I agree with that sentiment. i would rather the focus be on making sure the hub is capable of handling the grunt work, not just for today, but for down the road. The community has come through with some very well-designed and useful options for dashboards, and I think that is how it should be. As this thread has shown, not everyone has the same needs, the variety of dashboards means almost anyone can find what ever suits their needs best.
Is it the place I could look for all these dashboard options? I would like to choose one as built-in one is limiting.
Agree that most important for the company to make hub functioning itself and supporting as many devices as possible.
I personally think an improved mobile interface would be better and go a long way towards making the platform more accessible. Controlling things via the app now is a pretty rough experience.
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HD+ is quite popular, but it is Android only (find it in the Play Store)
Tilebuilder is available through Habitat Package Manager, there is a free tier, but the paid tier is only $7.00, and a small investment to support a community member's endeavors. I'm still tinkering with it.
Sharptools (Sharptools.io) is a web app, but can also be used as a custom dashboard in your habitat app. There are both Free and Paid tiers ($30/year).
Action tiles, but I have not had much luck getting it to work for me yet.
Hubivue is dead. there may be s few others out there, but those are the ones I've used.
Both HD+ and Sharptools are both very well supported by their developers who are very active in the community.
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Just to throw my .02 out there, but I advocate for pushing devices into HomeAssistant and making use of their dashboard. It can do everything your heart desires. Iām not a fan of the automations and so I do pretty much all of that via Hubitat. Best of both worlds in my mind.
Only downside is obviously the need for always on hardware, but I feel like that is pretty common in this community.
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Here...usually searching will find you cool stuff. 
HD+ If you're an Android user and want the best turn-key dashboard available, stop here. It's amazing.
Tile Builder:
Probably some good pointers here:
Tech how to w/CSS if you're of that ilk:
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I would like to put a plug for a better "Hubitat" Dashboard.
Perhaps I'm too much influenced by external reviewers, but it appears clear to me that they judge a Home Automation product (like Hubitat) by the quality of its Dashboard.
Is it user friendly, it it intuitive, is it powerful? Is it "sexy"?
These are the questions that are asked, not "Can it's automation facility do X, Y and Z?"
Certainly, we all know (those of you that have investigated Hubitat seriously), we know that the Home Automation capabilities of Hubitat are outstanding. This is it's best characteristic. Anyone who investigates this platform in depth, will know this to be the case.
However, I believe that its now time to shift focus to the app, the dashboard. It's time to upgrade the UI, to show off the Home Automation capabilities, to make it much easier to create a simple Dashboard (as the OP mentioned here).
This is my humble opinion, and should be taken as just one person's opinion - but it does appear that many others feel the same way.
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I rarely use the dashboard as all my automation ins nearly 100% perfect. The only dashboard I use occasionally is the one for my central heat/AC and maybe the house lights once in a while.
But that's Android only. iOS has 60% of the US market and I'd say much larger than that among the high(er) income households likely to use Hubitat. And with the HE HomeKit and HomeKit TTS apps, it would be unlikely that an android only solution would fly with most of users. Disclaimer: Apple Ecosystem user here.
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Yes, this. I tested a bunch of the other third party dashboards and found they were either worse than the built in dashboards or would be way to cumbersome to setup. I did not especially like any of them. I ended up just learning more about the HE dashboard and with a few custom device drivers and small amount of CSS I was able more easily do more, with HE.
Also tested exporting to Home Assistant and it was a bit of work to figure out what add-ons to get and how to use them but once you figure it out HA has really nailed the dashboard IMO.
I honestly don't use any of it myself, I was just exploring some options for someone else. I just have some super basic HE dashboards in case I need to access something quick that I have not shared to Apple HK.
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I concur with other posters. I aim to have a house that anticipates my needs and automates everything without me having to provide inputs. I turn on the TV it dims the lights. I walk into rooms it turns on the lights. It gets hot in a room and there is no one in there, the shades are lowered. I leave the house, it locks up. I walk downstairs in the morning and it adjusts the HVAC and turns on the lights if it needs to.
I also sprinkle a healthy set of Alexa commands in there with simple things like turning light groups on and off.
I do use Sharptools on a number of touchscreens. Very happy with the UI and capabilities. But to be honest the biggest use of the touchscreens is to look at the family photo album and to push the Go to Bed button when we turn in for the night. But the plan is to get a bed sensor and automate the go to bed as well.
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Does your family obey the Go to Bed button when pressed?
If they don't the lights all turn off on them after 30 minutes!
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I automate things - that's what we are doing here, but I'm different from a lot of you. I don't like to automate everything. I don't always want the lights to dim when I turn on the TV. I have different moods, what I feel like changes, sometimes my kids are in there working on something, there are so many variables, and things are just not so predictable around my house. I do like, and use my HD+ dashboard. I like that I can tell at a glance what is going on in the house, and a touch of a button can set off a convenient series of events. I get that this is an automation hobbiest forum and many enjoy predicting what one might want in a given situation and providing it automatically, but for me - I personally don't like to take it too far. To each his own - just thought I'd put my own thoughts out there - even if I am the only one here who feels this way.
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Nope, I do the same thing. I leave a lot with more manual control. Some rooms just the dim level is set by the time of day and otherwise manual. Dont really use dashboards though, most often use the physical switches or voice control.
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Your points are well taken, and I don't think many or hopefully any people here think there's only one path we can follow.
Everyone just has their own relative priorities for the different things that habitat team can do and I think everybody's been expressing those differing priorities really well.
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Two separate issues:
-
Will the UI get better?
I certainly hope so. I still run into instances on native HE apps where I have to click in the blank white space to get to the next screen. I've been conditioned to it so don't even notice it anymore, but the first time it happened I spent LITERALLY HOURS trying to figure out what I was doing wrong; I was soooo close to giving up on HE. However, I am multiple times more stubborn with myself than most other people, so I continued to search my issue until I came across a post that mentioned clicking into the white space to get to the next screen. By this point in HE maturity, all of these types of anomalies should be resolved. The next goal should be a more refined, polished and easier to navigate UI. For example, when clicking Save on device settings, why do I subsequently need to click Configure? Why can't save just do both?
I believe the UI is still a barrier to entry and thus barrier to sales. When reviewers write articles about HE, it is difficult to show a single screenshot of how simple it is to set up an automation because it is not really that simple....once you figure it out, it is easy, but not simple.
It is awesome that HE is powerful, but there should be a totally basic simple section with a clean, efficient & simple UI -
Dashboard
Separate issue from UI.
At the end of the day, the dashboard is how the non tech people of the household interact with HE (for those of us whose households cannot be 100% automated) and the impression people are left with.
The look of the native dashboard is utterly incongruous with the capability of HE. Its like a 1980's ugly economy car with a 2023 electric car "under the hood." Hard to get the general public to look past their first impressions.
I know there are community apps, but I'm hesitant to use something that could lose support at any time and thus may not be compatible with future HE upgrades.
Reviewers who do not already use HE are not going to invest the time to research and find community apps; they are going to evaluate HE based on what is in the HE when they plug it in for the first time.
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This exactly. While my jam is to automate everything, some people have other priorities. And a swanky dashboard is necessary for some and makes for better "marketing" for all. After someone mentioned Home Assistant I started looking at their dashboard and got some serious envy there. Indeed they have put a lot of time, thought and effort into their offering. I think the built in gadgets for graphs and such would be amazing. And yes, I know someone is going to say influx/grafana or WebCore but I'm trying not to make this harder for me to support than it already is. It's a hobby, not a job. HA's dashboards might be worth standing up an HA instance for. Might.
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I must admit that I only use the UI when Iām configuring automations and to occasionally view my weather dashboard.
My only complaint is that Dashboards are a little slow to load pages. This is minor tho. My family rarely needs to use a dashboard or interact with a dashboard or UI. After all, thatās kind of the point of āhome automationā IMO.
Our only frequent everyday use for a UI is opening and closing the garage door. And that gets done via Apple HomeKit or by CarPlay
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As a new c8 owner; When i started to create a app, i was a little lost. There are 3 issues in my chrome browser on my PC.
- done button was off the page below the end of the monitor. I needed to scroll the browser.
- The next step will not show if clicked out of a tag element. You must click tab to show the next step.
- The elements were so far apart. "Fisher price" looking.
When i used chrome on my tablet, all looked very nice.
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