IPad IOS 9.3.6 - Initializing screen OLD IPad2 won't work! BUT...VNC Does!

Hi! I’m not sure if anyone else may be having this problem but from the looks of it and my searches I haven’t found any real resolve…until now (sort of).

The Problem:
Home Assistant worked (though rather slow) on my IPad 2 with IOS 9.36 up until a couple months ago. It was fine and I could get to my ESP32 Lights, and some other functions. But I have a basic set up that I just want to get to some LED light strips via WIFI to my ESP32. After I did an update to 0.113.1 (HassOS 4.11) , like I mentioned a couple months ago, now I can’t get past the “Initializing…” screen. I have got to the password authentication screen but still it wouldn’t log-in to “Lovelace” or even give me access to the password fields. This sucked as I can’t see myself spending any money to get a new Tablet as the IPad 2 does fine with everything else.

My System:
I have my Home Assistant on a Raspberry Pi 3B+ and a main server PC that I can access it through OK via a Browser. I use the same Pi’s for Volumio, my Media System, and a couple other things around the house. EVERYTHING works but Home Assistant, no problem. My IPad can also get to my Router software via a browser.

The Fix (Sorta):
OK, I have UltraVNC installed in all of my systems so I can see all of my computers. I works really well. I fixed the access to my Home Assistant by installing the “RealVNC” Application, FREE and no problem with an IPad2, onto the IPad and then accessing my Main PC through that. I open a browser on the Main PC, and then my Home Assistant URL through the VNC connection and then I can use it through RealVNC on my IPad.

The Future:
Yeah, I understand we have to move on with software but buying more devices shouldn’t be a solution. I couldn’t find an older version of HA to load onto my Pi, and even if I did the “auto-update” would of taken over and then same problem. Hopefully this might help anyone going through the same difficulties but this is the best solution (HACK) that I could come up with. I didn’t find any resolve through forums, Google etc for this. Again, I hope this helps anyone in the same situation. I like Home Assistant but not supporting older devices due to (?..Python, JavaScript, Lovelace… I dunno?) was kinda hard to take.

Yep I had the same problem here:

and my solution which was posted by someone else and is very similar with respect to your solution was posted here:

The issue boils down to iOS 9.3.6 not supporting certain modern browser features such as the level of JavaScript required to run Lovelace. Installing a different browser on the iPad doesn’t change anything because those browsers all use the base webkit installed in iOS to function. so Firefox on an iPad is essentially Safari webkit with a firefox wrapper. The HA iOS Companion app is more or less a glorified web page with extra background features and functions.

How picky can HA be concerning the “expected” java script version on various tablet operation systems? Is the login page all javascript, not a single HTML element anymore which might load even if javascript fails? I got a simple blue and white background bar across my iPad (iOS 11.1), no messages, nothing…