Home Assistant is packed with features, making it easy to miss some of the useful tools that can make your life easier. I’ve made a simple change this year that has had a big impact on my Home Assistant setup.
Don’t sleep on labels
Organize by far more than just location
Home Assistant has a big focus on areas, and for good reason. In most smart homes, it can be useful to control or monitor devices based on where they’re located. If you have multiple lights in your living room, for example, then being able to turn on the living room area means that you don’t have to turn on each individual light within that room.
Location is not the only way that you may want to organize things in Home Assistant, however. You might want to group devices that are found in multiple different locations, and that’s obviously not possible using areas. That’s where labels can help.
The Home Assistant documentation states that labels “allow grouping elements irrespective of their physical location or type.” You can add a label to a device or entity, but you can also label automations, scenes, scripts, helpers, and even areas. You can add multiple labels to elements, too, so that they can be part of several groups at once.
How to use labels in Home Assistant
Create all the groups
There are multiple ways to use labels in Home Assistant. You can use labels to group devices that are battery-powered, to group devices and automations that are only used during the holidays, to group devices that should remain always-on, or even to mark things in Home Assistant that need attention.
You could create maintenance labels, such as for devices that need regular testing. You could create routine labels to tag anything that’s linked to your bedtime routine. You can even add behavior labels, such as tagging smart bulbs that you want to flash or change color as a visual notification.
You can also use labels as filters, allowing you to quickly find all the elements that are part of a specific group. If you want to see all the devices and automations that are only active during the holidays, for example, you can filter to only show devices with the holidays label.
- Dimensions (exterior)
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4.41″L x 4.41″W x 1.26″H
- Weight
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12 Ounces
Home Assistant Green is a pre-built hub directly from the Home Assistant team. It’s a plug-and-play solution that comes with everything you need to set up Home Assistant in your home without needing to install the software yourself.
Applying labels in Home Assistant
They’re quick and easy to set up
Creating and applying labels is simple. You can create labels in the dedicated section of Home Assistant, and then add them to various elements in the appropriate settings screens.
To create a new label, go to Settings > Areas, labels & zones. Select the “Labels” tab and click the “Create label” button. Give the label a name, choose an icon and a color, and add a description if you want one. Click “Create” to create the new label.
To add a label to an area, go to Settings > Areas, labels & zones, and click the “Edit” icon for your selected area. Click the “Add label” button and choose the label you want to apply.
To add labels to devices, entities, or helpers, go to Settings > Devices & services and choose the appropriate tab. Click the “Selection mode” icon, and select the elements you want to label. Click the “Add label” dropdown and choose the label you want to add. For automations, scenes, and scripts, go to Settings > Automations & scenes and choose the relevant tab. Click the “Selection mode” icon, and choose the elements you want to label. Click the “Add label” dropdown and choose your label.
How labels improved my Home Assistant setup
Less hunting, more automating
Labels were one of those things in Home Assistant that I knew existed but had never gotten around to playing with. That finally changed this year, and now I wish I’d tried them out sooner. There are some key benefits I’ve found when using labels.
The first is that labels make everything much easier to find. Devices can have multiple entities, and trying to find the entity you want can soon get tiresome. By applying labels, you can quickly filter by a specific label to find exactly what you need.
This really helps with scalability. You can survive without using labels when your smart home is reasonably small, but the bigger it gets, the more useful they can become. As the number of devices and entities grows, having ways to group them efficiently can make a huge difference.
Perhaps the biggest benefit I’ve found is how labels have improved my automation design. Labels can allow you to do things with little effort that would otherwise be a lot more complicated.
For example, I’ve added labels to all my battery-powered devices that include the type of batteries they use. When a battery falls below 10%, I get a notification, and the specific type of battery is added to my shopping list based on the label. When I add new battery-powered devices, I just give them the appropriate label, and they automatically become part of the same automation.
A label can be a powerful thing
Labels may not sound particularly exciting, but they can be incredibly useful. If you’ve never found the time to try them out, I recommend exploring what they can do. They might become your new favorite thing.
Stephan is the sports journalist for the Maple Grove Report.
