How to add a date filtering shortcut button in Home Assistant for your picture frame

I thought it would be nice to have shortcut buttons in Home Assistant for the date filtering functionality of PictureFrame.

Often, after holidays, I want to focus on the latest photos to relive a good time. I could, of course, use the date filter field, but it’s so much more convenient with a one-click button.

So, I asked the master of Home Assistant integration, Helge, for help, and it turned out that he had already implemented it. He was kind enough to share his approach with me.

As this may also be of interest to others, I have outlined the steps below.

Shortcuts

This is the idea: Instead of entering “Date from” and “Date to” manually, you can simply tap a preset button to define a time.

Besides dates, you can of course also create as many preset buttons as you like for tags, locations, or directories. Like “wedding”, “France”, “biking”, or whatever Exif data you have created.

In my case, I created four time filters and one reset button.

The following instructions assume that you have read Helge’s article on How to integrate PictureFrame into Home Assistant. If you haven’t, start there first.

Helpers

Start by considering which date presets you prefer. Then, go to Settings in Home Assistant, and navigate to “Devices & services > helpers”.

Create a new helper for every preset, choose “button”.

Give it a name and choose a suitable icon.

Repeat this process for every preset you want to create.

These are the five that I use:

Automations

Next, you’ll need to create automations in “Automations & scenes” in Settings.

Helge elegantly combined three buttons in one automation, but for the sake of simplicity, you can create a separate automation for each button.

Create a new automation

and the click on the three dots top-right and choose “Edit in YAML”.

You should see

Here are the automations that I use. This one is to clear the date fields and reset the filter:

alias: Picframe Date Clear
description: ""
triggers:
  - entity_id:
      - input_button.picframe_date_clear
    id: clear
    trigger: state
conditions: []
actions:
  - if:
      - condition: trigger
        id:
          - clear
    then:
      - data:
          topic: picframe/date_from
          payload: 1901/12/15
        action: mqtt.publish
      - data:
          topic: picframe/date_to
          payload: 2038/01/01
        action: mqtt.publish
mode: single

This one sets the date filter to the past 30 days. You must use the same name that you use in Automations.

alias: Picframe Date Last 365 days
description: ""
triggers:
  - entity_id:
      - input_button.picframe_date_last_365days
    id: 365days
    trigger: state
conditions: []
actions:
  - if:
      - condition: trigger
        id:
          - 365days
    then:
      - data:
          topic: picframe/date_from
          payload: "{{ (now() - timedelta(days=365)).strftime(\"%Y/%m/%d\") }}"
        action: mqtt.publish
      - data:
          topic: picframe/date_to
          payload: 2038/01/01
        action: mqtt.publish
mode: single

For “last seven days”, just replace the “days=365” with “7” and so forth.

Cards

Lastly, to show the buttons, I created a vertically stacked card with the five buttons with

type: vertical-stack
cards:
  - type: entities
    title: Fnatenrahmen
    entities:
      - entity: sensor.picframe_image_counter
        name: Selected Images
      - entity: switch.bilderrahmen
      - entity: select.picframe_directory
        name: Directory
      - entity: input_text.picframe_tags_filter
        name: Tags
      - entity: input_text.picframe_location_filter
        name: Location
      - entity: input_text.picframe_date_from
        name: Bilder ab dem
      - entity: input_text.picframe_date_to
        name: Bilder bis zum
  - type: glance
    show_name: true
    show_icon: true
    show_state: false
    entities:
      - entity: input_button.picframe_date_last_week
        name: 7d
        tap_action:
          action: toggle
      - entity: input_button.picframe_date_last_month
        name: 30d
        tap_action:
          action: toggle
      - entity: input_button.picframe_date_last_365days
        name: 1y
        tap_action:
          action: toggle
      - entity: input_button.picframe_date_last_1000days
        name: 3y
        tap_action:
          action: toggle
      - entity: input_button.picframe_date_clear
        name: Reset
        tap_action:
          action: toggle
    state_color: true

which is placed below the other filters.

Conclusion

Thank you to Helge for sharing his knowledge on how to have preset buttons.

It’s not limited to dates but opens great possibilities to pre-define photo collections for all kinds of occasions.

Thank you for your support and motivation.