Broadlink Codes Manager

A sidebar panel for Home Assistant to browse, test, copy, rename, delete and learn Broadlink IR/RF codes — without editing .storage/broadlink_remote_<mac>_codes by hand.

Status: v1.4.2. Built from a design spec and a review of the Broadlink integration's source in home-assistant/core. The integration's service logic has an automated test suite (see Tests below), but the integration itself is still not yet verified against a live Home Assistant instance. Please open an issue with your HA version if something doesn't load — see Known limitations below for why.

Screenshots

Devices	Commands	Command detail

Features

• Sidebar panel (admin-only), not a Lovelace card — this is a maintenance tool, it needs room for a table and bulk actions. Includes its own menu button so the standard Home Assistant sidebar stays reachable (narrow/mobile layouts, or an auto-hidden sidebar, no longer strand you on this panel with no way back).
• Devices shown as an icon grid (device type auto-guessed from its name, or set explicitly — see Device types below); tapping one opens a plain list of its commands. Tapping a command opens a detail view with Test, Copy, Copy to device, Rename, Delete.
• Create device is its own action, separate from learning a command — it just adds an empty, named (and optionally typed) device. Trying to create one with a name that's already taken doesn't silently do something surprising: it tells you and offers a shortcut into learning a command for the existing device instead.
• Device types — assign a device one of ~30 built-in types (TV, AC, light, lock, vacuum, kettle, and more), each with its own icon; leave it on auto-detect and the panel guesses one from the name instead. Change it any time from Edit device, which also lets you rename the device (moves all its commands, nothing needs re-learning).
• Learn command keeps its dialog open through the whole thing instead of closing right away: fill in a name, it waits for the IR signal, then shows you the code it just received with Test, Save, and Cancel (Cancel discards what was just learned rather than leaving an unwanted command behind).
• Copy to device — copy a learned command onto another device, on the same remote or a completely different Broadlink remote entity. Codes aren't tied to a specific MAC address, so this is a plain data copy (no re-learning, no button press needed), with overwrite protection unless you explicitly opt in.
• Delete device — a clearly visible button on the device's own page (not a small icon buried in the grid), removing every command on it in one call.
• Filter/search across devices and commands.
• Toggle commands (learned with alternative=True) are labelled, not silently treated as plain commands.

Installation

No YAML editing at any point — this is a UI-only integration.

HACS (custom repository)

1. HACS → Integrations → ⋮ → Custom repositories.
2. Add https://github.com/kdinya/ha-broadlink-codes-manager, category Integration.
3. Install Broadlink Codes Manager, restart Home Assistant.
4. Settings → Devices & Services → Add Integration → search Broadlink Codes Manager → Submit. That's it — one instance is all that's needed, and it takes no configuration fields.
5. A Broadlink Codes entry appears in the sidebar for admin users.

Manual

Copy custom_components/broadlink_codes_manager/ into your HA config/custom_components/ folder, restart HA, then do step 4 above.

Services

Service	Purpose
broadlink_codes_manager.list_codes	Returns all remotes + codes + device types (response data). Used by the panel.
broadlink_codes_manager.rename_command	Rename a command in place, no re-learning.
broadlink_codes_manager.copy_command	Copy a command onto another device, optionally on a different remote entity.
broadlink_codes_manager.learn_command	Wraps remote.learn_command, returning the learned code itself along with success/failure.
broadlink_codes_manager.create_device	Creates an empty device, optionally with a type/icon. Fails if the name is already taken.
broadlink_codes_manager.rename_device	Renames a device, moving every command under it. Carries over its device-type choice.
broadlink_codes_manager.delete_device	Deletes a device outright, including ones with zero learned commands.
broadlink_codes_manager.set_device_type	Sets (or clears, restoring auto-detect) which icon a device shows. Purely cosmetic.

Deleting and sending codes reuse Home Assistant's own remote.delete_command / remote.send_command — no point reinventing those.

Tests

The integration's service logic (rename, copy, learn, list, and safe access to live BroadlinkRemote entities) has an automated pytest suite.

The tests run against a small, local stand-in for the pieces of Home Assistant this integration actually touches (tests/_ha_stub/) - not a real HA instance - so they're fast and dependency-light, but they are not a substitute for the "not yet verified against a live HA instance" caveat above. They exist to pin down this integration's own logic (locking, error handling, toggle-list copying, overwrite protection) independent of that.

pip install -r requirements-test.txt
pytest

tests/ layout:

tests/
  _ha_stub/                     # minimal homeassistant.* stand-ins, test-only
  conftest.py
  test_entity_access.py         # defensive access to live BroadlinkRemote entities
  test_services.py              # list_codes / rename_command / copy_command / learn_command

Known limitations & how it works

• Reads/writes go through the live BroadlinkRemote entity object (via homeassistant.helpers.entity_platform), not a second Store pointed at the same file. That avoids the race where HA's own periodic flush could clobber a concurrent direct file write. The trade-off: this relies on the entity's private attributes (_codes, _code_storage, _lock). Those are stable in practice but not a public API, and could change in a future HA release without a deprecation notice. If that happens, the panel will show "no Broadlink remotes found" and the log will explain why — it won't crash silently.
• Repeat sequences (e.g. separate "once"/"repeat" blocks in some IR formats) are outside this integration's scope — it stores and replays exactly the base64 payload Broadlink itself produced.
• IR only. RF (315/433 MHz) codes are a different physical layer and are intentionally out of scope.
• Device types are stored separately from Broadlink's own codes. There's no field for this in Broadlink's own storage, so the panel keeps a small Store of its own (device name → chosen type), only ever read/written by this integration. Deleting a device's last command doesn't currently clean up its leftover type entry - harmless (a few bytes), but worth knowing if you inspect .storage directly.
• The panel's static file is served via hass.http.register_static_path (with a fallback to the newer async_register_static_paths / StaticPathConfig API introduced in HA 2024.7) — this code path is the least tested part of the integration; please report if the panel doesn't appear.
• Brand icon. As of Home Assistant 2026.3, custom integrations ship their own brand icon directly instead of submitting to the separate home-assistant/brands repository (which now auto-closes PRs adding new custom-integration folders for exactly this reason). This repo includes one at custom_components/broadlink_codes_manager/brand/icon.png, and Home Assistant itself displays it correctly everywhere (Settings → Devices & services, the config-flow dialog, etc.) via its own /api/brands/integration/... proxy. The one place it doesn't show up is the HACS store/download list, which still builds its icon URLs against the old brands.home-assistant.io CDN instead of that proxy - a confirmed bug in HACS itself (hacs/integration#5171, #5223), not anything wrong in this repo. A fix has been open since April 2026 (hacs/frontend#937) but is still unmerged as of this writing. Re-submitting to home-assistant/brands is not a working workaround here - that repo stopped accepting new custom-integration entries in March 2026, and this project's own attempt (see v1.3.3 in the changelog below) was auto-closed for that reason.

Changelog

v1.4.2

• Fixed: the device-type dropdown (Create device / Edit device) was sorted by its arbitrary internal declaration order, not alphabetically. It's now always sorted by the current language's label (TV, oven, air conditioner, ...), with "Auto-detect from name" pinned first since it isn't a real type.

v1.4.1

• Fixed: a device created via "Create device" but never given a command could never be deleted. Deleting a device used to go through remote.delete_command, which only removes named commands one at a time - Broadlink's own entity has nothing to iterate for an empty device, so it silently left the device behind forever. Delete device now uses a new delete_device service that removes the device entry directly (and cleans up its device-type entry), which works the same whether the device has commands or not.
• Changed: the device grid is now sorted alphabetically by device name instead of insertion order.
• Added: a small "View on GitHub" link at the bottom of the main device-list page, pointing back to this repository - the panel had no way back to the project page from inside Home Assistant before.

v1.4.0

• Added: device types. Assign a device one of ~30 built-in types (TV, AC, light, lock, vacuum, kettle, and more), each with its own icon - or leave it on auto-detect, which guesses one from the name like before. New set_device_type service; stored separately from Broadlink's own codes (see Known limitations).
• Added: Create device, split out from learning a command - it just adds an empty, named (and optionally typed) device. Creating one with a name that already exists no longer does anything surprising: it explains the conflict and offers a shortcut into learning a command for the existing device instead. New create_device service.
• Added: Edit device - rename a device (moves every command under it, nothing needs re-learning) and/or change its type, from one dialog on the device's own page. New rename_device service, which also carries over any device-type choice.
• Changed: Learn command no longer closes the dialog the moment you click Learn, which made it unclear whether anything had happened. It now stays open through the whole thing: fill in a name, it waits for the IR signal, then shows the code it just received with Test, Save, and Cancel - Cancel discards what was just learned (learn_command now returns the learned code itself, so the panel doesn't need a second round trip to show it).
• Changed: Delete device moved from a small icon on the device grid (unreachable on touch devices - hover-only) to a clearly visible button on the device's own page.
• Fixed: the row-navigation chevron (›) in a device's command list was barely visible (50% opacity, no color) - now bold and colored.

v1.3.5

• Fixed: long device names could overflow past the edge of their tile in the device grid instead of truncating - the truncation CSS was on an inline <span> with no defined width, so it never actually applied. Now correctly ellipsizes (Home Theater Sound...) and the command count stays reliably underneath the name (previously it could end up on the same line as a short name instead of always stacking below it, since neither element was block-level).
• Added: real screenshots to the README (device grid, command list, command detail dialog) - also brings the README in line with HACS's own recommendation to include images.

v1.3.4

• Fixed: switched to the correct, current way of shipping a brand icon. The home-assistant/brands repository stopped accepting new custom-integration icons as of HA 2026.3 - it now expects them bundled with the integration itself (custom_components/broadlink_codes_manager/brand/icon.png), which this release adds. The PR opened against home-assistant/brands in v1.3.3 was auto-closed by their bot for this reason and is no longer needed.

v1.3.3

• Fixed: the config flow's duplicate-instance abort didn't pass the single_instance_allowed error key, so it fell back to HA's default already_configured reason - which has no matching entry in this integration's strings.json/translations, so it would have shown an untranslated raw key instead of the intended message. Now passes the key explicitly so it matches.
• Added: CI (GitHub Actions) running hassfest, the official HACS validation action, and pytest on every push/PR and weekly.
• Fixed: the GitHub repository itself was missing a description and topics, which HACS needs to validate and list a custom repository properly.
• Confirmed manifest.json has every key HACS/hassfest require and no unrecognized ones, hacs.json is correctly configured for a content_in_root: false integration, and LICENSE (MIT) is present.

v1.3.2

• Redesigned: the command chip grid was replaced with an icon tile grid for devices (TV, AC, light, fan, etc. get a matching icon) and a plain vertical list for a device's commands once you tap into it - easier to scan than a wrap of same-sized chips, especially for devices with many commands.

v1.3.1

• Fixed: the panel could show the literal text "null" next to the "Learn command" button when a Broadlink remote's name came from the device registry rather than the entity itself. The friendly name is now resolved the same way Home Assistant itself resolves it.
• Fixed: the "Copy to device" dialog's device field is now a real dropdown of existing devices (plus an explicit "new device" option) instead of a text field with browser suggestions, which several mobile browsers don't surface as a visible picker at all.
• Changed: "Learn command" now has two distinct flows - the button in a remote's header creates a new device, while a "+" inside an existing device's command list learns a new command for that device specifically (shown as a fixed, non-editable field so you can't accidentally learn into the wrong device).
• Fixed: long remote/device names no longer push the header's action button onto its own line - the title now truncates instead.

v1.3.0

• General cleanup and test-suite maintenance.

v1.2.0

• New: Copy to device. Copy a learned command onto another device - same remote or a different Broadlink remote entity entirely - without re-learning. New broadlink_codes_manager.copy_command service, with overwrite protection unless explicitly requested, plus a "Copy to device..." action in the panel (per row and in the command detail view).
• New: command detail view. Clicking a command's name now opens a dialog with its full code (previously only a truncated preview was ever visible) and every action - Test, Copy, Copy to device, Rename, Delete - in one place.
• New: automated test suite for the integration's service logic.
• Fixed: sidebar navigation. The panel now renders its own menu button, matching native Home Assistant panels. Previously, opening this panel on a narrow/mobile layout (or with the sidebar set to auto-hide) could leave you with no way back to the sidebar without navigating away by URL.

v1.1.1

• Fixed the "Copy" button silently failing on setups where the navigator.clipboard API is unavailable (e.g. plain-HTTP access to Home Assistant, which has no secure-context clipboard access) — now falls back to a hidden-textarea + execCommand("copy") approach.
• Replaced every browser-native confirm() / prompt() / alert() popup (delete command, delete device, rename, learn command) with in-panel modal dialogs styled to match Home Assistant.
• Added a language selector to the panel, with Ukrainian (Українська) alongside English; the config-flow dialog is now also translated.
• General UI polish: card-style layout, collapsible device rows with a chevron indicator, escaped HTML in all user-supplied names to avoid markup injection in the panel.
• Confirmed (and documented) that there is intentionally no "add device" flow — devices are created implicitly the first time you learn a command on a new device name.

Roadmap

• Export/import full backup as JSON, one click.
• Duplicate-code highlighting.

Contributing

Issues and PRs welcome, especially real-world testing reports (HA version + what broke) since this was built and reviewed against source but not yet run live. Every push and PR runs pytest, hassfest, and the official HACS validation action (see the badge above) - all three should stay green.

License

MIT — see LICENSE.