I hate the new Zipatile UI - how do I get the old one back?

Vedran, clicking on "Types" you go to the previous "Devices". It is not the same as before, where you have Devices and Rooms. Rooms option is missing. Also the representation has changed and some options are not clear enough. UI should be self explanatory.

@Vedran - there is no option to include rooms which had logical groupings for devices in the previous version. Also, I’m not a huge fan of the way each sensor/device looks (fat grey tiles).

How can I go back to the old version?

@Pablo @Vineet

The Rooms are still available, you have to add the icon(tile) to the home screen. The same goes for scenes.

@ArskiYou can still go to AppRepo and download Launcher3. After downloading, just go to Android Settings - Home - and select the Launcher3. Although it will most likely prompt you to select a launcher as soon as you've downloaded Launcher3.

If you give it some time and play around with it, you will see that this launcher actually eases up the experience of the platform and the device itself. Everything is still available on the launcher as it was before.

In my opinion the new UI is smooth and fast, and we are all really proud of it. Overall user feedback on the UI is very positive, people tend to welcome the change.

@Vedran - I'm more after recreating the old look of the sensor tiles. My wife and I loved the minimalistic UI and it nicely blended with the style of our house. The new "fat" tiles are quite distracting.

@Arski

Yeah of course, you can still downgrade although its not recommendable.

Just go to AppRepo, download and install the 2.1.6 version. If you get an error or something, just clear the cache from the AppRepo application, force stop it, and run it again.

But give the new interface a chance, not even 24h has passed :)

@Vedran - oh, I don't need 24 hours to know whether I like something or not LOL ;)

@Arski, you are showing two different thermostats on left and right side. One is very simple heating thermostat on the left, and another one is much more complex with both heating and cooling set points. It's obvious that you are trying to show new widget as less appealing than the new one.

@Sebastian - I'm more so commenting on the overall interface redesign. The big grey buttons on the right are an eyesore. Again, this is purely subjective, some will hate it, others will love it. Personally, I'm very happy to be back on the previous version.

@seb, well Arski succeeded then. And thats not his fault. Its those large grey buttons from the 1980s windows interface

no wait this is better, remember these,

ohhh, now I figured it out. Zipato are trying to give you the whole windows experience

hahaha, i crack myself up sometimes.

When I first saw the redesigned interface, I thought of the Almond Z-wave router:

@Sebastian and the Zipato Dev Team - I kind of feel bad for starting this discussion thread and the heated discussion it's now generating. However, it also shows how passionate your user community is (myself included) about the Zipato line of products. Many companies pay big money to get that kind of user feedback.

EDIT: Update the app again, we've made a nifty little feature - just for you.

Hue bulbs work perfectly with the new UI, as they worked with the previous UI, as they worked since the beginning of time. Groups can be added as a tile, scenes can be added as a tile...

I would like to make groups and add as an icon on the desktop for quick control.

Meanwhile, I deleted an icon, and do not know how to add it back.

Vineet, I have same question

You have the "Add new" Plus on the empty icon field where you can add any tiles you want.If its missing, go to the toast menu on the left and refresh the view - it will appear.

Ok Vedran, when I've updated to 2.2.7 now I have the "Add new" Plus button and can customize the front page. So now I have the Rooms view.

I would like to customize the lines surrounding the time: they say nothing but if I click them, Alarm, Thermostats, etc. appear. How do I customize this?

Thanks for your help.

I also have lines. Very disturbing. It should be alarm and heating system

Instead of these lines you should see the status of original security alarm partition, which was made automatically during the registration of Zipatile. However, if you have deleted it, than you don't have it. in the near future, we will add option to add some other alarm partition there...

I would like to be able to remove the alarm/clock widget and use the weather widget instead.. or maybe the temperature widget.. It's an idea...

Well, Im sure it should have been an option straight from the beginning. It was always a problem if someone has more alarms and zones, not able to pick the one to show.

Besides, there are so many things Adrian mentioned here, that it is no point to go any further. Btw, I apparently have one customer, who I believe got so much disturbed by the new screen trying to get back to the used to screen (did not know the change to come), that he was touching everything on the ZT and it all ended up in him probably accidentally resetting the whole network...without PRO license looks like he lost everything...

Dont worry Attila, I have the same issues. Clients updated their Zipatiles because Zipato "push" out the notifications to them, and they all hate the new interface and want it reverted back. Most are either to old or just dont want to do it themselves as they paid for a specific system and now it changed on them. I have spent the last 3 days going to clients homes and reverting it back for them. Who pays for this? Not Zipato. I'm f"ing sick of this lack of communication and Zipatos own agenda that cost me money. I simply cant handle this any more.

This gets to the heart of the problem with products being online and getting updated automatically. In the old days, you would buy a product, take it home, and it would neither improve nor change. Now products are both improved *and* changed constantly. Which is better? Clearly, many users get used to an interface and would like it to remain essentially the same. They want bug fixes and new features, but not a total change in the way they use the box. I personally feel that this expectation is entirely reasonable. Most people are not technies, not interested in constantly renewing and changing everything. They have lives and take a purely utilitarian view of technology. The tech is there to do a job, and not get in the way or force them to constantly learn new knowledge.

@Raffael: Can you point me to the "touch control" app that you use for visualisation ? - thanks.

..maybe thats a missunderstanding. With touch control I mean the 6 touch buttons and the gesture function built-in to the Zipatile. This I use to trigger rules.

O Okay ! - thanks.

Hi Adrian,

I have still flagged your email response from 2 weeks ago (your post on 23.11.), but just simply had no time.

You seem like a realistic person in terms of trying to eliminate most error factors when working with Zipato system and I have to admit, Im more on your side than on Zipato. It is because I also feel that the most important people whose feedback should be highly valued is not often the case. At the end we are the people (companies) who are facing the customer direct, and if something fucks up, we are the one that bear cost to fix it...Im also tired of fixing things that worked well before.

I understand that Zipato has extremely complex system designed, but unfortunately some of the decisions made at early stages still kicks our asses.

1st one was the idea to have everything cloud based which even nowadays can cause some issues (although for me the internet stability is very good, but I remember when I had Zipabox it was a pain).

The 1st idea relates to the 2nd Idea where Zipabox was designed with too weak hardware as "most of the things can be run on cloud" philosophy"

3rd, when I purchased the 1st generation Zipatiles - the same phylosophy was followed - too weak hardware in the Tile can cause some issues. For example I cannot have the Teamviewer on or Skype, as the Zipatile after a while simply cannot manage and freeze up completely (until restart).

I also love the system as it is easy to use for me, the rule creator is brilliant.

It is a huge shame, that because of the Cloud idea now any feature takes ages to implement and this is why Zipato cannot keep up with the fast changing environment. So many huge features that could have been implemented, but as the system is so complex, and because (evidently) the zipato team is not as big as for example Fibaro), only very few new features come alive per each year.

Overall I'm going to keep using Zipato system for home and for small installations, but when some larger things come around, I also need to minimize the possible error impact. For example I personally would not dare to use Zipato system in a flat apartments as intercom system.

I really hope that Zipato is heading to right direction and that sooner (rather than later) an implementation of a feature will not take ages like now, it will be discussed or proposed to some power users for recommendation/testing.

I will get in touch with you direct as I seek for your advise on something.

BTW, keep up with the great work and I really hope that at some day we will meet in person, as I always like to meet great people like you.

@Alejandro, install the 2.1.6 version of the Zipato app and you will get the classic UI back :)

Please be aware that using 2.1.6 version of Zipato app will left you without all improvements and bug fixes from any of newer versions.

I agree!

Why not try to make a clear design theme on the platforms instead of going in totally different directions.

And why not bring the IOS app up to date. We have been waiting for that for more than a year - with an endless "coming soon" messages??!!?

The IOS app is an embarrassment in comparison to other smart home systems.

I agree, and was about to comment the same. We need an update on the mobile platform too so that the design is in sync.

New mobile platform will follow the design for sure. We just can't make it all at once.

...21 months has passed and you still didnt make it... it is not an issue of time any more but will of Zipato to improve user experience and its product, that is (from my experience) on very low level unfortunatelly... Kind regards, Alen

I do agree with Adrian and Attila, and really surprised they were not in solved somehow on the new development.

@Zipato, these two + Alberto are giving at least same or even more support and help to other users as the official team and their expertise always gives the rest of us a valuable information. I believe, and that is my opinion with which you could disagree of course, that they should be really taken in account!

@Attila, this has been refreshment of the current UI. If you really take a close look, you will see that we have just added a main menu in order to provide some simple interface for an average customer who is only using this device for it's primary purpose. Everything else is still there where it was before, so there was not a big development in the back which would require an additional help.

As for the PRO license, I don't know exactly what you are talking about, but all Power Users of this forum are having the right to have PRO license free of charge, as well as to get free sample for testing from time to time. So in case you have an issue with that, I think you should open a ticket and we will check it out.

interesting comment Sebastian. Firstly thank you for the reply, it is always nice to see Zipato get involved in the forum, and they have been a lot recently, so well done.

It is not just a refreshment, as you can tell from the dozens of comments above. It is similar, but different. And as you once told me, we need to design the UI for the general community, not just the few techy guys like us. Well I can tell you, that any non techy person now has 3 different interfaces to contend with and doesn't know where to begin. So ask again, who was this test group?

And I have not had a Pro licence on my Main controller for months now. And in fact, have always had to purchase them (besides the very first licence), as it was never offered for free. Not a big issue to me, but it would have been nice to have it offered.

So will this new UI be common on all platforms in the future? Will the previous UI be supported? Will we still have widgets supported? (both Zipato widgets on android devices, and widgets from other programs within the new UI?

Yes, we are working on mobile apps which are going to be unified this time. We don't have a plan to support widgets from other application within Zipato application, but we will continue supporting Zipato widgets in android so you will be able to use them in other launchers.

btw. I have wrote a big reply to your post above, but it seems like it's not saved as I was writing "inline":-(

thanks Sebastian. Just email it to me if you like.

A real shame you arent supporting widgets within the Zipato application, it was the only saving grace for not having any official support of media players.

So I guess we are back to having to install 2 tablets in residences now, or just the Zipabox and an Android/IOS tablet. One step forward, 2 steps back.

If this is your solution, than I am happy that you are not providing solution for my home:-)

So what would you suggest to install when automating a home. The clients wants a wall tablet to control their automation system (zipato) plus multiroom music, plus AV gear, plus see cameras and intercom. Everything they can do with an ipad or android tablet. Tell me Sebastian, what do you have installed in your home?

I find new UI quite nice (it has real home screen again!) ... but why have you removed switch button from rgb bulbs? This was the most basic feature for light.

There is no space enough since we use slider now. We are considering some other option for swtiching....

Well... "- +" was much better than.

There's something more disturbing with general touch screen function related somehow to the zipatile upgrade (I believe it is since my problem has appeared after upgrade). To slide up or down the screen, I need to touch specific part of it (e.g. a tab with device name). When I touch other places, there is no screen reaction - i can't move the screen even while my finger is sliding. This is not how typical android devices work and I believe it was not how zipatile used to work before.

This is not normal behavior. Did you upgrade Zipato app to the latest version? If yes, try to restart it.

Restart helped. Thanks Sebastian. Now I'm waiting for my bulb switch buttons ;)

Hello everybody Yesterday I got the Zipatile and had needed all day to find out that I'm not doing anything wrong but the new UI is to blame. Zipatile is very useless because you can not switch the Hue lights on / off. The widget is missing what a reason to buy. Zipatile goes back to Amazon.

Just my 2 cents worth. If you are going to market a product, then the product that is shown in marketing materials needs to match what the customer will actually use. I made the decision to evaluate the Zipatile (for a potentially large project, I might add) in part because of its looks--i.e., because of the look of the UI that was shown in marketing materials. Every single picture I've seen of the Zipatile on various websites showed the "old" UI, whether it be Amazon or some other e-tailer that I'd never heard of before. Even Zipato's own website still shows the "old" UI!! (https://www.zipato.com/how-it-works/interfaces) May I offer a suggestion: if you are going to "upgrade" the UI, then this new look needs to be reflected in your marketing materials so that customers will know what they are getting. Otherwise, make it a customer option. From my perspective, you simply cannot arbitrarily make a major change to the look of a product and not update marketing materials, for to do so borders on false advertising. To be honest, if I'd seen the Zipatile with the new UI, I would have been less enthusiastic about it, and would probably not have purchased it for evaluation. Again, just my 2 cents worth.

It's just a Ui and one that works rather well in my opinion.

but that's just me.