Does anyone know if the 2024.5 Companion App update for iOS removed the ability to control entities from the widget? I’ve read the release notes but there’s no mention of any features being removed.

I could absolutely swear that I had a working widget with most of my lights on it, a solitary button for each light, that I could single tap to toggle said light.

Then, a few months or so back, I noticed the widget didn’t seem to be working. The entity icons had change to black, round shadows, and tapping them did nothing.

I deleted the widget, thinking it got corrupted somehow and have never been able to get it back exactly as described above.

Now, it seems that only thing I can do with widgets is use Actions. Some Actions have been auto-created by the Companion App for each scene on my server, and I can obviously create my own Actions, to trigger automations.

But, I don’t want to have to frig around with Actions (using input_booleans and automations) to do something as simple as turning a light on or off.

Am I dreaming? Did the iOS widgets never have this ability? Or am I missing something really obvious to configure entities onto a widget?

Thanks in advance for any useful advice.

      • DeltaTangoLima@reddrefuge.comOPEnglish
        0·
        3 months ago

        So you can’t possibly conceive that a single finger tap on a home screen widget to control a light is far simpler, and takes less effort, than having to open the app each time, potentially scroll to the location of the entity you want to control, then tap?

        • AA5B@lemmy.worldEnglish
          1·
          2 months ago

          Look into the Shortcuts app. This is Apples answer to creating automations on your iPhone. While I’ve never tried this, I see that it can send actions to the HA app. Perhaps that will do what you want

          So your options include

          • use your HA dashboard
          • create a link to an action or scene in HA
          • configure HomeKit bridge and use a HomeKit dashboard
          • configure HomeKit Bridge and use Siri
          • Use the Shortcuts app to automate the HA app
          • DeltaTangoLima@reddrefuge.comOPEnglish
            1·
            2 months ago

            I use Shortcuts with NFC tags to automate some stuff with HA, and could probably achieve something on an entity by entity basis.

            My point is that we used to have the ability to put a widget on the screen with about 6 or 8 entities on it, for simple, single-click access. And now we don’t. Seems silly to have taken it away from us.