Finding devices¶

Once you have more than a screenful of devices, scrolling stops being a good way to reach the one you want. Machinon puts a search box in the top right of the header, next to the logo. Type into it and the page narrows to the devices that match, live, as you type.

Where you can search¶

The search box works on the pages that show devices as cards:

Dashboard (on a computer; see On a phone below)
Switches
Scenes
Temperature
Weather
Utility

On every other page there is nothing to filter, so the box dims and the typing area disappears, leaving just the magnifier, which does nothing when clicked or tapped. That includes the Floorplan page, the Theme Hub, the Domoticz setup pages, and Problem devices, which is a list rather than a page of cards.

What a search matches¶

A device matches if what you typed appears anywhere in:

its name
its description
its number, the index Domoticz gives every device
its type, such as Blinds or Temperature
the hardware it comes from, as named on the Domoticz hardware page

Some pages match a little more: on Temperature and Weather the humidity description and the forecast text count too, and on Switches a dimmer's percentage counts.

The box's placeholder text reads "Name, Desc, Idx, Status", which undersells it. Searching for a device type or for the hardware a device belongs to works just as well, and is often the fastest way to pull a whole family of devices onto one screen. Searching for blind on the Switches page, as in the screenshot above, finds every blind whether or not the word appears in its name.

Searching for more than one word¶

On the Switches, Scenes, Temperature, Weather and Utility pages, and on the Dynamic Dashboard, several words are treated as separate requirements that can appear in any order. Searching for living lamp finds a device called "Living Room Floor Lamp", and so does lamp living. You do not have to remember how the name was written.

The classic Dashboard is the exception. Domoticz searches that page itself rather than handing it to the theme, and it looks for what you typed as one phrase. On the dashboard, living finds everything in the living room, but living lamp finds nothing, because no device is called exactly that. If a dashboard search comes up empty, try a single word.

The match count, and clearing the search¶

While a search is active, the magnifier is replaced by two things: the number of matches, and a × to clear the search. The number counts the cards on screen rather than distinct devices, which matters on the classic dashboard, where one device can appear in two sections at once. A weather station that shows up under both Temperature and Weather counts as two.

You can clear a search in three ways: click the count or the ×, press Escape while the box has focus, or simply delete what you typed.

Two shortcuts save reaching for the mouse: F3 or Ctrl+F anywhere on a searchable page jumps straight into the search box (on other pages they open your browser's own find bar), and Enter closes the on-screen keyboard on a touch device without clearing what you typed.

The search stays as you move around¶

Moving to another page keeps your search term. If you search for kitchen on Switches and then open Temperature, you are still looking at the kitchen. This is deliberate: walking one room's devices across several pages is the common case, and having to retype the room on each page was the old, slower behaviour.

The flip side is that a page can look emptier than it should because a search you forgot about is still running. If devices are missing, check the search box first. On every searchable page the count beside it stays visible while a search is active, including on a phone, precisely so you can spot this. Pages with nothing to search show only the dimmed magnifier; the search picks up again on the next page that has one.

Cameras on the dashboard¶

The camera previews on the classic dashboard are searched too, by camera name. Typing part of a camera's name keeps that camera and hides the others. If nothing matches, the whole Cameras section disappears rather than sitting empty above a filtered dashboard.

On a phone¶

The box collapses to a magnifier in the header to save space, and expands into a floating field when you tap it, with the keyboard already up so you can start typing straight away. Once you have searched, the magnifier turns into the number of matches: tap that number to reopen the field with your search in it, then tap the X to clear it. See Mobile layouts for how the header behaves on small screens.

One difference worth knowing: the Dashboard is not searchable on a phone, because the phone dashboard is a different, compact layout rather than the card grid the search filters. Switches, Scenes, Temperature, Weather and Utility all search normally on a phone.