Alert disappearing after kiosk reload

[dukeseb]

Ok, so I really like this alert banner, but I am running into a problem on my kiosks where when I first load the kiosk when I walk by it I get the banner but when I come back and reload it again later the entity never changed but the banner no longer appears.

Anyone have any ideas?

[djdevil]

Hi @dukeseb! 👋

This is expected behaviour without persistent: true. Here's what's happening:

First load — the entity transitions from its previous state into the trigger state while the card is initialising → the card catches the change and shows the banner.
Reload — the entity is already in the trigger state when the card loads. No transition occurs, so the alert never fires.
The fix is one line — add persistent: true to your alert:

alerts:

• entity: binary_sensor.your_sensor
  state: "on"
  persistent: true # ← show even if entity is already triggered on load
  message: "Your alert message"
  theme: warning

With persistent: true the card checks the entity's current state immediately on load and shows the alert if the condition is already met — no transition required.

Could you share your current YAML config? If persistent: true alone doesn't resolve it, there may be something else in the setup worth looking at (e.g. on_change mode, conditions, or trigger delay).

[dukeseb]

cycle_interval: 5
show_when_clear: false
clear_message: There are no alerts
clear_theme: success
alerts:

• entity: sensor.litter_robot_waste_drawer
  operator: ">"
  state: "70"
  message: Litter Box is full!
  priority: 1
  theme: alarm
  icon: mdi:paw
  name: Litter Box Full
  show_badge: false
  use_ha_icon: true
• entity: vacuum.litter_robot_litter_box
  operator: "="
  state: error
  message: There is a problem with the Litter Box
  priority: 1
  theme: emergency
  icon: mdi:paw
  name: Problem with Litter Box
  show_badge: false
  use_ha_icon: true
• entity: sensor.dockstream_smart_fountain_remaining_water
  operator: null
  state: "35"
  message: The pet water level is below 35%. Refill Soon!
  priority: 1
  theme: caution
  icon: mdi:paw
  name: Pet Water Level is Low
  show_badge: false
  use_ha_icon: true
• entity: binary_sensor.granary_smart_feeder_food_status
  operator: "="
  state: "on"
  message: Pet food dispenser is out of food
  priority: 1
  theme: caution
  icon: mdi:paw
  name: Pet food dispenser is out of food
  show_badge: false
  use_ha_icon: true
  type: custom:alert-ticker-card
  cycle_animation: roll
  overlay_mode: false
  card_mod:
  style: |
  ha-card {
  min-height: 130px;
  }

[dukeseb]

also i forgot to add, i may of explained wrong.... i dont want it to be persistent as I dont want to have to click the x to dismiss it...... I want it to stay there until the state of the entity changes......

so as soon as i put the cats water back full the state is above its warning threshold it will disappear then...

the problem im having now is that after seeing the notification once or twice it disappears whether i have filled the water or not

[djdevil]

There are actually two likely causes for this on a kiosk — accidental snooze and the browser cache/service worker.

Cause 1 — Accidental snooze

On a wall-mounted touchscreen, any stray tap near the 💤 button silences the alert for hours. The snooze state is saved in the browser's localStorage, so it survives page reloads. The alert won't show again until the snooze expires, even if the condition is still active.

Fix — disable the snooze button entirely:

type: custom:alert-ticker-card
show_snooze_button: false
show_history_button: false
cycle_interval: 5
Cause 2 — Kiosk browser service worker / stale cache

Home Assistant's Lovelace frontend uses an aggressive service worker. When a kiosk wakes from sleep or does a soft reload (equivalent to F5), the page is often served from the service worker cache with stale entity states. The card evaluates those stale states at render time, sees no active condition, and shows nothing. A fraction of a second later the WebSocket reconnects and sends the real states — but the initial evaluation has already passed.

This explains the "works the first couple of times then stops" pattern: the first loads happen to catch a live WebSocket connection; later loads hit the cache before reconnecting.

Fixes to try in order:

Force a hard reload — in Fully Kiosk Browser (or whichever kiosk app you use) make sure the reload action is a full/hard reload, not a standard browser refresh. In Fully Kiosk this is the "Reload URL" action, not "Reload Page".

Add a short load delay — if your kiosk software supports it, add a 2–3 second delay before the dashboard becomes interactive after waking, to give the WebSocket time to reconnect and push fresh states before the card renders.

Use persistent: true with buttons hidden — if the cache issue persists, this is the most reliable fallback. With persistent: true the card re-evaluates the condition on every state update after load, so even if it misses the initial render it will catch up within seconds. Since you're on a kiosk with no one manually dismissing anything, the auto-dismiss-on-condition-clear behavior you want still works the same way:

type: custom:alert-ticker-card
show_snooze_button: false
show_history_button: false
cycle_interval: 5
show_when_clear: false
alerts:

• entity: sensor.litter_robot_waste_drawer
  operator: ">"
  state: "70"
  persistent: true
  message: Litter Box is full!
  theme: alarm
  use_ha_icon: true

• entity: vacuum.litter_robot_litter_box
  operator: "="
  state: error
  persistent: true
  message: There is a problem with the Litter Box
  theme: emergency
  use_ha_icon: true

• entity: sensor.dockstream_smart_fountain_remaining_water
  operator: "<=" # was: null — fix this or it only fires at exactly 35
  state: "35"
  persistent: true
  message: The pet water level is below 35%. Refill Soon!
  theme: caution
  use_ha_icon: true

• entity: binary_sensor.granary_smart_feeder_food_status
  operator: "="
  state: "on"
  persistent: true
  message: Pet food dispenser is out of food
  theme: caution
  use_ha_icon: true

Also note the operator: null on your water sensor — this was only triggering when the value was exactly 35. Changed to operator: "<=" so it fires for any value at or below 35%.

[db-wally007]

On a wall-mounted touchscreen, any stray tap near the 💤 button silences the alert for hours. The snooze state is saved in the browser's localStorage, so it survives page reloads. The alert won't show again until the snooze expires, even if the condition is still active.

So Snooze is not handled in the backend (db, file whathave you) but purely in the front end ?

So if user has 2 or more tablets with the same dashboard (and same notification) user has to snooze the alert on all of them ?