handy-time

Custom template for Home Assistant with some handy time macros - mainly smart_time which gives an english readable string for a time in the past or the future to the nearest 30 seconds for use on dashboards, it gets more accurate as the time delta from now becomes smaller - just as you would say it was the aim! I wrote this to create something small and quick that would deal with the common dashboard display cases, If you are looking for somehting more comprehensive to manipulate time value check out easy-time-jinja.

Install

Copy the handy_time.jinja file into your config/custom_templates directory in Home Assistant, then anywhere you want to use one or more of the macros in some Jinja template code use:

{%- from 'handy_time.jinja' import long_time, short_time, smart_time,
   delta_mins, delta_hours, delta_days -%}

To play with

In Developers Tools->Template try pasting this:

{%- from 'handy_time.jinja' import smart_time -%}
{%- set a = now() - timedelta(days=5) %}
{{ smart_time(a) }}
{%- set a = now() - timedelta(hours=5, seconds=55) %}
{{ smart_time(a) }}
{%- set a = now() + timedelta(hours=5, seconds=55) %}
{{ smart_time(a) }}
{%- set a = now() + timedelta(days=100) %}
{{ smart_time(a) }}
{%- set a = now() - timedelta(days=100) %}
{{ smart_time(a) }}

and you should see:

5d ago
5h 30s ago
in 5h 1m
in 3 months
3 months ago

Examples

In an entity-row in a lovelace dashboard (using custom:template-entity-row):

      - type: custom:template-entity-row
        entity: input_datetime.last_power_cut
        name: Last Power Cut
        state: |-
          {%- from 'handy_time.jinja' import smart_time -%}
          {{ smart_time(states('input_datetime.last_power_cut')) }}

      - type: custom:template-entity-row
        entity: sensor.daylight_savings_days_until
        icon: mdi:calendar-clock
        name: Next Clock Change
        state: |-
          {%- from 'handy_time.jinja' import smart_time -%} {{
          smart_time(states('sensor.daylight_savings_next')) }}