NFC: Use Tags on Android w/o popups (solution)

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Hi there,
wanted to share my fresh knowledge with you guys.

Unfortunately we Android users need to unlock our phone prior scanning NFC tags - I cannot change that (but maybe it is possible by rooting the device - anyone in the comments?).

But at least I got rid of the annoying popup from the NFC service ‘want to open the link’. To solve this you need an additional NFC writer app.
Do the following steps:

  1. Add the NFC tag via the app as usually

  2. Get an NFC writer app like “NFC tools” - fortunately free :slight_smile:

  3. Open NFC tools and scan the freshly written tag

  4. at the very bottom you will find a dataset like “https:/home-assistant.io/tag/[the tag id]” copy this url into the clipboard

  5. Change to the Write tab in the app.
    5.a) Add a custom URL and place the URL from the clippboard
    5.b) (Now the important part): Add a second dataset, now use application and choose then the homeassistant app: should loke like “io.homeassistant.companion.android”
    5.c) Write the NFC tag

  6. Change the the read tab and try to scan the NFC tag, it should look like this:

    grafik
    grafik390×839 48.8 KB

  7. Exit now the NFC tools app and you should be able to finally scan the NFC tag without the annoying popup

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Are you talking about a prompt that you have to click or the very brief message that just tells you it’s reading the NFC tag? I have a number of NFC tags and other than unlocking, no other action is required other than actually scanning it.

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I’ve found an error on my side and the reason you did not get my error.
My problem seems to be that the available space on my first NFC tag was too small, so the home assistant app only could write the URL but not the app information to it. I tried again to write my first tag and got these entries:

grafik
grafik1080×2306 191 KB

And when I read the tag with the phone the popup appears:

grafik
grafik1080×453 59.3 KB

Then I wrote to another tag which has more available space and got these entries:

grafik
grafik1080×2313 233 KB

and so as hoped, no annoying popup.

So with these information in mind my originaly given documentation was only a workaround for too small nfc tags which the homeassistant app was hiding.