Improve automation notification

[FredrikM97]

Hi!

In the automation it is possible to send notification to devices/targets.

However, the functionality is still limited. There is a "sends a notification message" action but the target list is empty. And there is no title option, only message.

The "send a notification" have a free text for targets but not a dropdown. However, title, message, data is available.

Last option is to select each individual device/companion app and need to repeat same settings if I want to send to multiple devices.

I would like to suggest a few impovements:

• Select multiple targets/devices to "send a notification" to reduce multiple notifications with same message.
• "Send a notification" message to include title and data.
• Allow Send notification to user and not only devices
• Merge send a notification and send a notification message or clarify their separate use case.
• Maybe persistent message can be a option instead of separate action?

[hanwg]

"send a notification" (the notify.notify action) is legacy and might be deprecated in the future.
Development for notify.notify has been frozen due to the deprecation so your suggestions for "Send a notification" will not be possible.
You should use the newer "sends a notification message" (the notify.send_message action) instead.

notify.send_message will only show the title field if the targets supports title.
notify.send_message does have a dropdown; the free text input is for filtering the targets.
It looks like this:

[FredrikM97]

Thanks for the response!

For some reason Entities, Devices, areas are empty? I have multiple "Mobile Apps" setup with companion app and multiple users but none of them are visible? Would also be nice in future for an option to notify a user so it is independent of the device (or map user to one or more devices)

[hanwg]

Notify entities are relatively new and not many integrations support them.
The Mobile App integration has no support for it that's why you can't see it in the targets.

There's already a PR for this feature: home-assistant/core#156644
If all goes well, you should see it in 2026.1.