Your suggested_area settings now actually sync to Home Assistant

[MarkAtwood]

The Problem

You set suggested_area in Z2M device settings, but Home Assistant ignores it after first discovery. The device stays in "No Area" unless you manually fix it in the HA UI.

This has been a long-standing frustration - HA "preserves user customizations" which means it only reads suggested_area on first discovery.

The Solution

I built a custom integration that fixes this: MQTT Device Sync

It runs alongside HA's MQTT integration, listens to the same discovery topics, and actually applies suggested_area (and optionally device name) to the device registry.

Features

• Syncs suggested_area from Z2M to HA device registry
• Optionally syncs device name
• Auto-creates missing areas
• Parse area from device name - if you name devices like "Living Room / Light", it extracts the area automatically
• Handles the 4-segment topic format Z2M uses

Installation

Available via HACS (pending approval) or manual install. Just copy custom_components/mqtt_device_sync to your HA config directory.

Configuration

After adding the integration:

• Enable/disable area and name sync
• Choose whether to overwrite existing values
• Configure name parsing delimiters

Hope this helps others who've been fighting this!