I see you guys are working on a home assistant app for Mac OS. There are apps avalable for ios/android, so I think there should be one for windows. Doing so could potentially allow for notifications on the desktop and easy access to HA.
Thanks,
Christian
The thing about the macOS app was that we could take all of the native code written for iOS/iPadOS and pretty instantly make it work on macOS via Catalyst. No such thing exists for Windows/Android, so a Windows app would have to be built from scratch. Not saying it won’t happen, but none of the current iOS or Android developers can write or want to write Windows apps (afaik!)
It is just a webpage, What good would an app do? Install another browser on your system, or leverage the one you already have?
I’ve used Nativefier in the past for Nextcloud. I imagine it would work very well for Home-assistant
*Edit:
Boom, with no options used it works well. I haven’t tested the notifications yet but if chrome notifications work it will work in electron.
Well a proper native app could offer some very nice benefits in the form of system sensors. The brand new macOS app has sensors for your computers battery level and state, storage space, etc so you could create some nifty automations around that.
One of the cooler sensors that Robbie just added to the Mac app is a camera one. So if you’re working from home in a video conference call, as soon as your camera becomes active it could turn on a light outside your room so your family members know not to disturb you.
Yeah that does sound like it is useful. Consider me converted.
Can there be an automation to make the dogs shut up when you are on a video call to the Courtroom!
Zigbee shock collar? I see a million dollar business. Writing a patent now. 
How would I go about desktop notifications through chrome then?
You can use the HTML5 Push Notifications integration for desktop notifications through Chrome and Firefoox.
Not trying to disagree with you that an app would be cool, but I’m accomplishing those two use cases currently with:
I like the “is my webcam turned on” sensor above.
An “am I in a call” sensor could also be used to pause the music you’re playing as soon as you go into a call, and resume when you leave. That’s something I find myself pausing manually and forgetting to resume.
Similarly, with “am I in full screen mode” it could automatically dim the lights when gaming / watching video.
I like this one too. Having maybe the option to turn the display of or on so i can use a windows tablet for lovelace while being able to display lovelace based on presence
Sorry to hijack the thread but I don’t see any news about any macos app and I am interested, could anyone link me to some info or page about it?
There’s not a blog post or official documentation for the macOS app yet (I will start working on docs soon). For now you can read about it on the iOS release notes page. You can also download the Mac app from those release notes as well by pressing the “Assets” button.
The coolest part IMO is probably the “Active” sensor which determines whether your computer is currently in use by looking at a number of criteria - whether it’s locked, sleeping, if the screensaver is on, if you haven’t touched the mouse for a certain period of time (this is user configurable), etc.
And just an hour ago Zac released a new mac build with a microphone sensor. So now if you’re in a voice call or recording a podcast or something, Home Assistant can know about that and you can run automations based off that. Pretty neat.
I have created a Home Assistant app for Windows (3 months ago), today I have added built-in browser to display HA web interface.
You can check it out here:
Also maybe you could detect Focus Assist?
Moving my mouse would indeed be a pretty good and accurate presence detection. Just to add one more idea.
There are alot more when my desktop could receive HA commands.
My first thought was also “why?” as it runs fine in a browser. So I thought on android too.
Agreed. I would love to be able to tell when I am at the computer. That is one of the reasons I proposed this because I saw how awesome the Mac App is!
