Ability to specify defaults for UI-created input Helpers

[seraphx2]

Pretty much self-explanatory. Dropdowns and Toggles cannot have a default value set. That can be very important to have defined on restart of a HA. Weird this wasn't included in the first place.

[Mariusthvdb]

Same goes for initial which is really necessary for some toggles (booleans). Unless that’s what you mean ofc

[seraphx2]

correct. I meant for that field.

[Mariusthvdb]

had written my own discussion here #12944 (comment) but it was marked duplicate if yours ;-)

hope it will attract some attention other than administrative....

[lollo78]

OMG!
After more than a year the "initial" option is not added to the UI.
This is essential in some scenarios!

Please devs, add it for our brain sanity. Thanks

[Mariusthvdb]

wonder if we can set that via customize:

homeassistant:
  customize:
    input_boolean.just_started:
      initial: on

like we did when this was still in yaml:

input_boolean:

  just_started:
    name: Just started
    initial: on

nope, doesn't work

[karwosts]

Out of curiousity, can you elaborate some of the situations where this is useful? I'm not sure why it was left out but maybe someone didn't think it provided for much. Was curious about the use case.

[Mariusthvdb]

Suppose the example above is exemplary.

set a Boolean always true on start.

After some time automate to turn off.
Et voila you always have an entity to template and use in any other logic for HA being just started or not.

Checking the code there still is the ‘initial’ state but we can no longer set it in the Ui.

Which would be the sole and silly reason for it to keep in Yaml.

currently I solve this by adding another automation run on startup itself to turn off the Boolean …..

[lollo78]

Out of curiousity, can you elaborate some of the situations where this is useful? I'm not sure why it was left out but maybe someone didn't think it provided for much. Was curious about the use case.

For example: I have two views for my motorized ipcam (A and B) and I want that the initial view is A. So, when I power on the camera it will set automatically on A also if the last used was B.