Naming in Residence Assistant formed primarily based on suggestions

Let’s say a smart plug powers a coffee machine and is installed in your kitchen.

• area: The room/space where the smart plug is installed. kitchen.
• device: physical object. smart plug 3or whatever name you gave it, e.g. coffee machine.
• Real thing: What a device can do or measure. A smart plug has three entities. switch, power sensor and energy sensor.

Each entity has its own name, ID, and friendly name. So for a smart plug power sensor:

• Entity name: The name of that one thing. force.
• Entity ID: Fixed ID used by automation. Sensor.Kitchen_Smart_Plug_3_Power.
• Friendly name: A state attribute that combines device name and entity name. Older cards and templates still use this, but we’re trying to move away from it. Smart plug 3 power supply.

How did it have so many names? It all started simply…

In its early days, Home Assistant only recognized entities. Since there were no devices, areas, or floors, the entity’s name had to include all of its context. To differentiate the power sensor, name it “Kitchen Coffee Machine Power.” The community has created an entire naming strategy guide to ensure consistency.

Starting in 2018, Home Assistant started adding structure around entities. Entities belonging to one physical object were grouped together as a device. Added areas, floors, and labels to describe the layout of your home. However, this structure also caused repetition, so when I moved the coffee machine to another room, its entity names were all wrong.

To fix this, the integration now gives each entity its own name instead of the device name. The integration named the entity, such as “Power,” and Home Assistant prefixed it with the device name to display “Smart plug 3 Power.”

One gap remained. Renaming an entity removed its device name. If you rename the switch on your smart plug to “Coffee Machine,” other entities on the device may still appear as “Smart Plug 3 Power” and “Smart Plug 3 Energy.” As a result, many people had to manually rename all entities for consistency.

Each of these steps made sense at the time, but when you combine them, you’re left with rules that don’t necessarily match. We’ve been unraveling them for several years, and this release is the next step.

From now on, Home Assistant will have consistent rules everywhere, from your dashboard to your settings pages. Name each thing once. The floor is the “first floor”, the area is the “kitchen”, the device is the “coffee machine”, and its entities are “power” and “energy”. A name never repeats another name.

Home Assistant provides context when needed.

• On the kitchen area page, the device will be listed as simply “coffee machine” instead of “kitchen coffee machine” because that area has already been cleared.
• On the coffee machine device page, the entities are simply listed as “Power” and “Energy” because the header already specifies the name of the device and its area.
• The entity picker that lists all the power sensors in your home also shows devices and areas in each row so you can tell them apart.
• Dashboard cards let you choose which parts of entities, devices, parent devices, areas, and floors to display in any order.

Some entities do not require their own names. The switch on the plug turns the coffee machine on and off, so it will only display the device name “Coffee Machine.” This is called the main entity of the device. Settings[デバイスのメイン エンティティ]You can turn this on for any entity using the switch. This is why renaming the device rather than the switch will give most people the result they want.

Devices that are made up of multiple parts will now each get a separate child device. For example, a power strip with four sockets becomes one device with four child devices, one for each socket. Each socket can have its own name, such as “Kettle”, and its own area, instead of an entity such as “Socket 3”. If you place a socket in another area, such as a lamp in the dining room, it will simply say “Lamp” without the name of the power strip.

Our goal is to avoid needing a naming scheme to organize things. The default should be correct. Also, if you want to rename something, you only have to do it once in one place, since no name holds a copy of another name. You can name it whatever you like. If the area is not specific enough, for example two spotlights in one kitchen, you can include that detail in the device names “Cabinet Spotlight” and “Countertop Spotlight”.

A new entity ID is also constructed from these parts. Starting in 2026.8, entity IDs include areas, and you can choose which parts to include according to your needs. So two “TV” devices in different rooms will get distinct IDs without _2.

Starting with the 2026.11 release, changes are propagated in four main ways:

Cards, badges, and rows that are not manually named will display the new default entity name with its context instead of the friendly name. When naming a card, you can use the name picker to select the part you want. You can always restore the defaults with one click. Any name you have already set on the card will remain as is. The rest of Home Assistant (settings page, activity log, automation instructions, voice assistant settings, tools page, maps) and the Home Assistant app for Android and iOS follow the same rules.

If you want to rename an entity, you only need to specify the name of the entity part, such as “Power Usage.” Nothing else is needed. Home Assistant retains the name exactly as you type it and adds context, such as device name or area name, where needed. If what you really want to change is the device name, you should rename the device instead.

Starting with this release, Z-Wave, MQTT, and ESPHome support the child devices listed above, as well as some Tuya devices and several other integrations. Support for Matter and ZHA is ongoing, with more integrations to follow. As a result, the original parent device remains, but its structural elements (such as multiple outlets on a power strip) are divided into child devices that are organized separately from each other.

Many custom cards and templates still use friendly names. We will keep this name for backward compatibility for now, but the friendly name will be deprecated and eventually removed. Removals will be announced in advance so card creators and template users can update first.

Here’s what to expect and a few things to be aware of after the update.

Existing entity IDs remain unchanged. Automations, scripts, scenes, and dashboards reference entities by ID, so the correct entity is always found. Only the displayed name may change, as described below.

During an update, Home Assistant migrates the names of entities that you renamed in the past. As mentioned at the beginning, most should work as expected, but some may look different. It depends on the beginning of the name.

1. If the entity name already starts with a device name (such as “Coffee Machine Power Usage” for a coffee machine), the device part is removed so the entity is named “Power Usage” and will still appear as “Coffee Machine Power Usage”.
2. If it doesn’t already start with the device name, nothing changes except that Home Assistant adds the appropriate context as needed. Therefore, a switch renamed “Coffee Machine” on the device “Smart Plug 3” will appear as “Smart Plug 3 Coffee Machine.”

If the second case looks weird, you can fix it right away. Rename the device (in this case the smart plug) to “Coffee Machine” and turn on the switch “Device Main Entity”. That way it will appear as a “coffee machine” everywhere. If you have time, you can also try removing area names from entity and device names. Home Assistant shows you the right content when you need it.

Built-in cards allow you to create names from parts by dragging entities, devices, parent devices, areas, and floors into the order you want, or by entering your own custom name. Some custom cards can read friendly names, so you may see a different name than the built-in card. Renaming an entity or its device also changes its name. Set a name on the card and fix it, or update the card if the author supports new names.

If your template continues to use friendly names, such as displaying entity names in notifications, those names may be different than what you see in Home Assistant and may change if you rename the entity or its devices. To select only the parts you want, use entity_name(), device_name(), and area_name() instead.

We understand that naming is personal, and this change will affect all installations, even if it is imperceptible to many users. It’s not perfect for every setup, but I’m sure it’s a change for the better. In future releases, we will move more integrations to child devices and help custom card creators adopt the new name.

Thank you to everyone who tested the 2026.4 beta, reported issues, and shared their honest feedback. We’ve made this change even better.