.

[jeffsf]

Same issue observed today on 11.0

[coupeborgward]

Can confirm the issue is still there. Can't add my mobile device to a notify group

[maillme]

Still an issue for me. What is the point of this helper?

[coupeborgward]

Still an issue for me. What is the point of this helper?

That group is adding an additional abstraction layer. Basically instead of adding your specific mobile device to numerous automations you add this group to it with the mobile assign to it. The advantage is if you want to change your mobile you only need to change it in the group instead of all automation that would have used it directly.

[maillme]

Hi coupeborgward, Sorry, I was being somewhat sarcastic - because - adding your app /phone to this group, is not possible......

[depuits]

I've learned of this issue because of the telegram integration. Since version 2025.10 i think I get following repair:

The Telegram notify service has been migrated. A new notify entity per chat ID is available now.

Update all affected automations to use the new notify.send_message action exposed by these new entities and then restart Home Assistant.

Since then the telegram notify entities are available for grouping using the ui. The problem for me however is that it is the only integration available in the ui. So changing to the new notify entities for telegram is not possible as long as not all other integrations I use which are grouped with the telegram entities are updated to this new system.

As far as I found you can only group using the configuration file or ui but you're unable to mix entities from one and the other.