#How to bulk change (friendly) names of entities

1 messages · Page 1 of 1 (latest)

pale pier
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I go to setting > devices and services > Shelly and here is a list of my shelly devices. I've renamed all devices as i added them to home assistant. They're all named in the same manner: manufacturer_device_room, for example shelly_ceilinglight_bedroom. But if i click the entities of a device, all the entities are not renamed in the same manner. Why is that? How can i change that, so all entities of a device is named in the same manner as the device? Also, what is the difference between "Name" (what i guess is often referred to as "friendly name") and "Entity ID"?

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compact canyon
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The easiest way is to rename the device again to something different (like _1) and then allow it to rename the entities. Then name it again to the name that you want and it should rename the entities again.

limber axle
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Note you need Advanced Mode enabled to show the entity_id rename dialog.

turbid zodiac
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And the friendly name is what you see in things like cards, and in the name column. You can use spaces and capital letters to make it easy to read. The entity id is always lowercase and can only have letters, numbers, and a few special characters (like _) and is used to reference things from scripts, automations, cards, etc.

pale pier
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Sorry i totally forgot about this post i made yesterday!
Anyway, i tried renaming a device and the entity_id rename dialog came up, asking me if i want to rename 14 entities, but still there's no change.

limber axle
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Entity renaming is a little confusing as it only renames the part that matches the current device name.

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If they're already different, then you would need to stage multiple device renames to make it take effect

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(this is better explained in the dialog if you update to 2024.10)

pale pier
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How would i stage multiple device renames?

compact canyon
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You can't. You can only rename a device 1 by 1.

turbid zodiac
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I suspect what is being referred to is renaming the device to have what is in most of the entity IDs, and then renaming it again to get what you want.
So if the device is currently called "Banana plant" but the entities are "orange tree", rename the device to "orange tree" and then rename it to what you want.