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Intro

A property with a lot of accessories doesn’t have to feel like a busy place. The best control is the one you can find quickly. Zendo gives you two views of every floor, and they do different jobs:
  • The floorplan shows where things are. It is designed for the accessories you use daily.
  • The Tiles view lists every accessory on the floor, grouped by room, whether they’re on the floorplan or not.
Because all accessories will show on the Tiles view, you can take off the floorplan anything you rarely use. Hiding something moves it one tap away, it never takes it away. Two things keep a property simple:
  • Fewer accessories. Group your lights, so one accessory does the job of many.
  • Less on show. Leave what you rarely use off the floorplan, out of the Tiles grid, or hidden on a small screen until you zoom in.

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Where an accessory appears

Each accessory has up to four options that decide where it appears. They sit together in its settings, so you can set them all in one go.
  1. Tap
  2. Tap “Settings”
  3. Tap “Add or Change Accessories” (or “Edit Floorplan”)
  4. Tap the accessory you want to change.
You’ll find:
  • Show on the Floorplan. Deselect it and the accessory isn’t shown on the floorplan. You reach it from the Tiles view instead.
  • Show in Tiles view. Deselect it and the accessory drops out of the room’s main grid and sits in the room’s panel, one tap from the room’s heading.
  • Include in Favourites. Select it and the accessory joins the Favourites section at the top of that floor.
  • Floorplan on Small Screens. Decides whether, on a small screen like a phone, the accessory can give way to a room accessory that already controls it. You’ll only see this option on accessories that can be grouped that way, such as lights.
Favourites, the main grid and tile order all belong to the Tiles view. To take a whole room off the floorplan in one go, see Keep a room off the floorplan.

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Hide accessories on small screens

On a small screen like a phone, a room with many accessories is hard to read. When the room already has a room accessory that controls every accessory of one kind, such as all its lights, the individual ones can be automatically hidden. Floorplan on Small Screens has two options:
  • Always show: the accessory is never hidden, whatever the size of the screen. Useful for the lights you want to reach quickly, such as your bedside lights.
  • Hide when not needed: on a small screen, the accessory is hidden only if its room already has a room accessory of the same type (the app calls it the room’s controller). Pinch to zoom in on the floorplan to reveal it.
The Tiles view isn’t affected. It shows the accessory whatever the screen size.

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Group your lights

This is the single biggest difference you can make, and it’s worth doing before you start hiding anything. Lights are the accessories you add most of, and the ones a property has most of. A kitchen can easily have ceiling spots, under-cabinet strips and three pendants over the table. As eight separate accessories that’s a crowded room on the floorplan and eight taps to turn off. As two or three light accessories it’s a room you can quickly control. One light accessory can control a whole room, or any set of lights you pick. See Add lights to the floorplan for how to set one up.

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What to group

  • A whole room. Zendo names the group after the room, so it reads Kitchen Lights, and keeps it up to date as lights are added or removed. One tap turns the room on or off, one slider dims it.
  • Any set you always use together. Three pendant lights over a dining table, a run of under-cabinet strips, two matching bedside lights.

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What to keep separate

Keep individual accessories for the lights you genuinely control on their own, such as a desk lamp or a reading light. Group everything else.
Grouping never costs you individual control. Open a group and you get a colour wheel with every light in it, so you can still set any one on its own. See Control a group of lights.

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What to leave off

Some rooms are better left off the floorplan. A boiler room, a loft, a utility cupboard, a plant room: you want to control the accessories in them, but you don’t want them taking up space. Take the whole room off in one go with Keep a room off the floorplan. The same goes for anything you use a few times a year. A Christmas tree socket, a garden pump, a spare-room heater: keep the floorplan for what you reach for daily, and let the Tiles view hold the rest. The Tiles view follows the same rule. A room with a lot of accessories makes a long grid, and not every accessory needs a tile. Keep “All lights” in the grid, and leave the individual ceiling spots in the room’s panel for the rare time you want to control one on its own.
You can also add an accessory straight from the Tiles view, without placing it on the floorplan at all. See Add an accessory from the Tiles view.

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Edit mode

While you’re editing, the floorplan always shows accessories hidden by Floorplan on Small Screens, whatever the screen size or zoom level, so you can always reach and configure every one of them. Accessories and rooms you’ve hidden from the floorplan stay hidden while editing, because that’s what you asked for. Switch to the Tiles view to find, change or place them.

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Which setting does what

The settings for the floorplan and the Tiles view are separate, so an accessory can be in one and not the other. Here is every setting in one place. Everything else in an accessory’s settings, such as its name and room, applies to both views.