The companion app is a bit aggressive about reloading the dashboard when I come back a few seconds later. I wish it could be smarter about managing its state. That means two things, #1 not redrawing things that have not changed and #2 returning me to the same spot in the dashboard where I was before.
Example. I go to my dashboard, scroll down, and click the button to open my garage door. I back the car out to the street, then open the app to close the garage. Ideally, the UI would be just where I left it.
As a practical matter, if enough time has passed it probably makes sense to keep doing what it’s doing now and redraw everything.
This would give the app a more “native” feel, plus if it did fewer redraws it would be more responsive. In the web world, technologies such as React maintain a shadow DOM and update only what has changed.
I also see many times that when I have the app open and simply close my phone by going to the lock screen and then unlock the phone again with the app still open I’m greeted by a black screen that takes many seconds to open up the app and then it reloads back to the top as you describe.
Are you off of your wifi when at the street? Or still the same connection. If a different connection, it makes no sense that it would go back to the same place.
When I am grocery shopping and close my phone to put in my pocket, when I open it back up, it is mostly on the view of the shopping list. If more time has passed, i have to go back to that view. Understand this is the same connection as opposed to on wifi vs on cellular.
I’m not sure about iOS, on Android this is I think a matter of mostly 2 things: one is Android energy management messing with the app, freezing or closing it, the other is the option in settings that specify the app to always open on the main dashboard view.
I just checked and if I have this option disabled, the app doesn’t change the place where I was (including if I scrolled down). If iOS app has the same setting, check it, you probably have it enabled.
This has been my experience on Android too, especially since I pinned the app so that closing all running apps doesn’t close the HA companion app.
@jheirtzler maybe you could check if there’s an option to pin the companion app on the iPhone? Whatever it is you’re experiencing seems more like an Apple / app settings issue rather than an app issue.