Howdy party people!
Vulpo has been out for a few months now but I wanted to wait a bit before posting here so I could gather some feedback first before throwing it to the wolves 
It’s a project I’m really proud of and have been working on constantly in my free time, with the first commit being almost 3 years ago now! After release this year around May, I posted on Reddit and was overwhelmed by the feedback and people checking it out, Vulpo has become the daily driver for a lot of HA users already.
Like all of us, I love Home Assistant - like most Apple users, I started out with HomeKit but as the smart home grows (and the wallet shrinks), so does the need for more control and devices you can’t get to work natively with HomeKit. Which is where HA comes in - I fell in love immediately, spent countless hours tinkering, modifying my dashboard, etc. etc. but one thing always bugged me: I really don’t like web-apps 
Which is why I started to work on Vulpo - a fully native client that hopefully does justice in delivering an Apple-like experience for HA users. My background as UI/UX designer and my work as freelance programmer helped greatly, I hope it shows!
Since release, Vulpo gained a lot of new features (including watchOS support recently!) - so I just wanted to give a quick overview what Vulpo is about:
Dashboards
I mean, it’s a HA companion app, so of course there will be dashboards I put a lot of care and time into supporting all you need to get started with Vulpo - over 30 cards including lights, switches, covers, fans, alarm panel, rooms, persons etc. and even some more niche ones like a 3D printer card. Vulpo sets up a basic dashboard for you (if you want) but you can customize it to your liking!
3D Floorplan (Lumen)
Something that I definitely wanted for Vulpo was a 3D view of my home. It started out as a simple editor but quickly evolved into a fully fledged scanner using the LiDAR sensor from your phone (required for this feature, not all iPhones/iPads have it). You can add 3D objects from a huge library of assets and link lights, media players, etc. to them, letting you control your home directly via the scan. There are also some decorative items so you can play Sims with your home The screenshot above shows my home that I decorated a little. There is also an option for newer devices to display your home with a path-traced/realistic view, letting you create stunning renders of your home (being heavy on your GPU this mode is more for viewing not interaction though).
watchOS
This just released but I took a lot of time and care to get it right: a (mostly*) fully standalone watch app for Vulpo that lets you control your home directly from your watch, even without your phone present. It lets you control your thermostats, alarm panels, lights, etc. directly from your wrist and you can even dive into your entities historical data with beautiful charts.
There is also a bit of an experimental feature called Whisker that lets you control a few entities like lights by just pointing at them, double tapping with your finger, and the light toggles. Requires a bit of setup but once you get it going, it feels a bit like being a thrift store wizard (Requires Apple Watch Series 9 or newer)
(*Mostly because it needs your phone once to sync your server to the watch).
Live Activities
This was something Vulpo had from the beginning: Live Activities that let you monitor your “in progress” stuff throughout your home. HA recently added this to the iOS companion app as well and honestly it’s a bit more flexible compared to Vulpo - with Vulpo you get predefined Live Activities for your solar panel, vacuum and a few more but you can’t create any custom ones (yet?). However, Vulpo lets you control your Live Activities directly from the lock screen, so you can pause/dock your vacuum for example.
Widgets
Not THAT exciting but I thought I’d mention it nonetheless: of course Vulpo is also packed with different kinds of widgets for your home screen, version 1.2 that just released includes a new group widget that lets you control up to 8 different entities without opening Vulpo. A cool widget worth mentioning though I think is the camera widget that lets you view a live feed!
Controls/Charts
A big thing for Vulpo was making HA more accessible for your wife, partner, friends and family - which is why extra care went into designing different control types, presenting data or controlling playback in a way that feels familiar, especially to Apple users.
Privacy
Since Vulpo is closed source, I spent a lot of time digging around the app with Charles Proxy to make sure absolutely nothing is leaked. Vulpo talks directly to your HA instance, there is no cloud or server attached, except Sentry for crash logs (which HA uses too, and you can toggle off), PostHog for anonymous usage stats, RevenueCat for handling purchases, and a simple relay for push notifications that never stores anything. Your dashboards optionally sync through your own iCloud via CloudKit, which I can’t see either. It never sends any personal data and honestly, I don’t really care that much about your shower cameras anyways so why would I want that 
But it’s a serious topic so I understand if for some people this is the dealbreaker - I completely understand, I can’t give more than a “trust me bro” and invite you to inspect the app yourself with Charles Proxy but that’s all I can do - I hope you give it a chance nonetheless!
Pricing
Vulpo is completely free for the stuff you’d expect from a HA companion app - there are no artificial limits like dashboard count or stuff like that. There are a few optional things that are attached to a “Pro” version like the Lumen feature or some other experimental stuff - I called this “Vulpo Labs” and it’s basically an early access feature for things I want to release to everyone eventually. Beyond that it’s the usual customization stuff like additional app icons, etc. (and of course, my gratitude which I know is the most important thing to you guys :D) - no but seriously, I hope you guys understand and it shows that I put a lot of time into this and still do, and at a certain point it’s just not feasible for me. I’m happy as long as all the costs are covered, I don’t see myself retiring on this hah. The purchase ($4.99/mo, $24.99/yr, $59.99 one-time) is family-shared so your partner and kids can enjoy it too if they are part of your iCloud family!
I think that’s enough babbling for now though - if you’ve read this far, thanks! You can check out Vulpo here on the App Store (iOS/iPadOS/macOS/watchOS 26+):
To learn more there is also a website you can check out:
I’ve mentioned this a lot on Reddit already, so sorry if you know my posts from there already but I wanted to repeat it anyways: The official HA companion app is fantastic and I’m not trying to replace it. It’s free, it’s excellent, the people behind it do great work, and if it covers everything you need then please just keep using it. Vulpo is simply a more Apple-native, opinionated option for people who specifically want that, and it won’t be for everyone. If it’s not your thing that is completely fine, I’m not here to talk anyone into it and a lot of love goes out to the HA developers! 
-Josh
