i'm confused by the two icons in the top right corner of all windows in my mac companion app. they seem to be "alive" as buttons in that when i click on them, they change appearance slightly, but as far as i can tell, they don't do anything.
what are these for?
below is a snapshot of the the title bar of a (small) window.
Those are not HA features, but MacOS features.
The icons could indicate a copy function and the other might be something similar, like cut or paste.
if they are "macos features", they're not standard. none of the ~3 dozen other mac apps i use have them. i'm a long-time mac user, but i've never seen them before.
i understand perhaps that there is some cross-platform API being used here for both IOS and MacOS... so perhaps that's what you meant?
secondary question, if these are somehow part of some MacOS or cross-platform API, what are they for? i.e. what is the purpose for their being "standard"? they don't tell me anything when i hover over them, nor do their icons convey meaning?
It probably is features from iPhoneOS, since there is no MacOS companion app.
Yes, there is official HA app in official App Store...
And it has these pesky icons that do nothing. To be honest, looking at them they look like copy and paste icons, but do not do anything... Sort of recent development artefacts? I've not noticed them before.
No, that is an iPhoneOS app running in a MacOS virtualized environment that enables it to run iPhoneOS apps.
My guess is that those buttons are present in the virtualized sessions for iPhoneOS apps.
No, this is not iOS app running in virtual environment, but native OS X app. Lets take look at Home Assistant get info dialog. It clearly shows that Kind: Application (Universal) that indicates that this is universal binary compiled not only for OS X, but also for older Intel. Native iOS apps ported to Mac are marked as Application (Apple Silicon).
@WallyR and @mirekmal - i just want to avoid the thread going astray, so i'll clarify what i meant and what i think i know.
@WallyR, i think it is not a "virtualized environment" that the app runs in. instead i think it may be a development environment that allows a developer to write an app and have it run on multiple platforms (e.g MacOS and IOS in this case).
@mirekmal, you are correct to point out that the app is "universal" which means that it includes binarys that run natively on either of the supported two mac hardware architectures (intel/apple silicon). this is really an orthogonal concept. it is still possible that an app developed using a compatibility api could generate a universal app for mac - so i don't think the "universal" label clarifies specifically whether some cross-os compatibility layer/api/etc is in play here.
i think the api or compatibility layer that i was referring to may involve something called "catalyst". not being an active mac developer, i'm not up on the details, but i think the gist of it is that a developer can write an app using mostly standard apple API's like swiftUI and others and then have the resulting app be usable on either mac or ios devices. i could not remember the name "catalyst" when i made my original post... i have heard it mentioned occasionally in the past, e.g., with bugs like copy/paste not working correctly in the companion app.
It is a virtualized environment, but one controlled by Apple with only a few settings available for the user to change.
Al though the M-chips in the iPads and iPhones are nearly the same as the ones used in Mac computers there are still a lot of hardware that needs to emulated.
If I search for "iPad apps on MacOS" I actually get an article from Apple that explains it, including the buttons.
Apple just presents the Danish version of it and I have not been able to get an English version in any way. :expressionless 
1 - Open in browser (opens current page in a browser)
2 - Navigate backwards
3 - Navigate forward
4 - Refresh page
5 - Copy
6 - Paste
Those were introduced as helpers for the Mac app since in its essence is a web UI wrapper.
Copy and paste button were introduced due to keyboard shortcuts not reliably work, a well known Mac Catalyst issue on Apples plate.
thanks for clarifications, @bgoncal.
seems kind of obvious in retrospect, but in many contexts where i was trying to use them, 5 - Copy and 6 - Paste did not seem to do anything. now that i know what they are supposed to do, i tried them in a few cases where they make sense and they do seem to work.
