I often find myself having to hit back, close, back, back, back, to get back to the dashboard (or at least the hamburger menu) in the mobile app. It’s extremely tedious and I’m sure it could be easily fixed by having a global means of returning to ‘Home’ (e.g. the default dashboard). It’s made worse by the fact that the app stays where you left it, so next time you open the app, rather than landing on the default dashboard, you’re still in the screen you had open and have to press multiple times to get to the default dashboard.
As an example, if I open the app, go to hamburger menu → Settings → Devices & Services → Entities → select an entity → cog icon, then make a change and lock my phone, then the next time I open the app, to get to the default dashboard, I have to do the following: < icon, x icon, ← icon, hamburger menu, select default dashboard.
It would be great if there was a ‘home’ button (or the hamburger menu, at least) always visible to allow much faster, easier, and more convenient, navigation back to the default dashboard.
Thanks, so much! That solves some of the problem. Now, we just need a way to be able to get back to the first screen without having to press back, back, close, back, etc, while using the app
Well, actually, it doesn’t solve anything! I enabled that setting but the app still opens back in whatever screen I had it in, before Tried all the usual troubleshooting.
I was thinking, often I actually want the app to remain where I left it, anyway (e.g. when flicking between HA and other smart home apps) so really the only true solution would be up have a button always visible to return “home”. That way the option is always there, but it’s not forced upon the user.
I agree that this is a problem. A quick and dirty solution would be to always show the hamburger menu button and do not replace it with back button (it should still be there, but to the side).
But overall the whole menu structure is just not great. Many important parts are just hidden too deep. I find myself opening integrations or devices or editing automations in the app quite often and while it’s all usable (it’s actually surprising how usable the actual pages are), getting to the subpage of subpage is annoying.
If you guys don’t consistently see the hamburger menu then turn off sub view for those views and problem solved. A lot of people turn that on by mistake.
When using the app (Android companion app) and doing some “advanced” stuff deep down in settings/addons/specific addon/specific tab and I want to navigate back to the default dashboard. I also quite often need to “back” a large number of times, revisiting each tab I openend, and if I switched tabs, then I have to back multiple times to the same tab.
Back, is back in history, not back in meny hierarchy, so if I go to an addon settings and switch 5 times between log tab and config tab, then I have to “back” more than 10 times to get to the default dashboard.
To make matters even more inconvenient, sometimes I see the “Overview” menu (= my default dashboard) and I can just select that. And sometimes it is not present in the menu at all and I have to revert to swiping back 10+ times.
See screenshots of 2, one with overview and one without.
Why does it sometimes show and sometimes it does not?
Getting to the subpage of a subpage does take some steps, agreed, but it’s achievable and not too bad when you consider how many layers deep you’re diving. I guess the issue is, why should it take so many steps to get back “home”?
If you use the phone OS as an analogy, no matter how deep you are into any app or settings screen, you can always swipe up from the bottom of the screen to immediately get back “home”. There’s a lot of convenience in that pattern. Your activities typically lead you down varied branches, particularly as you dive deeper into things, but by always being able to quickly and conveniently jump “home”, you can always get where you need to be
Great point, actually! I hadn’t realised that the back button was traversing history rather than hierarchy so that illustrates the value of an always available “home” button even more!
Your Overview dashboard not appearing in the sidebar isn’t something I’ve experienced and may be worth opening a separate discussion about, as that appears to be a bug
Having the back function in the companion work hierarchy instead of history based would make more sense to me for an app, as most phone apps I use tend to go back hierarchically and not based on history. History based back is more a browser oriented implementation of the use of back.
And then I would not mind having no “overview” menu item, as going back to overview only takes a couple of steps.
I opened an issue on Github for the companion app.
that is definitely a frontend issue and not one the app can fix, the app has 0 control over the HA interface.
and the app is also a webview to the HA frontend, users can also navigate to other pages that they link to so back button working like a browser is important.
sounds like you guys may want a general HA feature request for easier way to navigate to home when in mobile because a lot of these issues also exist in Chrome for Android, which is how you should expect the app to behave.
Thanks. However, I should point out that in the browser, typically (with a standard viewport, at least) the hamburger menu is always visible and accessible within a click or two (considering that a ‘dialog’ may be in the foreground). I extensively use both browser and app, and the issue I’m referring to specifically affects the app as there are many extra steps required to get “home”. A feature request does seem appropriate. I appreciate the dialogue
the thing with the app is it has 0 control over the HA interface, what you see in chrome is what you should expect to see in the app and if you dont then its a HA frontend issue. The hamburger menu should appear consistently in both browser and app in teh same locations.
I guess this is technically correct, it might not be the app, but the frontend in general. Still it’s something that should be fixed.
To be clear, yes, it works the same in the browser as in the app, but only under certain resolution width. That is, in normal browser window, the interface is a bit different, only under certain width the left menu is hidden and then the hamburger button is gone. This is what we see in the app, likely because phones have smaller width resolution.
Although maybe it’s more complicated. In the settings (/profile/general) there is an option to always hide side menu, similar to how it works on mobile devices. So it’s not just about resolution.
yea and I think our webview interface is also slightly different which is why some issues only exist in the HA app and while others may exist in a browser they are mre prominent in the app
Tried all the usual troubleshooting.
