Reconsider removal of Today View Action widget until feature parity achieved in home screen Action widgets

[dd143999]

The deprecation of the Today View Actions widget in 2024.07 (and its currently undocumented removal in 2024.08) is disappointing, given the inferior user experience of the home screen actions widgets that replace it.

As of 2024.08, home screen Action widgets:

• do not support customized button, text, or background colors
• do not inherit icons from Action settings in the app
• take up more space per button than the previous Today View Action buttons
• support much fewer Action buttons than the Today View widget

This lack of features in the home screen Action widgets compared to the previous Today View Action widget creates a much limited user experience by comparison. Given this, please revert the removal of Today View Action widget until feature parity is achieved in the home screen Action widgets.

[bgoncal]

Besides taking more space and being able to display less Actions than before in a single widget, the rest of features are already available in v2024.8

• You can customize colors (just enable "use custom colors")
• They do inherit icons from Actions configuration (check if you icon color is not the same as the background of the widget)

"Today's view" widget won't return, Apple recommends moving towards WidgetKit and all iOS versions that the App supports do support it, so this allows us to not have to maintain 2 different generations of widgets.

On top of that, we are planning the deprecation of iOS Actions in favor of scripts and scenes.

[dd143999]

I see.

Will the documentation be updated to match the current removal state?

Is there any interest in addressing the more space/fewer actions points on the development side? Under the previous setup, I was able to completely fill the today view with buttons, and I used every inch of that space accordingly. Even adding multiple instances of the largest widget ends up giving the user fewer total buttons to work with, which is a disappointing step back.

You might want to address this on the community side as well. Users are addressing this there as a bug.

[bgoncal]

I can update the documentation, besides the current message saying the today's view widget is deprecated (I'll change to removed) what do you want me to add?

About the amount of items that fit inside a widget, this is on my backlog to be reviewed, for now you can use "stacked" widgets and then swipe up to use as many actions you need.

Please send me the link from the community post and tag this conversation there too.

[dd143999]

Re: Docs, nothing beyond "this functionality was removed in 2024.8 to coincide for [REASONS HERE]" or just remove that section altogether, dealer's choice, either option brings the docs in line with current state.

Re: widget reworking, good to hear, looking forward to updates.

Re: community, https://community.home-assistant.io/t/legacy-widgets-missing-after-update/762659/2 is the most current community thread I see asking about the change.

[bgoncal]

home-assistant/companion.home-assistant#1098

[kevanghobadi]

@bgoncal Thanks for the details here. Quick question, why deprecate iOS actions? I use them pretty heavily and have found them useful. Specifically since they so easily integrate into iOS widgets. Thanks!

[bgoncal]

Because we are creating an easier way for the user to achieve what iOS actions initially allowed, for example, just reusing scripts you already have instead of creating an iOS action and on top of that creating a new automation for it.

[dd143999]

I would disagree with the characterization of that as easier. For my workflow, I simply add ios.action_fired triggers to existing automations that already have multiple triggers. I suspect I'm not the only one who has structured their workflows this way. To have to convert dozens of automations to script form and rebuild Actions as Scripts on multiple mobile devices gives those who have good, functional existing workflows based on the current state the same problem that this purports to solve.

[bgoncal]

I understand, I'll take that in consideration in future discussions about iOS Actions, even though you may have already structured your automations this way, it doesn't make it simpler for a new user for example, very frequently many users ask for support configuring iOS Actions, it's not as straight forward as just using scripts/scene/entities directly.

[dd143999]

Even accepting that premise as true, that's only easier for one subset of users, and:

• I doubt it's easy to quantify the number of users who aren't asking questions about how to configure iOS actions because in their opinion, they're dead simple and don't require further explanation, making population UX comparison difficult, and
• I suspect those users who do have problems with Actions as automation triggers might have just as many if not more problems writing scripts.

[bgoncal]

Just the fact that iOS Actions need documentation to explain how it works already makes it more difficult than directly choosing a script/scene/entity.

iOS Actions is a concept that only exists in iOS, not in Android not in home assistant itself, and the reason for that is that it is not necessary to exist.

But don't worry, the feature won't be removed completely, just less promoted for now.