home-assistant
Group of light management is not perfect in light panel and Home Dashboard
Checklist
- [x] I have updated to the latest available Home Assistant version.
- [x] I have cleared the cache of my browser.
- [x] I have tried a different browser to see if it is related to my browser.
- [x] I have tried reproducing the issue in safe mode to rule out problems with unsupported custom resources.
Describe the issue you are experiencing
Lights that are present in groups are taken into account twice (at least) in light panel and counted twice (at least) in Home summary card
On top of it, group of lights created in yaml are not taken into account at all (most probably because they are named group.name_of_the_group and not light.name_of_the_group as UI groups of lights => this limitation is understandable)
Example with a room (my soon bedroom):
- 3 lights
- 1 group to follow the room state (contains the 3 lights)
Area is showing the 4 lights without filtering capacity (filtering was available in area dashboard)
Light panel is showing the 4 lights without any filtering capacity:
With one light on, both the group and the light are displayed on (which make sense for the display here if you selected both to be displayed)
Area dashboard tells me that I have 3 lights ON:
Whereas it is only ONE light and two groups:
Test to find a way around: For the display issue in area subview, it is possible to un-assign the group from the area, the group is thus:
- no more displayed in the area subview:
- no more display in the area section of the light panel:
But the group is still displayed in the bottom in a "other lights" section and counted into the ON lights:
Describe the behavior you expected
I do not ask not to count or display groups because they are cases where you create a group to control a set of lights as a whole, and maybe want to control / display / count the group and not the individual elements.
I ask for a way to let the user decide what to do with either, the individuals or the group.
Previous Area dashboard was offering the capacity to filter which lights you wanted to display (show/hide interface):
- individual lights
- group
- both Which would be perfect for the light panel and area to tune the display instead of playing with area (why a group should not belong to the physical area it represent?)
Here "chambre_thibault" is the group of all 3 light in this area and it was hidden in my area dashboard:
A similar display / hide criteria could be used to count or not the lights in the summary card (do not count the lights hidden in the summary card).
Steps to reproduce the issue
- create a group of light
- set one light on in the group
- both the light and the group are displayed and counted as lit in summary card
What version of Home Assistant Core has the issue?
2025.12.2
What was the last working version of Home Assistant Core?
2025.11.3 (for area dashboard)
In which browser are you experiencing the issue?
not related but chrome
Which operating system are you using to run this browser?
not related but windows
State of relevant entities
on or off light belonging to a group
Problem-relevant frontend configuration
home dashboard untouched no yaml config
JavaScript errors shown in your browser console/inspector
no error
Additional information
No response
Note the same kind of behaviour appears with groups of covers.
In this case it only affects the display in area subview or climate panel, as there is no counter on summary card for cover, thus no number to fool in that case.
Groups that start with group. are not considered lights. These are legacy groups that can contain anything.
light. groups will exclude their members if they are "hidden". This is done in the entity configuration dialog or by selecting "hide members" on the group.
If a light is part of a group and is not hidden, this means it should also be displayed in dashboards. We all agree this is far from optimal and want to change it but this is the state now.
Good to know that hidden entities are not counted (I do not have the case)
The use I was refering to (namely area groups of entities) could maybe be supressed in the future.
- the kind of group that bothers me are created to:
- allow quick control of entities (ex lights, covers) with an area target => this can be done with automation control now quite easy with new target based trigger, condition, and actions.
- allow area display of the state (ex: some lights ON, some cover "not closed", etc...)
If there was a way to have target area or label (like for automation) but for display. this could remove the need for those groups... Or kind of automatically created groups by label/area of entities (that HA would not count) but usable for display/control in the dashboard...
There is something existing today, but I do not know the mecanisme behind: In area card, setting lights or cover control in the area cards feature allow to have this kind of both:
- info feedback => through the state of the button
- quick control => through the button itself
Same example as in first post with one light lit in my son bedroom:
This could have allowed to suppress the "light from this area" group as there is no need from automation point of view, and the dashboard need is covered.
Home dashboard is, for the time being, not providing the same info, nor controls.
There could be some options in the main page (an option to have the feature back in area cards) or in the panels (a quick control of all lights of the area for example):
To illustrate the panel case:
- This is the current light panel:
- This is my "custom dashboard" equivalent of it:
Note that they are very similar and that for each section header I have: - a navigation link toward the area subview. - when there are more than one light a entity showing the state and quick control (toggle) of the area lights.
This is not addressing the quick control from main page that Area dashboard was offering, but could be removing the need for "area group" and 'home group" for display and quick control, and thus not break the counter...
You can achieve this behavior using the standard visibility settings for your entities.
To clarify the current logic:
- Legacy groups (YAML group: domain) are not displayed in these panels because they can contain multiple domains (mixed entities), so the dashboard cannot safely assume they are lights.
- Light groups and individual lights are all displayed by default unless they are explicitly hidden.
To solve your double-display/counting issue, you should use the hidden flag in the entity settings, which effectively replaces the area dashboard-specific filtering:
- If you don't want to control the group directly in your dashboard or by voice (e.g. group of lights for an area, a floor, or the whole house), set the group to Hidden.
- If you don't want to control the member (e.g. grouping ceiling lights you don't want to control manually), hide the member. You can change this by clicking on the entity -> settings (gear icon) -> visibility.
These dashboards are built to reflect the house structure and the configuration must solve multiple use cases (voice, dashboard, automation), not just this specific dashboard. That is why we do not want to continue with area dashboard specific settings.
- a navigation link toward the area subview.
The links are added back with this PR : https://github.com/home-assistant/frontend/pull/28552
I understand that you want to get rid of area dashboard. I understand there are technical issues behind. I trust dev on that topic. But I am sorry, its design and functionalities were good, and the current design is not as good (at least there is room for improvement).
Is it a crazy advanced geek use case to want to be capable to both:
- control independently the various lights?
- have an area control of lights in area AND in the whole house?
Even Amazon Alexa is capable to do this in its default dashboard and in its vocal control. With per domain the capacity to have:
- individual control (vocal and dashboard)
- area control (vocal and dashboard through what they call groups which is equivalent to areas)
- global control (vocal only)
I think I am not crazy when I want to be capable to control my accent light or my main light independently (by voice or by dashboard) AND I want, when I leave the house or go to bed, to be capable to shut down every lights or close every cover(by voice or dashboard), AND I want to be capable to shut down every lights or close every cover in a specific area (when my teenager left without shutting down his 3 différents LED for example).
Plus I hope in the future to be capable to do the same with labels : shut down the Christmas lights, close west side covers, etc...
Hide group or entity is not the full solution to this issue (or I did not understand how it works), it is only addressing panel/counting, not control.
I agree to hide or even delete my groups if there is another way to do this kind of display/control easily ...
Hiding only solves the display / counting issue, not the quick control. For quick control in Home you have:
- to keep the group visible in areas but screw the counting
- to hide the group and set them as favorite to be able to control them.
If you have more that 8 groups of lights or covers that you want to control, you are screwed and must go to custom dashboard.
see also https://github.com/orgs/home-assistant/discussions/1164
it was the first thing during the beta that popped up.. ;)
btw showing those child entities should be a user option imho, it's becoming a terrible case for larger groups....
Hiding them is not the solution.
We made groups to generate grouped control, and not for getting them back via a u-turn here.
