Hi, all. My wife and I recently got new phones, and it got me thinking again about how notifications work.
Currently I have several automations (maybe 10) that send notifications to my phone, her phone, both, and possibly other devices.
But when we get a new phone, or replace a tablet, etc., I have to update every single one of those automations. And I inevitably forget some or introduce errors.
Is there a better way to do this? For example, it’d be nice if I could abstract the concept of “my phone” out in those automations, then I’d only have to change the device “my phone” in one place, rather than a bunch of places.
Any thoughts on this? Maybe I’m missing a way to do it. Thanks.
I utilize scripts for all of my notification needs. It allows me to utilize logic based around certain criteria, like this on that will only notify family members at home. If no one is home it will wait and notify the first person to show up. This also allows me to be able to quickly toggle notifications for my wife when I’m testing automations with notifications.
alias: Notify People at Home fields: title: description: The title of the notification example: Laundry message: description: The message content example: Washer Finished! sequence: - if: - condition: state entity_id: zone.home state: "0" then: - wait_for_trigger: - platform: numeric_state entity_id: zone.home above: "0" else: [] - parallel: - if: - condition: state entity_id: person.bob state: home then: - service: script.notify_bob data: title: "{{ title }}" message: "{{ message }}" - if: - condition: state entity_id: person.mary state: home then: - service: script.notify_mary data: title: "{{ title }}" message: "{{ message }}" mode: queued icon: mdi:exclamation-thick max: 10I have something similar, but added user names to the mix. “names_iphone” works for “alert name” and similar.
This is really cool. I’ve been out and about and have gotten notification the laundry is done, and it’s like, welp, that’s not very useful information right now. Thanks!
The only issue with doing it this way is that the UI to call the script isn’t as nice as calling the notification service directly, but it isn’t too bad to switch to yaml mode and populate the parameters once you get used to it.
Yeah, I’m okay with the YAML mode, so that’s not a major problem for me.
I set up a notify group for each of us. I use
notify.meand add/remove the devices as needed.notify: - name: me platform: group services: # - service: mobile_app_pixel_2_xl - service: mobile_app_pixel_6 - name: her platform: group services: - service: mobile_app_iphoneThen you can use it like any other service:
service: notify.me data: message: Test title: Alert!This is how my partner and I do our notifications. We’ve got “him”, “her”, and “us”, depending on who needs the notification. Whenever either of us gets a new device, I add it to either of our groups and then works.
Yes notifications need an overhaul, we assign devices to people we should be able to choose notify.user as a service and choose the user to send the notification to. That way when we change devices we only have to associate the device with the user again.
Recently did this and yes it’s a pain. I don’t know if it’s going to help until next time we change phones, but what I did this time was name the device after the person, rather than the phone model.
The idea being that I can delete the old device in the future and replace it with the new device, named the same. That way I don’t have to change the device name in each automation every time. Hopefully that made sense. But I still haven’t tested it in reality.
I use the notify service with a group platform. This way you add and remove devices in one place only. Here’s how I set it up in configuration.yaml:
notify: - name: notify_all_devices platform: group services: - service: mobile_app_pixel_6_pro - service: mobile_app_pixel_3_xlIn my automation triggers, I simply call my
notify_all_devicesservice.
