5.5 Action Panel Copy, Default, and Edit All Panels

I was pretty excited to see 5.5 show up, it sounded like it was farther off so it was a pleasant surprise!

For existing setups it would be helpful if you could edit the action panel for a device in one activity and copy it to other activities. A good example is a receiver, there are a number of buttons to address and then once they are tweaked to your liking it would be great to be able to copy that to other activities.

Along with that it would be good to be able to go to devices and change the layout there globally, which would then carry over to any new activities automatically. It would also make sense to prompt the user after making changes at the device level to prompt whether to replace existing action panels in existing activities with the new layout. In essence, allowing a change to be made globally and offer to copy that to all existing instances of the device.

The editing of the default config under devices would probably need to include a global reset to default config to be complete.

Allow editing of the panels that are not editable currently. For example on the receiver volume panel allow editing to include the surround mode etc. I think this has been asked elsewhere and I’ll try to find it and bump that topic so people can chime in.

2 Likes

+1 on this. I would also like to be able to edit the receiver volume panel in order to include the receiver’s input and mode display there for easier reference.

+1 on copying/pasting action panel edits to multiple activities or global device action panel edits. Example - I have Sonos activities in multiple rooms. I have created action planned buttons for various playlists and streams. I would like to copy/paste the Sonos action panel design or custom module for other actives.

Just experimenting with customizing action panels for the first time today. Would love to see ability to copy (or set globally) from one activity to another. I have the same receiver use case described in this thread.

It’s been a few years and after the reading the manual and playing around with the UI I am wondering if this is possible yet?

My use cases are as follows:

  1. I have two physical receivers that are the same exact model - one for each of two rooms.

  2. Within each room the receiver is used on most / all of the activities.

I’d like to create a default action panel design such that it is possible to use the design to control the two separate physical devices from multiple activities in each room. Customization at the device or activity level would be nice too.

I don’t want to solution here but in my mind I think of it as having a device type and then instances of the device type. Basic Fruit → Orange, Fruit → Apple object-oriented semantics.

  • Device Type: Denon AVR-X4300H. At this level I could set a default action panel design.
  • Device Instance 1: Family Room Denon AVR-X4300H. At this level I would inherit the device type default action panel design but could, optionally, customize it for the Family Room.
  • Family Room Activity 1: Family Room Watch AppleTV. At this level I would inherit the inherit either the device type or room instance default but could optionally, customize it for the Family Room Watch AppleTV activity.
  • Family Room Activity 2: Family Room Watch DirecTV. At this level I would inherit the inherit either the device type or room instance default but could optionally, customize it for the Family Room Watch DirecTV activity.
  • Family Room Activity 3…n
  • Device Instance 2: Theater Denon AVR-X4300H. At this level I would inherit the default action panel design but could, optionally, customize it for the Theater.
  • Theater Activity 1…n
  • Device Instance 3…n

Probably doesn’t need to be that complex, but that would be a nice goal. From a MVP perspective it would probably work to have a Device Type definition that could then be customized per activity.

If there is a way to already do this then I apologize for not locating it. Feel free to point me in the right direction.

I was hoping maybe a way of handling this was by utilizing popup inline activities.

In my Family Room, I created a new inline activity with an action panel and start commands called Receiver Control.

I went into my existing Watch Apple TV activity and added a button to the Denon Tray that starts the Receiver Control activity. This works and pops up the activity as expected.

Thought I haven’t done it yet I believe the next steps would be to: 1) get the action panel exactly how I want it on the Receiver Control activity; 2) go into each activity that uses the Denon device, add the button to the tray to launch the popup; 3) remove all the other buttons from the Denon tray for each activity.

Is that the best approach given the current capabilities? Any advice? Is this even the intention of popup activities?

Also, is there a way “go back” to the source activity after launching the popup activity? I didn’t see an easy way. In the example above the only way to get back to the Watch Apple TV activity was to go back to Family Room and then back into the Watch Apple TV activity. When I try to jump directly to another activity from within the popup activity the list of activities excludes the Watch Apple TV activities. So it seems the app is aware that the Watch Apple TV activity is the active media activity. Just no easy way to go back as far as I can tell.

Any help appreciated.