HomeKit Bridge fans should not have present modes exposed as switches by default

[timdream]

The problem

I added a fan to Apple Home app and found the bridge grouped a few non-descriptive switches with the fan.

Upon researching, I realized this is a feature added in #45962 by @bdraco to expose all available present modes from the fan to HomeKit.

(Aside: I didn't dig deeper into why the names of the switches are non-descriptive; it seems that the code did try to make them descriptive.)

While I value @bdraco's contribution and respect his code ownership, this doesn't feel like a proper default behavior. The switches clutter the views in the Home app, and they are impossible to remove from the Room view. Also, the documentation does not explain the present modes support (and the way it supports them by exposing them as switches).

I am asking for any of the following solutions to resolve this issue:

1. Stop exposing present modes and ask people to set up their own template switches for each of the present modes. This is the least preferable solution, since it reverts Add support for preset modes in homekit fans #45962 which had been there for three years. It may cause some surprises to people who depend on this feature.
2. Enable some kind of entity_config allowing the switches to be not exposed. The drawback of this solution is that users will only be able to access this option when the bridge is defined in YAML, not from the UI; unless we want to invest in extra UI work to put up all the bells and whistles.
3. If either of the solutions is preferable, at the very least, we should update the documentation and explain what these switches are. We may also explain to people who really want to remove those switches to define a template fan and expose that fan instead — the template fan is arguably more work than template switches, though, given the Helper UI is not available.

Regardless the solution chosen, I want to thank you for your attention to this issue and the contribution to Home Assistant.

What version of Home Assistant Core has the issue?

core-2024.11.3

What was the last working version of Home Assistant Core?

No response

What type of installation are you running?

Home Assistant Container

Integration causing the issue

HomeKit Bridge

Link to integration documentation on our website

https://www.home-assistant.io/integrations/homekit/

Diagnostics information

No response

Example YAML snippet

No response

Anything in the logs that might be useful for us?

No response

Additional information

No response

[home-assistant]

Hey there @bdraco, mind taking a look at this issue as it has been labeled with an integration (homekit) you are listed as a code owner for? Thanks!

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[home-assistant]

Hey there @PhracturedBlue, @home-assistant/core, mind taking a look at this issue as it has been labeled with an integration (template) you are listed as a code owner for? Thanks!

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• @home-assistant rename Awesome new title Renames the issue.
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