Home Assistant Secret Taps: Execute actions in Home Assistant using just tap sequences

I have just published Home Assistant Secret Taps, a custom HACS plugin that allows you to perform several actions in Home Assistant only tapping on your screen.

Motivation

I have a kiosk device in my home enabled with Fully Kiosk in which every house member can turn-on/turn-off lights, see the status of several devices, weather info, etc. This device has the sidebar and several more elements hidden using kiosk-mode. Sometimes I want to be able to navigate to a certain dashboard, enable the sidebar or show some elements in this device and even if I am able to do that following different flows, it is not a very straighforward task.

I have created this custom HACS plugin to be able to do that just tapping on the device screen. The plugin allows you to configure a sequence of taps and map it to an action like calling a service, opening a more info dialog, navigating to a dashboard or opening the sidebar menu.

So, for example, with this configuration:

enabled: true
notification: true
profiles:
  - user: Walltablet
    secrets:
      ## Open the sidebar
      - taps:
        - double-tap
        - tap
        - double-tap
        action: toggle-menu
      ## Navigate to the profile dashboard
      - taps:
        - tap
        - double-tap
        - double-tap
        action: navigate
        navigation_path: /profile/

I am able to open the sidebar just making a double-tap followed by a tap followed by a double tap and navigate to the profile page just making a tap followed by two double-taps. And the rest of my family doesn’t need to be aware of these taps combinations, these are intended only for me, the Home Assistant administrator, so for them the sidebar or the profile page will keep hidden. (well, maybe I need to change them after posting this on the Internet :sweat_smile:)

Screenshot 1 Screenshot 2 Screenshot 3
Default View Sidebar shown Profile Dashboard
  1. Screenshot 1: default view without UI elements to open the sidebar or to go to the profile dashboard
  2. Screenshot 2: sidebar open after executing the proper tabs secuence
  3. Screenshot 3: profile dashboard open after navigating to it executing the proper tabs secuence

I know that many of you will find other use cases for use the plugin. :wink:

To see how to install the plugin and all the options to configure it, check the Github project and open an issue if you face any error or unwanted behaviour.

I hope that you find it useful. :+1:

6 Likes

Brilliant!

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Thanks for that, im doing an HA in Echo Show 15 soon and probably will be very usefull

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