Orphaned entities are not deleted

[andreaskoelsch]

What version of Spook are you using?

4.0.1

What version of Home Assistant are you using?

2025.11.3

The problem

I tried to delete all orphaned entities, but they do not get deleted. If I list them before and after the deletion, the list is the same. also a reboot does not change anything.
What I actually wanted to do was to remove entities created by Thermal Comfort because I don't need all of them.

Steps to reproduce:

• Install Thermal Comfort from HACS
• Create a Thermal Comfort device with all entities checked
• Remove the just created device
• Uninstall Thermal Comfort
• List orphaned entities (Spook), check the ones from the removed device are there
• Delete all orphaned entities (Spook)
• List orphaned entities -> entities are still there!
• Install Thermal Comfort again
• Create device with the same name again, but do not check all entities to create -> still all entities are there!

Any number of reboots in between did not change anything.

The issue is not limited to Thermal Comfort. The same happens with some old automations or some manually defined switches which are long gone.

Anything in the logs? Paste it here!

[jonaskello]

I have the same problem on my HA 2025.11.3. I can run the Developer tools -> Actions -> Delete All Oprhan Entities. After pressing the "Perfom Action" button it turns into a green checkmark which I interpret as the action being successful. Then if I run the action to list the entities they are still there.

[bjh45964]

How many orphaned entities do you have? If there are more than a few hundred, I think you'll hit this error:

Failed to perform the action script/delete_orphaned_database_entities. Error rendering service target template: Template output exceeded maximum size of 262144 characters

Script is:

alias: Delete orphaned database entities
sequence:

• action: homeassistant.list_orphaned_database_entities
  response_variable: orphaned
• action: recorder.purge_entities
  target:
  entity_id: |
  {{ orphaned.entities }}
  data:
  keep_days: 0
  mode: single
  description: ""

[jonaskello]

On my system, the "List all orphaned database entities" returns 5 items. The "Delete all orphaned entities" completes with green button checkmark but does not not delete them. I don't see any error messages but perhaps I'm not looking in the right place?

[h3llrais3r]

Same issue here with 69 orphaned items on latest home asisstant version 2026.1.0. Invoking the service gives "green" button but when listing them again, it returns the same.
Also reboot of HA doesn't help.