Picture entity not working with template | Home Assistant | Page 1

weary abyss Jan 19, 2026, 12:58 PM

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Heya, I am trying to get my album art in a picture entity, but I am having trouble with an template thingy to try to cache bust so that it loads new images

Underneath is my YAML

show_name: true
fit_mode: cover
type: picture-entity
entity: media_player.home
state_image:
  playing: '/api/media_player_proxy/media_player.home?token=mytokengoeshere&cache={{ now().strftime("%Y%m%d%H%M%S") }}'

According to the documentation I should be able to punch in template values into the YAML like I am doing since it shows it in the examples as well.

Currently trying it with dates, but I plan to have some more rapidly changing values in there if the card allows for it

weary abyss Jan 19, 2026, 2:14 PM

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The massive picture (duh) is not adhering to the template I try to set and when I look in inspect element I see the URL of the state_image.playing from the YAML config

idle adder Jan 19, 2026, 2:17 PM

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You can't use templates in frontend cards.
(except markdown)

weary abyss Jan 19, 2026, 3:03 PM

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🙁

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But I saw in the documentation that the photo entity had an template in the examples

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for reference: https://www.home-assistant.io/dashboards/picture-entity/#:~:text='%2Fshared%2Fbackdoor-{{ now().strftime("%25Y-%25m-%25d-%25H%25M%25S") }}.jpg

idle adder Jan 19, 2026, 3:06 PM

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So the frontend doesn't process/resolve that template at all, it just sends that string to the camera.snapshot action. I guess the camera action might handle it, but that's pretty nonstandard.

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In general you can't template anything in the frontend.

weary abyss Jan 19, 2026, 3:10 PM

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Aaaaah

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Got it

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Maybe I can write a little javascript to handle my very very niche usecase

idle adder Jan 19, 2026, 3:14 PM

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Are you just trying to display the entity_picture?

weary abyss Jan 19, 2026, 3:35 PM

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Yes

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Trying to show the album art of my media player

idle adder Jan 19, 2026, 4:08 PM

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I imagine we can probably just make this work natively, we already show the entity_picture for person entity in this card, but it's hardcoded to only that domain...

weary abyss Jan 19, 2026, 4:37 PM

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I see

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That would be amazing though

idle adder Jan 19, 2026, 4:55 PM

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Although I guess sometimes it doesn't have an entity picture if it's not playing

weary abyss Jan 19, 2026, 5:03 PM

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Thats true, but for that the media entity can have a fallback?

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So its a bit more involved than only adding the media_player domain to the picture entity/card

idle adder Jan 19, 2026, 5:29 PM

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Hmm, yeah not sure if it's worth that.

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Maybe a template image entity can get you somewhere 🤔

weary abyss Jan 19, 2026, 5:29 PM

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I was thinking about that too yea

idle adder Jan 19, 2026, 5:29 PM

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That's sort of a way to combine templates & frontend image cards

weary abyss Jan 19, 2026, 5:30 PM

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I'll play around for a while with it

idle adder Jan 19, 2026, 5:30 PM

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There's also media player card

weary abyss Jan 19, 2026, 5:32 PM

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I've been using that for volume control

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But I wanted to build a dashboard to control my speakers and I wanted a challenge

idle adder Jan 19, 2026, 5:38 PM

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Template image kind of got me there. You need to manually add the host part of the url which is annoying.

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{{ state_attr('media_player.bedroom', 'entity_picture') }}

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You could code a fallback image there of your choosing as well

weary abyss Jan 19, 2026, 5:42 PM

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The URL is fine

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But dude, holy sh*t. Thanks!

idle adder Jan 19, 2026, 5:42 PM

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oh actually nevermind, you don't need that

weary abyss Jan 19, 2026, 5:42 PM

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Never thought of going with an helper

idle adder Jan 19, 2026, 5:42 PM

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just the state attr seems to work with the relative path

weary abyss Jan 19, 2026, 5:42 PM

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it does yea

idle adder Jan 19, 2026, 5:43 PM

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TIL

weary abyss Jan 19, 2026, 5:43 PM

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This is amazing

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I learned something about the template image helper today

idle adder Jan 19, 2026, 5:44 PM

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Yeah it seems to rarely be mentioned

weary abyss Jan 19, 2026, 5:44 PM

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I've been doing a lot with the input_select lately but the image slipped my mind since i never clicked into that menu

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and its instant update too

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exactly what i've been looking for

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Especially Music Assistant is providing the images so only one call to the internet needs to be made for it 🙂

#Picture entity not working with template