I recently got a 2026 Honda Passport and I’ve been playing around with its infotainment system. It seems that there are a couple of ways to launch Home Assistant Companion App from Honda’s infotainment system.
There’s the Android Auto app which seems to have its own selection of apps, including Home Assistant.
There’s the top-level Android running on the infotainment system and I also installed Home Assistant there.
Running HA from #1 install (using Android Auto to launch), it seems to work. I can see all the categories and dig into each one toggle switches and lights, everything seems to be working.
However, when I run HA from #2 install (using the built-in Android OS to launch), the back button doesn’t ever go back one step, it backs out of HA completely.
This means that once I go into a category if I hit back, it puts me at the top-level app selection screen. When I try to re-launch HA, it shows me the lowest-level buttons. I can never get back to the category screen unless I shut off the car so that it loses state. It’s a little hard to describe so I tried to shoot a video showing the issue: https://youtu.be/WzkJRihbFX0
your video is cutting off the parts of the UI…from the looks of it your Car UI is blocking the back button at the top left. should be identical to where the android auto app is as the interface is the same codewise. That bigger back button does not seem to correlate to the apps navigation.
Ah, is there some way to add it to the display in a way such that the car’s UI doesn’t or can’t remove it? I think you’re right because I can see the back button arrow when I launch it from Android Auto.
the back button is part of the native navigation in the header, the app doesnt control that is there maybe another back button you are not seeing? Can you try to click on the title where the button is in my screenshot to see if that does it?
we do indeed set the header action to the back button as well
Wow, that is great but I just tried it out a couple of times and nothing I could do went back to the categories screen. I trapped all around on the header without any reaction. Also, on restarting the car it didn’t actually restart HA! It was still showing me the lights without a back button. I found a way to get into the Android apps list and force stop HA so I could restart it. That got me back to the categories screen but obviously not ideal.
Maybe the devs could add an option to the app to turn on a button in the list of entities which performs the back action from within the app? I don’t know why the car’s version of Android wouldn’t be rendering the back button here. Also if the header is supposed to be the back action, that isn’t working either! Grrr. How can I debug this further to figure out where it is busted?
Actually, I tried hitting the header/title in the Android Auto HA implementation and it doesn’t function as “back” either, in order to go back I have to hit the left-pointing arrow OR hit the infotainment system’s back button (as I did in the video).
Regarding the support ticket. I actually have a different problem with text message notifications that happen every time I start the car. I opened a ticket for that with Honda and they quickly closed it citing that I had already tried a factory reset and suggested that I take it to the dealership… I don’t have high hopes for that. I expect the dealership people to be less capable than I am. Haha
feel free to log a bug in the meantime for some discussion the back button should be visible. The code for the app is the same for Android Auto and Automotive. Wonder if any other vehicles are impacted by this.
Do you know how to get into the settings for Home Assistant on Android Auto?
I tried to enable a bunch of the entities from sensors and diagnostic in the Mobile App internal integration and it worked for most but a few of them complained on the infotainment screen citing something like “you must allow the permissions for this in the settings of the app”. I could not figure out how to get into the settings area to approve the permissions.
Settings → Apps → Home Assistant → Manage Permissions
I was able to pull that up and turn on more permissions that way but I want to confirm that there isn’t another method for looking at these settings. The organization of the settings and screens seems to be a rats nest.
:edit:
Oh, I see what you’re saying. In the mobile phone companion app I can configure what sensors are reported on my phone from Android Auto. I was more asking for the natively running Home Assistant Android app on my infotainment system. There doesn’t seem to be a way to get to any settings menus for it other than the built-in Android app settings that I listed at the top.
Using the native infotainment’s Android, it creates a new Mobile device, specifically for the car. I’d rather have that set up than elements like “Fuel Type” and “Car Range Remaining” attached to my mobile phone’s entry – but the implementation of this whole ecosystem is pretty clunky.
Negative ghostrider. Google and most infotainment actively prevents that for a reason.
And your bug will be with the Honda devs or Google themselves it’s the customization for thier head unit that’s probably hosing things. The dealership won’t help. You need to get to Honda proper - had a similar issue with my Ford Explorer two years ago and had to suffer through two updates to AA before things fixed
Yeah, I figured this to be the case. It’s really too bad that this package (hardware/software) isn’t more fully “cooked”. It seems that running HA on the infotainment system’s Android is very inconsistent & unstable and there isn’t any detail about what is happening, So, unfortunately, I think it’ll likely be like this for a long time. I may just have to do everything through Android Auto and forego having a “Honda Passport” dedicated mobile device…
I rarely have trouble once they fixed the layout problem I had early on. The other issue that rears it’s head is about one out of every 5-6 updates I get weirdness with phone but that’s squarely on AT&T… It’s definitely thier bug on Samsung…
Thank you @dshokouhi this is very helpful! I see that Android Auto (AA) is decidedly different than Android Automotive OS (AAOS) and now I have a way to reference the two.
Using the method from your link, I’ve been able to turn on and see:
I think you’re right because I can see the back button arrow when I launch it from Android Auto. 
