Automation Editor

In Home Assistant 0.45 we introduced the first version of our automation editor. If you just created a new configuration with Home Assistant then you’re all set! Go to the UI and enjoy.

From the UI choose Configuration which is located in the sidebar, then click on Automation to go to the automation editor. Press the + sign in the lower right corner to get started. This example is based on the manual steps described in the Getting started section for a random sensor.

Choose a meaningful name for your automation rules.

If the value of the sensor is greater than 10 then the automation rule should apply.

Firing a persistent notification is the result.

As “Service Data” we want a simple text that is shown as part of the notification.

{ 
  "message": "Sensor value greater than 10"
}

Don’t forget to save your new automation rule.

Updating your configuration to use the editor

The automation editor reads and writes to the file automations.yaml in your configuration folder. Make sure that you have set up the automation component to read from it:

# Configuration.yaml example
automation: !include automations.yaml

If you still want to use your old automation section, add a label to the old entry:

automation old:
- trigger:
    platform: ...

Migrating your automations to automations.yaml

If you want to migrate your old automations to use the editor, you’ll have to copy them to automations.yaml. Make sure that automations.yaml remains a list! For each automation that you copy over you’ll have to add an id. This can be any string as long as it’s unique.

# Example automations.yaml entry
- id: my_unique_id  # <-- Required for editor to work.
  alias: Hello world
  trigger:
  - platform: state 
    entity_id: sun.sun
    from: below_horizon
    to: above_horizon
  condition:
  - condition: numeric state
    entity_id: sensor.temperature
    above: 17
    below: 25
    value_template: '{{ float(state.state) + 2 }}'
  action:
  - service: light.turn_on

Any comments in the YAML file will be lost when you update an automation via the editor.