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Pages and Board Types

jv edited this page Jun 6, 2026 · 1 revision

Pages & Board Types

Every page (view) in Glance has a board type that decides what the page is for — controlling devices, watching sensors, monitoring servers, showing cameras, or showing what's playing. You pick it from one dropdown, and you can mix board types freely across your pages (e.g. a Home control page, a Cameras page, and a Now Playing page).

This page explains what each dropdown option means and every per-page setting so you can squeeze the most personalized dashboard out of Glance. Nothing here needs code or JSON — it's all done in the running app.


Where the settings live

There are two places to configure a page, both in Edit mode (the pencil icon):

  1. Manage Pages (pencil → Manage Pages, or Settings → Manage Pages) — create, rename, re-icon, reorder and delete pages, pick each page's board type, and toggle its header widgets.
  2. On the page itself — some board types (notably Now Playing) show their own edit controls inline at the top of the page while you're in Edit mode.

The board-type dropdown

In Manage Pages, each page row has a board-type dropdown with five options:

Option What the page becomes Auto-discovers Key per-page settings
Tiles The standard control board — a grid of entity tiles you place and drag Nothing (you add tiles) Per-tile settings, scenes, glance strip
Sensor graphs A clean wall of sensor trend cards (24-hour sparklines) Your sensor.* entities Header toggles only
NOC (servers) An infrastructure monitoring board (nodes, threshold bars, ports, panels) Optional auto-detect of UPS/gateway/storage Fully user-built — see NOC / Servers Dashboard
Cameras A camera wall grid; tap a feed for full-screen Your camera.* entities Header toggles only
Now Playing An auto media board showing devices only while they play Your media_player.* entities Search button, tile size, show/hide, merge, group-collapse, per-device artwork

Switching board type is non-destructive for Tiles ⇄ Now Playing/Sensors/Cameras — flip back to Tiles any time to return to a normal control page. (NOC is a Sensor-graphs page with a noc config layered on top; the selector manages that for you.)


Per-page header widgets (every board type)

Next to the board-type dropdown are three header toggles. They control whether this page shows the header widgets — handy for a clean, wall-mounted screen:

Toggle Icon Hides
Greeting 👋 The dynamic "Good morning, Jeff & Carissa!" greeting
Weather The header weather widget
People 👥 The "who's home" avatar bubble

These are per page, so your main dashboard can keep its full header while a NOC or Cameras screen runs clean.


Tiles — the control board (default)

The default board: a responsive grid of entity tiles for controlling lights, switches, covers, locks, climate, media, vacuums, scenes, scripts and more.

  • Add tiles. In Edit mode → + Add Tile → pick any entity from the searchable picker. Drag to arrange.
  • Tile sizes & auto-sizing. Tiles are a compact 1x1 by default. Vacuums and covers (with a position) auto-pick a tall 1x2 to fit their controls; lights stay 1x1 even when on so toggling doesn't reflow the grid. Override any tile to 1x1 / 2x1 / 1x2 / 2x2 in its settings — manual choices always win.
  • Gap-filling grid. The layout uses grid-auto-flow: dense, so small tiles backfill the space around a taller tile instead of leaving holes.
  • Compact sections (Settings → Appearance, on by default) — short room sections flow into a masonry so they sit side-by-side and fill the screen instead of each claiming a full-width band.
  • Per-tile settings (Edit mode → gear on a tile): name, icon, size, a camera feed, linked entities in the flyout, quick-action buttons, slide-to-dim / slide-to-set-position / reverse slider, media artwork source, and a flyout customizer (hide the state, controls, history graph or individual attributes). See Recipes for step-by-step walkthroughs.
  • Scenes & glance strip. Each page has a scene picker, and the header at-a-glance strip (lights on, who's home, climate…) is fully editable — see Configure an at-a-glance button.

Sensor graphs

A page of trend cards for your sensors — each numeric sensor.* renders a 24-hour sparkline so you can scan history at a glance instead of placing tiles.

  • Auto-discovered. Sensors are detected automatically; there's no manual tile placement.
  • Reads wide. Compact-sections masonry is intentionally off here so graphs get the full width.
  • How to switch: Manage Pages → board-type → Sensor graphs. See Switch a page to Sensor graphs.

A Sensor-graphs page is the same underlying board a NOC (servers) page builds on — switching to NOC (servers) simply adds the monitoring config.


NOC (servers)

A full network/infrastructure monitoring board — device nodes (servers, gateways, switches, UPSes, NVRs) each bundling threshold bars, a status LED, alert chips, a sparkline, UniFi-style port maps with PoE power-cycle, and bottom Internet / Storage / Power panels. Everything is user-built in the UI, with an optional Auto-detect head start.

This board has its own dedicated guide: NOC / Servers Dashboard (and the recipe Set up a UniFi switch on the NOC board).


Cameras

A camera wall: every camera.* entity rendered in a responsive grid. Tap any feed to open it full-screen.

  • Auto-discovered. Cameras are detected automatically; the grid's column count scales with how many you have.
  • Clean by default. Pair it with the header toggles for a dedicated, wall-mounted camera screen.
  • How to switch: Manage Pages → board-type → Cameras. See Switch a page to a Cameras page.

Want a camera on a single tile of a control page instead of a whole page? Use Add a camera feed to a tile.


Now Playing (media)

An auto media board: it lists your media devices and shows transport controls only while something is actually playing — no manual tile placement. This board has the richest set of per-page settings, all shown inline at the top of the page in Edit mode.

What it does automatically

  • Shows only active devices. A device's card appears while it's playing / paused / buffering and disappears when idle.

  • De-duplicates one physical device. A TV that exposes several media_player entities (Cast + ADB + AirPlay + Kodi…) collapses to a single card.

  • Collapses synchronized speaker groups. When speakers play together as a group, the page shows just the group card instead of the group plus each member. It recognises three grouping styles so it works across integrations:

    • Standard group_members groups — Google Cast, Sonos, Squeezebox.
    • Music Assistant sync groups — members that share an active_queue collapse into the group card.
    • The silent passive speaker outputs an MA group drives (Snapcast / satellite endpoints that play with no metadata).

    A lone playing speaker is never hidden.

Per-page settings (Edit mode)

Setting What it does
Music Assistant search button Show/hide a search-and-play button at the top of the page (see below). On by default.
Combine grouped speakers Collapse synchronized groups to one group card (above). On by default — turn off to show every grouped speaker separately.
Tile size Small / Medium / Large card width. Columns are a fixed width so a single playing tile doesn't stretch across the page.
Show / hide a device A type-ahead filter lists every detected device; toggle each one shown or hidden. Hidden devices stay listed in Edit mode so you can bring them back.
Merge into one When the name heuristic can't tell two entities are the same device, select them and Merge into one (a badge + split button let you undo).
Artwork and media settings (image icon per device) Per-device Show artwork toggle and Artwork source picker — borrow album art from a companion player when one has none. See Fix missing media artwork.

Music Assistant search

When the Music Assistant integration is set up in Home Assistant, the Music Assistant button opens a right-side flyout to search the MA library (artists, albums, tracks, playlists, radio) and cast a result to any MA player — the player list is narrowed to only active Music Assistant players. Glance auto-discovers the integration; there's nothing to configure. See Search and cast with Music Assistant.

How to switch: Manage Pages → board-type → Now Playing. Full walkthrough: Switch a page to Now Playing (media).


Per-page settings cheat sheet

Setting Board type(s) Where to find it
Board type All Manage Pages → dropdown
Hide greeting / weather / people All Manage Pages → header toggles
Page name / icon / order All Manage Pages
Add / size / arrange tiles Tiles Edit mode → + Add Tile / drag / gear
Per-tile camera, links, quick actions, flyout, slider, artwork Tiles Edit mode → gear on a tile
Scenes Tiles Edit mode → scene picker
At-a-glance strip buttons Tiles Edit mode → gear on a glance button
Music Assistant search button Now Playing Page edit controls
Combine grouped speakers Now Playing Page edit controls
Tile size (S/M/L) Now Playing Page edit controls
Show / hide / merge devices Now Playing Page edit controls
Per-device artwork & source Now Playing Edit mode → image icon on a device row
Nodes, metrics, ports, panels, chips NOC (servers) Edit mode → Add Device / Auto-detect

Everything above is saved in your layout backup so it syncs across devices and survives add-on restarts.


See also: Features · Recipes · Configuration · NOC / Servers Dashboard.

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