Hi
I’ve a HA instance set up with my old mum and have the app on her phone (android) and iPad. She almost always uses it on her iPad, never her phone, but I have the app on the phone for home/not_home tracking.
On Friday I got a voicemail saying she couldn’t get HomeAssistant off of her screen so she couldn’t use the phone for other things she wanted to do.
To make it easier for her to close it, is there a function in HA that I could assign to a home-screen button that works the same as Fully-Kiosk where you can tell the app to “send to background” so that it’s still running, but the screen is free to use other apps?
To you and me it seems a trivial thing, but she sometimes gets in a bit of a muddle and I’m trying to think of a way to make it easier for her to dismiss the app.
I totally understand making tech easier for lay people, but honestly can’t think of anything here that you can do that’s not going to overcomplicate things for her.
When she ‘can’t get if offf’ the home screen she’s muddling around with it full screen there’s nothing faster than the good ol home button - especially if you’re trying to get out of HA… no matter ios or android. If you try to add more to the mix you’re just making things worse imho.
Think of the conversation this way.
No mom click here. No here… Where?
Ok swipe here and click.
Huh?
Nope. Not even trying…
Rather (and this is what I did btw)
Mom this button at the bottom that’s always there (I set it in the phone to never go away) gets you to this main screen no matter what…
Spend time showing the home button and how it gets our of trouble… Probably a much better use of your time.
If you can add a secured folder to that phone and set-up HA in the secured folder, that won’t pop up unless you open the secured folder and ask for it. It then becomes a tracker only, as she will likely never find it, so then that might be a problem…
Yea, the problem I have there is that she’s 400miles away otherwise it would be an easy demonstration to show her. I set the system up so we could make sure she doesn’t fall and not tell us (happened before).
She gets automated lights and switches, we get peace of mind.
I don’t think the home button is present on her phone (Galaxy A71) unless she swipes up to get it. She uses her iPad a lot, so is used to a physical button. Notsomuch her phone.
Thinking about it, there was a recent change to HACS kiosk and I’m wondering if maybe that’s why she’s now having issues.
hmmm…