Groups are an essential part of managing your umpteen devices in Home Assistant. Be it to control multiple lights in a fixture, adjusting media players throughout the home, or setting up presence detection using multiple sensors, they can be and are used for just about every purpose. Until now, Groups could only be created by editing the configuration.yaml file. As of Home Assistant Core 2022.4 that is no longer the case. Groups can finally be created and edited, without ever having to open a text editor.
Groups can now be found in the Helpers section of the Home Assistant Configuration. When creating a Group, you are presented with a list of entity types which can be grouped. Once you have selected a type, you can start adding individual entities to this Group.
Creating Groups in the Home Assistant Configuration
In this example, I am grouping occupancy sensors located in the office. This allows me to use only the Group to automations and scripts, and spares me from having to add each entity individually. By default, an OR condition defines the Group's status, so if any entity switches to on, the Group will be on. If you wanted the Group's status to be defined by an AND condition, you can enable the slider titles All entities.
Another option you are presented with is whether you would like to hide the members of this group. Let's say you have a light fixture with three individual spotlights. It's highly unlikely you would ever control each spot individual. By hiding the members, you will only ever see the light fixture Group, and the individual spots will remain hidden.
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