It would be great to have an app to install in Android TVs that’s like the Companion App, but much simpler: just to view dashboards.
I understand the difficulty is on managing the interface without a mouse or a touch screen; sure, but one could also think about much simpler use cases, like:
someone rings at the door, automation triggers ADB to start companion app in the TV with a dashboard that shows the camera… or
simply “I just want to see what’s going on at my home” so I start the android tv companion app, which opens the default dashboard for that user in pure read-only mode.
Of course, eventually (in v2) one could use the remote buttons to make it a bit more interactive; up/down to scroll, left/right to change dashboard. On v3 we could have the central button enter “interactive mode”, the arrows going up/down clickeable events (buttons, switches), surrounding the button with a red box; central button to “click” and back to exit interactive mode. But really, v1 would already be awesome.
You can currently use something like HALauncher to run the mobile version if Android apps on a TV. So, you might be able to get a dashboard up already.
the HA frontend is not optimized for remote control based navigation, the app used to be available but once it was discovered teh experience with dashboards is not good for users we took it down. Once the HA frontend is optimized for better D-pad navigation I think we can bring it back.
TV applications are typically different than mobile apps; I don’t think using the same code-base as the mobile app will give users a good user experience… but my experience developing TV Apps is limited (just a couple, simple ones).
Under the hood its android so many existing features like sensors still continue to work. Websockets still works. Notifications will need extra handling and using the leanback APIs can be made Android TV specific. Other stuff like widgets are already hidden from those form factors.
The app itself shows the HA frontend in a webview by default so that definitely needs a better experience with remote control based navigation otherwise getting to settings and just navigating becomes cumbersome.
We already have a lot of form factor specific code hiding things when we need to so optimizing the experience once the login page and dashboard work better with a TV remote is doable in the current architecture.
Never tried… just checked and its last version is from 2019, and it’s not in the Google Play Store. I’ve tried all those crappy web browsers without success, though.
the app used to be available but it got pulled as the HA frontend is not optimized to work with remote control based navigation. Would love to add it back once its optimized for that!
And what about publishing it in “read-only” more, meaning no possibility to interact with the dashboards, but just “see” them? When the frontend allows for better DPad interactivity, then one could enable it in the TV-Companion App, but at least we could have a view-only app in the meantime.
Even with view only you still have the same navigation issues. It is not a good experience. Just try and sideload the app and tell me how difficult it is to navigate around and read some entity states.
I agree the Existing UI is not effective for using HomeAssistant on the TV. However, much like using the Cast feature to show dashboard actions, there is still a value.
Much like the evolution of WearOS interfaces, I hope there is support from the community to show the desire to create such an app.
