Best strategy to hide multiple device-specific dashboards ?

[jpbaril]

Hi, and sorry for asking again questions twice the same day.

As previously mentioned, I'm building a specific dashboard per device.
I managed to make these specific dashboards to be the default one on each associated device using exceptions.

Now I want to hide these specific dashboards on devices that are not targeted in any 'exception'.
In reality my questions is more one out of curiosity on the best/cleanest way to do something as in the end I do have working options I can fall back to even if not ideal.

Here are the options I thought about and tested.

1. Hide multiple dashboards with one wildcard config block.
   Does not work. It was my first idea and would have been the 'cleanest'.

order:
  - item: "Dashboard"
    exact: false # trying to match every sidebar item with "Dashboard" in its name. 
    hide: true

2. Hide specific device dashboards through Home Assistant sidebar item's visibility toggle + keep as is my recently created short configs for each specific device.
   Does not work. Adding hide: false is not enough to make the item appear in the sidebar if it was first hidden through Home Assistant sidebar item's visibility toggle.

exceptions:
  - device: 'device 1'
    order:
      - item: 'Dashboard - Device 1'
        name: 'Dashboard'
        hide: false
    default_path: '/dashboard-device-1' 

3. Hide specific device dashboards through Home Assistant sidebar item's visibility toggle + adapt my config to make the device-specific sidebar items as new_item:true .
   Works, but makes the config bigger and I need to first go make each one invisible with HA sidebar built-in feature.

exceptions:
  - device: 'device 1'
    order:
      - item: 'Dashboard - Device 1'
        name: 'Dashboard'
        new_item: true
        href: '/dashboard-device-1'
        icon: 'mdi:dashboard'
    default_path: '/dashboard-device-1' 

4. Separately hide each specific dashboard in the config as below.
   Works, but again makes the config a bit bigger.

order:
  - item: "Dashboard - Device 1"
    hide: true
  - item: "Dashboard - Device 2"
    hide: true

So, in the end I mostly I ask because from what I had read about the exact: parameter in the docs I thought my option # 1 would have worked.

I might use option 4 as that way every action/factor only occurs in custom-sidebar config.

Thank you again

[elchininet]

Hi @jpbaril,
I think that you are misunderstanding how the exact property works. The exact property (which is false by default) is to match an item by its text or href checking that the name/href is exactly the one that you are specifying in the item property. For example, this config:

order:
  - item: "Dashboard"
    exact: true
    hide: true

Will match a dashboard that its text is exactly Dashboard (it will not match Something Dashboard nor Dashboard Something). If it is false (default value) it will match the first item that contains the item string in its name. Each item in the order property should match one and only one item from the sidebar. When an item is matched, if there are more items that could match they are ignored (because there was already a match).

About this:

Hide specific device dashboards through Home Assistant sidebar item's visibility toggle + keep as is my recently created short configs for each specific device.

You should not do that, check the seventh bullet point in the above screenshot.

For your use case you have two options:

1. You can hide all the prefixed Dashboard items in the root config and then with exceptions show the specific one that you want to show in the specific device.
2. Hide all the items using hide_all and show only the ones that you need in the specific devices (if you need to show other items in all the devices, you can create an extendable config and extend from it in all the device exceptions).

---

One observation, this config:

order:
  - item: 'Dashboard - Device 1'
    name: 'Dashboard'
    hide: false

Means: match the item that its text contains Dashboard - Device 1, unhide it and change its name to Dashboard. I don't know if you want to do that, but if that is your purpose, then it is OK.

[jpbaril]

Well, I did somewhat understand exact property. It's just I did not know it would act as per below you wrote.

If it is false (default value) it will match the first item that contains the item string in its name. [...] When an item is matched, if there are more items that could match they are ignored (because there was already a match).

Option 1 you suggested is option 4 I listed.
Option 2 would mean that I would also have to manually add back all wanted sidebar items for devices that are not targeted by an exception. I don't want to do that as I'm fine to have everything shown -- except device-specific dashboards -- by default.

And about the last bit you wrote, yes, this is what I want. It's just that in reality the names are not 'Device n' but the real device names.

So as I thought I'll go with my option 4.

Thanks again

[elchininet]

So as I thought I'll go with my option 4.

Yes, if you don't want to show all the items that got hidden, it means that you just want to hide some items from the sidebar. If that is the case, the hide_all is not for you and indeed, the best option is option 4 (it means that those Dashboard items are less than the items that you would need to show if you hide everything).