Skip to main content

Custom Cards

Dashboards are our approach to defining your user interface for Home Assistant. We offer a lot of built-in cards, but you're not just limited to the ones that we decided to include in Home Assistant. You can build and use your own!

Defining your card​

This is a basic example to show what's possible.

Create a new file in your Home Assistant config dir as <config>/www/content-card-example.js and put in the following contents:

class ContentCardExample extends HTMLElement {
  // Whenever the state changes, a new `hass` object is set. Use this to
  // update your content.
  set hass(hass) {
    // Initialize the content if it's not there yet.
    if (!this.content) {
      this.innerHTML = `
        <ha-card header="Example-card">
          <div class="card-content"></div>
        </ha-card>
      `;
      this.content = this.querySelector("div");
    }

    const entityId = this.config.entity;
    const state = hass.states[entityId];
    const stateStr = state ? state.state : "unavailable";

    this.content.innerHTML = `
      The state of ${entityId} is ${stateStr}!
      <br><br>
      <img src="http://via.placeholder.com/350x150">
    `;
  }

  // The user supplied configuration. Throw an exception and Home Assistant
  // will render an error card.
  setConfig(config) {
    if (!config.entity) {
      throw new Error("You need to define an entity");
    }
    this.config = config;
  }

  // The height of your card. Home Assistant uses this to automatically
  // distribute all cards over the available columns.
  getCardSize() {
    return 3;
  }
}

customElements.define("content-card-example", ContentCardExample);

Referencing your new card​

In our example card we defined a card with the tag content-card-example (see last line), so our card type will be custom:content-card-example. And because you created the file in your <config>/www directory, it will be accessible in your browser via the url /local/ (if you have recently added the www folder you will need to re-start Home Assistant for files to be picked up).

Add a resource to your dashboard configuration with URL /local/content-card-example.js and type module (resource docs).

You can then use your card in your dashboard configuration:

# Example dashboard configuration
views:
  - name: Example
    cards:
      - type: "custom:content-card-example"
        entity: input_boolean.switch_tv

API​

Custom cards are defined as a custom element. It's up to you to decide how to render your DOM inside your element. You can use Polymer, Angular, Preact or any other popular framework (except for React – more info on React here).

Home Assistant will call setConfig(config) when the configuration changes (rare). If you throw an exception if the configuration is invalid, Home Assistant will render an error card to notify the user.

Home Assistant will set the hass property when the state of Home Assistant changes (frequent). Whenever the state changes, the component will have to update itself to represent the latest state.

Your card can define a getCardSize method that returns the size of your card as a number or a promise that will resolve to a number. A height of 1 is equivalent to 50 pixels. This will help Home Assistant distribute the cards evenly over the columns. A card size of 1 will be assumed if the method is not defined.

Since some elements can be lazy loaded, if you want to get the card size of another element, you should first check it is defined.

return customElements
  .whenDefined(element.localName)
  .then(() => element.getCardSize());

Your card can define a getConfigElement method that returns a custom element for editing the user configuration. Home Assistant will display this element in the card editor in the dashboard.

Advanced example​

Resources to load in dashboards are imported as a JS module import. Below is an example of a custom card using JS modules that does all the fancy things.

Screenshot of the wired card

Create a new file in your Home Assistant config dir as <config>/www/wired-cards.js and put in the following contents:

import "https://unpkg.com/wired-card@0.8.1/wired-card.js?module";
import "https://unpkg.com/wired-toggle@0.8.0/wired-toggle.js?module";
import {
  LitElement,
  html,
  css,
} from "https://unpkg.com/lit-element@2.0.1/lit-element.js?module";

function loadCSS(url) {
  const link = document.createElement("link");
  link.type = "text/css";
  link.rel = "stylesheet";
  link.href = url;
  document.head.appendChild(link);
}

loadCSS("https://fonts.googleapis.com/css?family=Gloria+Hallelujah");

class WiredToggleCard extends LitElement {
  static get properties() {
    return {
      hass: {},
      config: {},
    };
  }

  render() {
    return html`
      <wired-card elevation="2">
        ${this.config.entities.map((ent) => {
          const stateObj = this.hass.states[ent];
          return stateObj
            ? html`
                <div class="state">
                  ${stateObj.attributes.friendly_name}
                  <wired-toggle
                    .checked="${stateObj.state === "on"}"
                    @change="${(ev) => this._toggle(stateObj)}"
                  ></wired-toggle>
                </div>
              `
            : html` <div class="not-found">Entity ${ent} not found.</div> `;
        })}
      </wired-card>
    `;
  }

  setConfig(config) {
    if (!config.entities) {
      throw new Error("You need to define entities");
    }
    this.config = config;
  }

  // The height of your card. Home Assistant uses this to automatically
  // distribute all cards over the available columns.
  getCardSize() {
    return this.config.entities.length + 1;
  }

  _toggle(state) {
    this.hass.callService("homeassistant", "toggle", {
      entity_id: state.entity_id,
    });
  }

  static get styles() {
    return css`
      :host {
        font-family: "Gloria Hallelujah", cursive;
      }
      wired-card {
        background-color: white;
        padding: 16px;
        display: block;
        font-size: 18px;
      }
      .state {
        display: flex;
        justify-content: space-between;
        padding: 8px;
        align-items: center;
      }
      .not-found {
        background-color: yellow;
        font-family: sans-serif;
        font-size: 14px;
        padding: 8px;
      }
      wired-toggle {
        margin-left: 8px;
      }
    `;
  }
}
customElements.define("wired-toggle-card", WiredToggleCard);

Add a resource to your dashboard config with URL /local/wired-cards.js and type module.

And for your configuration:

# Example dashboard configuration
views:
  - name: Example
    cards:
      - type: "custom:wired-toggle-card"
        entities:
          - input_boolean.switch_ac_kitchen
          - input_boolean.switch_ac_livingroom
          - input_boolean.switch_tv

Graphical card configuration​

Your card can define a getConfigElement method that returns a custom element for editing the user configuration. Home Assistant will display this element in the card editor in the dashboard.

Your card can also define a getStubConfig method that returns a default card configuration (without the type: parameter) in json form for use by the card type picker in the dashboard.

Home Assistant will call the setConfig method of the config element on setup. Home Assistant will update the hass property of the config element on state changes, and the lovelace element, which contains information about the dashboard configuration.

Changes to the configuration are communicated back to the dashboard by dispatching a config-changed event with the new configuration in its detail.

To have your card displayed in the card picker dialog in the dashboard, add an object describing it to the array window.customCards. Required properties of the object are type and name (see example below).

class ContentCardExample extends HTMLElement {
  static getConfigElement() {
    return document.createElement("content-card-editor");
  }

  static getStubConfig() {
    return { entity: "sun.sun" }
  }

  ...
}

customElements.define('content-card-example', ContentCardExample);
class ContentCardEditor extends LitElement {
  setConfig(config) {
    this._config = config;
  }

  configChanged(newConfig) {
    const event = new Event("config-changed", {
      bubbles: true,
      composed: true,
    });
    event.detail = { config: newConfig };
    this.dispatchEvent(event);
  }
}

customElements.define("content-card-editor", ContentCardEditor);
window.customCards = window.customCards || [];
window.customCards.push({
  type: "content-card-example",
  name: "Content Card",
  preview: false, // Optional - defaults to false
  description: "A custom card made by me!", // Optional
  documentationURL: "https://developers.home-assistant.io/docs/frontend/custom-ui/custom-card/", // Adds a help link in the frontend card editor
});

Tile features​

The tile card has support for "features" to add quick actions to control the entity. We offer some built-in features, but you can build and use your own using similar way than defining custom cards.

Below is an example of a custom tile feature for button entity.

Screenshot of the custom tile feature example

import {
  LitElement,
  html,
  css,
} from "https://unpkg.com/lit-element@2.0.1/lit-element.js?module";

const supportsButtonPressTileFeature = (stateObj) => {
  const domain = stateObj.entity_id.split(".")[0];
  return domain === "button";
};

class ButtonPressTileFeature extends LitElement {
  static get properties() {
    return {
      hass: undefined,
      config: undefined,
      stateObj: undefined,
    };
  }

  static getStubConfig() {
    return {
      type: "custom:button-press-tile-feature",
      label: "Press",
    };
  }

  setConfig(config) {
    if (!config) {
      throw new Error("Invalid configuration");
    }
    this.config = config;
  }

  _press(ev) {
    ev.stopPropagation();
    this.hass.callService("button", "press", {
      entity_id: this.stateObj.entity_id,
    });
  }

  render() {
    if (
      !this.config ||
      !this.hass ||
      !this.stateObj ||
      !supportsButtonPressTileFeature(this.stateObj)
    ) {
      return null;
    }

    return html`
      <div class="container">
        <button class="button" @click=${this._press}>
          ${this.config.label || "Press"}
        </button>
      </div>
    `;
  }

  static get styles() {
    return css`
      .container {
        display: flex;
        flex-direction: row;
        padding: 0 12px 12px 12px;
        width: auto;
      }
      .button {
        display: block;
        width: 100%;
        height: 40px;
        border-radius: 6px;
        border: none;
        background-color: #eeeeee;
        cursor: pointer;
        transition: background-color 180ms ease-in-out;
      }
      .button:hover {
        background-color: #dddddd;
      }
      .button:focus {
        background-color: #cdcdcd;
      }
    `;
  }
}

customElements.define("button-press-tile-feature", ButtonPressTileFeature);

window.customTileFeatures = window.customTileFeatures || [];
window.customTileFeatures.push({
  type: "button-press-tile-feature",
  name: "Button press",
  supported: supportsButtonPressTileFeature, // Optional
  configurable: true, // Optional - defaults to false
});

The only difference with custom cards is the graphical configuration option. To have it displayed in the tile card editor, you must add an object describing it to the array window.customTileFeatures.

Required properties of the object are type and name. It is recommended to define the supported option with a function so the editor can only propose the feature if it is compatible with the selected entity in the tile card. Set configurable to true if your entity has additional configuration (e.g. label option in the example above) so the editor.

Also, the static functions getConfigElement and getStubConfig work the same as with normal custom maps.