When multiple HA instances are configured in a mobile app and one is offline switching between the instances will cause the app to freeze and not show any state indication.
If both are offline, the user will quickly lose track of which instance is which, because there is no indication about which instance is active until the UI loads.
The three finger swipe as the only switch gesture is also not working well, its very easy to trigger some action on a dashboard.
I absolutely agree. Switching between instances needs to be much more intuitive. As a workaround I have now created a Desktop Widget on my Mac to allow quick access to each of the main dashboards. This otherwise requires 5 clicks/taps.
The three finger swipe as the only switch gesture is also not working well, its very easy to trigger some action on a dashboard.
That caused me to turn on/off in my main instance multiple times.
on android you can at least create shortcuts to help have different icons to different servers on your home screen.
https://companion.home-assistant.io/docs/integrations/android-shortcuts
i agree that its not easy to tell which instance is down until the error loads but the app really just loads the frontend like a browser and in those cases you only have the URL to go by. We could change the pop-up to maybe include the server name?
That’d be super-helpful. I have a second instance in our RV/trailer, but it’s usually off. It can be hard sometimes to tell whether I’ve accidentally three-finger swiped to that one or if my main instance is down. When they’re both accessible, I generally find the swiping to work well though.
the pop-up actually already lists the server name that you setup in the app, make sure to give each one a unique name to differentiate
I think a simple solution would be to always show the name / URL of the instance when the loading starts, even if it’s on a popover. I would also always show a version off the side menu where the instances and their connection states are visible (if enabled)
I was thinking it would maybe be nice the ability to clone the app for example, so you can have multiple instances available without having to switch the server within the app. Not sure how easy it is to implement that, however.
Install the minimal build and the 2 debug variants from GitHub to have a total of 4. Some devices also let you clone in a sandbox app.
Can’t you just put the server name on the dashboard too? The apps have no control over the frontend and pop-ups are never user friendly. This may be easily handled on the dashboard with a markdown card for example.
I had no clue that was possible. I’ll try it out as soon as I can 