Implement clustering to Map card and view

[marcinbauer85]

Hi 👋
In recent weeks, we've merged a change that shows entities in the default Home zone. This change was triggered by a different PR aiming to fix this because there was a mismatch of this behavior in the Map view vs. a Map card. To make this change more complete and user-friendly, we would like to implement a clustering mechanism when there are overlapping entities on the map.

We're reaching out to anyone that would like to take on this challenge and implement clustering to our current Maps 🤔💪
Some research suggests that https://github.com/Leaflet/Leaflet.markercluster may be used to achieve this.

Related issue: #24202 (comment)

[markus99]

Just upgraded to 2025.2.3 and noticing this behavior as well. Made a real mess of my map unfortunately.

Don't mind the idea of the leaflet cluster - but was happy with how it was (hiding entities if at home). Perhaps a toggle switch to use leaflets and another to show / hide entities in the HOME zone.

+1 for me to set it back to how it 'was' and then improve go-forward

[jpbede]

@marcinbauer85 Something like that? :) This is just a quick PoC

[markus99]

To me, the WHO/WHAT is more important than the how many. I understand, for simplicity, how the leaflet could look like a good solution - but would still vote that this is an OPTION and not mandated - otherwise when it says 2, how do you know (quickly & easily) which 2 are in a location?

I'm also still voting to have the HOME zone entities HIDDEN (or at least an option switch added to allow going back to that behavior).

[marcinbauer85]

@markus99 The original PR that sparked this change shown that even long-time users may not know how this works in map view, vs a manual card. The same features cannot work differently in different locations, more so just hiding entities when they are home w/o ANY information is a bad experience. @jpbede PR aims to add a button to toggle the clustering.
As for the feature to 'hide in Home' I propose to explore this in a different discussion, and maybe add an explicit option to entities, and provide some visual feedback on a map that there are entities, just not visible at a glance?

[markus99]

Appreciate the insight @marcinbauer85. While I don't disagree that hiding something w/out notice is a bad experience - so too is removing a feature that's been in place for 5 years w/out a way to easily revert (save for reverting to a prior version).

While it would be nice to select which entities show on the /map/ view - it sounds far more difficult to implement than a toggle / method / option to hide all entities when at home. Default however you want - but give the USER the option - and bring back what wasn't broken. Thank you.

Maybe like this?

[markus99]

Personally I don't use (or like) the map card, I prefer the VIEW - and want to be able to, as it used to be, have items hidden while at home. That's my request. It used to be that way, now it isn't - just asking for a toggle to enable how it used to be for the past 5 years I've been using HA.

[dm82m]

@marcinbauer85 and rest I would also opt for having it in sync for the map card, independent where the map card it is placed. I would also opt for having a configuration option like @markus99 has suggested but rather on the map instead of the view. and more precisely I would suggest it like this:

type: map
entities:
  - person.human
  - device_tracker.car
  - sensor.gas_station
  - entity: zone.home
    hide_entities: true (default: false)
  - zone.school

so the default would be to show the entities of each zone. but with the option to explicitly disable it.

in my current situation I have a complete mess:

• within the view all entities in the home zone are shown
• within a dashboard view with a map on it, the device_tracker entities are shown and the persons that get tracked by the companion app and the router status are not shown

edit: and leaflet can be integrated aswell to just tidy things up if they are shown. but I would treat both paths independently