The User, the Phone, and the Device in Home Assistant
After installing the app, a few new things showed up in Home Assistant: a user, a phone device, and quite a few entities. This lesson sorts out what appeared and clarifies the difference between a person, a user, and a device. That's the foundation for presence and personal automations.
In Lesson 2 the phone connected to Home Assistant and got a device name. That was a good start, but now it's time to sort out the vocabulary. Home Assistant distinguishes three things that beginners often mix up: a user, a device, and a person. Mix them up, and later it's hard to understand why presence doesn't behave the way you expect.
Plan on roughly forty to forty-five minutes. This is an organizing lesson. We're not building automations or zones yet. We're just setting readable names and assigning the phone to a person, so the home knows who is who.
This lesson's core idea
A phone is a device.
A person is a household member.
Home Assistant works out a person's presence from their devices.
Three concepts you need to separate
Let's start by sorting out three concepts. They look similar, but they mean different things. That's the heart of this whole lesson.
A user: the login account in Home Assistant. It's what you log into in the app, and it's how the phone gets access to the system.
A device: the specific phone as seen by the mobile app integration. It carries entities: battery, network, location, and other data.
A person: a household member in Home Assistant. A person can have one or more devices assigned, and it's that person's presence the system tracks.
The simplest comparison
A user is a key to the door. A device is the phone in a pocket. A person is the human carrying that phone. Home Assistant looks at devices to guess where the person is.
A user doesn't always mean a person
In Home Assistant, a user account and a person can share a similar name, but they aren't the same thing. A user is for logging in. A person is for presence and personal automations. Most of the time it's the same real human, say, Marek, but the system still treats these as separate concepts.
In practice
The user account answers: who can log in. The person answers: where is a household member probably located. The phone answers: where is this specific device.
Don't use one account for everyone
If several people log into the same Home Assistant account, personal notifications and automations become hard to build later. The phone is supposed to represent one specific person, so every household member should have their own account and their own person entry in Home Assistant.
A person can have several devices
This is an important point. One person doesn't have to have exactly one phone. You might have a personal phone and a second one you actually carry around. Home Assistant lets you assign several devices to one person, but it doesn't work like a simple "any tracker equals home." The person entity's algorithm distinguishes connectivity trackers (router, Bluetooth) from position trackers (GPS), and picks a source based on tracker type and update time. That's why you should only assign devices to a person that genuinely travel with them, and why it's worth checking the source attribute.
One device: the simplest case. The person has one phone, and it determines their presence.
Several devices: the person has a personal phone and a second one they genuinely carry. The system may consider them present when any one of those devices is home.
To start: for learning purposes, one phone assigned to one person is enough. Add more devices later.
Don't assign every device to a person
Assign to a person only devices that genuinely travel with them. Most often that's a phone. Don't assign the shared wall tablet, an old phone sitting in a drawer, or any device that permanently stays home. A device like that could make Home Assistant think a household member is home even after they've left.
Do assign: a household member's main phone, and possibly a second phone, if it genuinely travels with that person.
Don't assign: the wall panel, a household tablet, a test phone, or any device permanently left at home.
What device_tracker actually is
After installing the app, Home Assistant creates a device_tracker entity for the phone. This is the entity that says where the device is: home or away. You don't need to dig into accuracy or delay details yet, we'll cover that in the presence lesson. For now, it's enough to know that device_tracker is the device's location entity.
A device_tracker entity most often shows home or not_home, but it can also show a zone name, say, work. The person entity works similarly. Don't assume there are only two possible states.
Don't worry yet about accuracy, delays, or why the state doesn't update instantly. That's a topic for the presence lesson. Here we only care about the connection: the phone creates a device_tracker, and that device_tracker can be assigned to a person.
device_tracker describes a device, not a human
device_tracker tells you where the phone is. Only once you assign the device to a person can Home Assistant say where a household member probably is. That's exactly why a phone and a person aren't the same thing.
What person actually is
The person entity represents a household member in Home Assistant. You assign one or more tracking devices to a person. Home Assistant looks at those devices and works out whether the person is home or away. That lets you talk about a person in automations, instead of a specific phone.
That matters for readability. An automation like "when Marek gets home" is easier to understand than "when a device_tracker with a cryptic name changes state." A person is also more durable than a device. Replace your phone, and you just assign the new device to the same person, and automations keep working.
| Concept | What it describes | Example |
|---|---|---|
| User | The Home Assistant login account | The account you log into in the app |
| Device | The specific phone and its entities | Marek's Phone, with battery and location |
| device_tracker | Where the device is | home, not_home, or a zone name |
| Person | A household member and their presence | Marek is home |
A sound layout for a household
In a simple household, the layout might look like this: every household member has their own account, their own person, and their own phone. That way Home Assistant knows who's logging in, whose phone it's seeing, and whose presence it should track.
| Household member | User | Person | Device |
|---|---|---|---|
| Marek | Marek | Marek | Marek's Phone |
| Anna | Anna | Anna | Anna's Phone |
Why a readable phone name is worth it
After installing, the device and its entities often get technical names. Leave that uncorrected, and once you've added a few phones, you'll get lost in the entity list. A good name is an investment. It makes every following lesson easier: presence, notifications, the dashboard, and automations.
Good device names: Marek's Phone, Anna's Phone, Kasia's iPhone, Dad's Samsung.
Bad names: SM-G991B, iPhone, Pixel 7, mobile_app_iphone.
Notice that the device's name and the person's name are two different things. The device can be named "Marek's Phone," while the person is simply "Marek." That way, automations talk about the person, while diagnostics tell you immediately which piece of hardware is involved.
How to assign a phone to a person
Now for the most important hands-on part. You'll connect the phone device to a person, so Home Assistant knows whose presence it's tracking. You do this in the people settings. If a person doesn't exist yet, you create one and assign a tracking device to it.
- Go to Settings, then the People section.
- Open your person entry, or create a new one, say, Marek.
- In the person's settings, find the list of tracking devices.
- Assign the phone device from the mobile app to the person.
- Save your changes and check whether the person shows a home or away state.
One person, one account, their devices
The cleanest layout looks like this: the person Marek has his own user account and his own phone as a tracking device. Then logins, presence, and automations all form a coherent whole.
What all this is for: a simple example
Imagine you want a notification when you get home. Without a person, you'd have to reference a specific device_tracker entity with a technical name. With a person, you simply say: when Marek's state changes to home. That's more readable and more durable.
When you replace your phone a year from now, you don't rewrite the automation. You assign the new device to the person Marek, and everything keeps working. That's the whole strength of separating a person from a device.
Several trackers don't work like a simple "any one is home"
If you assign several device_tracker entities to one person, Home Assistant picks the state's source based on tracker type and the most recent update. Router, Bluetooth, and GPS trackers can carry different priorities depending on whether the device is home or away. In the person entity's attributes, you can check source, which tracker currently supplies its state. A typical problem: the router still shows the phone home after you've left.
The phone-replacement procedure
Replacing a phone is its own procedure, not just "log in on the new one." Do it in this order.
1. Register the new phone in the Companion App.
2. Test the new notify.mobile_app_... action.
3. Assign the new device_tracker to the person.
4. Check any automations that reference the old phone directly.
5. Only then remove the old registration, and check that no stray actions, sensors, or devices remain.
A user and a person remain two objects
A person can be linked to a user account, but the user and the person remain separate objects. Don't assume that changing an account automatically fixes trackers.
What happens when you replace your phone
Replacing a phone shouldn't mean rewriting automations. That's exactly why we build logic around the person, not around a specific phone model. When you buy a new phone, you install the app, log in, give it a readable name, and assign the new device to the same person.
The rule
Base personal automations on the person. You can replace the phone device, the person stays the same.
What can go wrong
Confusing a device with a person: base automations on the person, not on a single phone entity, when household presence is what matters.
The phone isn't assigned to a person: the person shows an unknown state, because no tracking device is assigned.
Technical names: after adding a few phones, you can't tell which is which. Give them readable names right away.
Several people on one account: every household member should have their own account and their own person entry, otherwise presence gets muddled.
Assigning the wall panel to a person: the tablet stays home, so the person can look present even after they've left.
Deleting the old phone without checking automations: assign the new phone to the person first, then clean up old devices.
Assigning a phone to the wrong person: personal notifications and automations can end up going to the wrong household member.
Assignment: sort out your phone and your person
To do
☐ Check what name the phone device currently has in Home Assistant.
☐ Give the device a readable name, say, Marek's Phone.
☐ Find your phone's device_tracker entity.
☐ Assign the phone to your person in the people settings.
☐ Check whether the person shows a home or away state.
☐ Write down which person has which device, if the household has several phones.
☐ Check that the phone isn't assigned to the Panel account or to a shared user.
☐ Make sure you're only assigning a person the devices that genuinely travel with them.
☐ If you have an old phone or a household tablet, don't assign it to a person just because it's visible in Home Assistant.
☐ Build a simple table: person, user account, phone device, and device_tracker entity.
Key takeaways
A user, a device, and a person are three different things: an account, a phone, and a household member.
device_tracker describes the device, it says where the phone is, home or away.
A person ties presence together, you assign devices to a person, and it's their presence the system tracks.
A person outlasts a phone, replace the phone and just reassign the new device to the same person.
Readable names are the foundation, a good device name makes every following lesson easier.
What's next
In Lesson 4 you'll look at the phone's entities: battery, charging, Wi-Fi, sound mode, and sensors. You'll learn to pick out the ones that are genuinely useful, without creating chaos out of dozens of entities you'll never actually use.
For now, what matters most is that Home Assistant knows who is who. A phone is a device, a person is a household member, and presence connects the two.
