Cannot rename device back to original zigbee name (friendly_name '0xxxxx' is already in use)

[dagobert]

What happened?

1. I renamed a device from the original name 0xyyyy to Mydevice with the option "Update Home Assistant entity".
2. Than later I wanted to rename it back to the original name.

This caused an error:

friendly_name '0xxxxx' is already in use

What did you expect to happen?

Rename back without an error.

How to reproduce it (minimal and precise)

1. Rename a device from original zigbee name "0xyyyy" to eg. "Mydevice"
2. Rename it back to the original name "0xyyyy"

This problem already exited in version 1.x

Discussed in #23341

Zigbee2MQTT version

2.0.0

Adapter firmware version

20240716

Adapter

SLZB-06P7

Setup

HA Addon

Debug log

No response

[dagobert]

This solution is not a fix of this bug. It is only a mitigation for the time being.

To solve the problem you need to do the following:

1. Stop zigbee2mqtt
2. Open the file zigbee2mqtt/configuration.yaml
3. Look for the section devices:
4. Within this section you will find en entry with your original device name 0xabcde12345 and within this section the entry friendly_name: My-New-Device-Name
5. Change the entry friendly_name: My-New-Device-Name to friendly_name: '0xabcde12345'
6. Start zigbee2mqtt

After zigbee2mqtt is running again, you can check the result.

Example from:

devices:
  '0xabcde12345':
    friendly_name: My-New-Device-Name

To:

devices:
  '0xabcde12345':
    friendly_name: '0xabcde12345'
    description: zprä-00

This solution is not a fix of this bug. It is only a mitigation for the time being.

I hope this discription helps to fix the bug faster.