Need Activity Logs

It would be great if there was an activity log. Just logs of what happened, door opened, lock unlocked, light on, motion sensed. No battery events, and other stuff to pollute the logs. I just want to see what is happening in my house...
The full logs are great, but either a filter, or a separate log for just action/activity events would be great.

You can search/filter the logs for just the events you want using the search/filter box towards the top right of the page:

Screenshot of search feature in logs

You might already know this, but I'm just mentioning it since it's the closest you can get. :smiley: The second-closest you can get is disabling "debug logging" in your drivers, which gets automatically disabled after 30 minutes in stock drivers (after installation or manual enabling). So, that's probably already done, but it's worth checking.

Leaving "descriptionText logging" (or "info logging") enabled will just put device events in the log, like "switch on" or "level is 50%" and whatnot. Unfortunately for you, it will also include things like "battery is 100%," but events are events and that's what the setting means. That's why I suggest search.

Oh, and the above describes stock driver behavior and, IMHO, well-written community driver and app behavior. If you're using a custom app/driver and it doesn't have these options or it doesn't behave like it excepts, consider asking the developer.

This is what I do, and maybe 90% of my logs are events that I actually care about and am able to find, either directly or with a search (on this page or using my browser)--assuming so much time (logs, really) hasn't passed and they are still there. That's another reason cutting down log traffic like debug logging when you're not troubleshooting can be helpful. If you have more specific needs, maybe a rule or custom app can help you with some specific cases? (You can write to a file in Rule Machine, or have an app do about whatever you want.)

PS - Keep in mind that you also have the "Events" button on each device page that will take you to a history of actual events for that device (regardless of log settings), which of course won't give you a general overview like "Logs" but can still be useful for troubleshooting.

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thanks for the awesome information.

I would love to have a combined Events page. Same as the one for individual devices, but with every device together in sequential order with the same types of filters that the Log pages have. So often I can see an error in a particular app, but either that app doesn’t log what I need (or it’s turned off) or there’s too much noise. (My own personal apps are also guilty of this.) I can limp along now by opening each device event page in a separate tab and toggling back and forth, but that’s less than ideal.