FAQ¶
About the app¶
What is HKI 7?
An Android client for Home Assistant, built with Jetpack Compose and Material 3. It connects to your own Home Assistant server and gives you a dashboard, per-domain controls, notifications, presence and optional family sharing.
It is an independent project and is not affiliated with or endorsed by Home Assistant or Nabu Casa.
Do I need Home Assistant to try it?
No. There is a built-in demo home that runs entirely on the device — pick Try the demo home on the welcome screen. Everything behaves normally against an in-memory sample house.
Does it replace the official companion app?
It does the same job and more of it, but they are separate apps and can be installed side by
side. HKI 7 registers as its own mobile_app device, so it gets its own
notify.mobile_app_<device> service and its own device tracker — the official app's stay
where they are.
Which Android versions are supported?
Android 12 and newer (minSdk 31).
Is it free? What is Premium?
The app and its community source are free and open. HKI 7 uses an open-core model: the community source code is MPL-2.0, while separately marked premium materials — premium icon packs, animated icon and artwork collections, premium themes — are proprietary and paid.
The open-source core stays fully usable without Premium. No Premium term limits the rights MPL-2.0 grants you over the community source.
Is HKI 7 open source?
The community core is, under MPL-2.0, at jimz011/android-hki7. Premium assets are not. See LICENSE.
Was this built with AI?
Yes — with the help of AI, including Claude and OpenAI models. If you dislike AI being used in projects, then do not install this.
Privacy and data¶
Where does my data go?
To your own Home Assistant server, and nowhere else. There are no developer-operated servers, no analytics, no advertising and no tracking. The developer never receives, sees or stores any of your data.
What about Google Drive backups?
Only if you turn them on. They go to the private app-data area of your own Google Drive, which only HKI 7 and you can read. Disable them at any time, or revoke the app's access from your Google account settings.
Does family sharing send anything to the internet?
No. The HKI 7 Cloud component stores everything on your own Home Assistant. "Cloud" is the feature's name, not its architecture.
Setup¶
Can I connect to more than one Home Assistant?
Yes. Each home keeps its own login, dashboard, notification settings and location settings. Swipe left from the upper-right edge of the dashboard to switch.
Do I need Nabu Casa?
No. Home Assistant Cloud works and is the easiest remote setup, but a plain external URL or a local-only setup are both fine.
Why set both an internal and an external URL?
So the app uses the LAN address at home and the remote one everywhere else. Hairpinning out to the internet and back in is slower and, on some routers, does not work at all — which matters most for camera streams.
Does HKI 7 read my Home Assistant dashboards?
No. It builds its own dashboard from your areas, floors, devices and entities. Your Lovelace configuration is untouched, and nothing you do in HKI 7 changes it.
Dashboards¶
I added an entity in Home Assistant and it did not appear. Why?
Auto-generation is a one-time starting point. The first edit you make switches the dashboard from Automatic to Manual, after which HKI 7 stops regenerating it and your arrangement stays put. Add new entities yourself in edit mode, or reach them through global search.
How do I get to edit mode / settings? I cannot find a button.
Pull down on the page header. That reveals Search, Flows, Edit and Settings, from any page — including the compact header.
The app shows all five gestures in a Quick start dialog the first time your dashboard opens. They are written down in Gestures.
Can I write YAML?
No. Everything is edited in the app, in place. There is no YAML mode.
Can I show a button only sometimes?
Yes — by schedule (including yearly recurrence, for a Christmas button), by another entity's state, or by which family member is signed in. Rules combine with AND/OR.
Can I stop someone triggering a button by accident?
Lock it behind a double-tap or a PIN, with a configurable re-lock delay.
My house imports and exports at the same time. Why does the tile show only one?
Because your connection is metered per phase and the tile was reading a single net figure. This happens on a three-phase supply with solar on one phase: that phase feeds back while the other two still draw.
Switch on Per-phase import/export under Settings → Energy → Electricity. HKI 7 usually spots this and says so above the setting.
Notifications¶
How do I send a notification?
Call the notify service for the device, from any automation or script:
Do my existing notification automations work?
The common fields do: title, message, data.tag, data.channel, data.clickAction,
data.sticky, data.actions, and the clear_notification message. Action taps fire the same
mobile_app_notification_action event the official app fires, so automations written for it
work unchanged.
Do I need Firebase or Google's push service?
No. Notifications ride the app's own connection to your server. There is no third-party push service in the path.
Why does a notification say the app is connected?
Android requires a visible notification for a persistent background connection. It is on its own channel, so you can turn just that channel off and keep the connection.
Presence¶
Will presence drain my battery?
It is designed not to. HKI 7 uses geofences and a batched WorkManager job rather than continuous tracking — the same model the official app uses. The radio only wakes on a zone crossing.
High accuracy mode is the exception, and it says so.
Can I use the app without location at all?
Yes. Decline every location permission and everything except the device tracker works.
Android Auto and Wear OS¶
HKI 7 does not appear in my car
Android Auto only shows apps like this one when they came from Google Play. Its "Unknown sources" developer setting does not cover them — that option applies to media and messaging apps, not to apps built on the Android for Cars App Library.
So a copy installed from GitHub works normally everywhere else, but the car screen will never appear. There is no setting that changes this. Settings says so on such a copy.
Why can I not see my whole dashboard in the car or on my watch?
Neither can draw one. Android Auto renders Google's own templates rather than an app's interface, and hides content past a limit it sets while the car is moving. A watch has room for a few rows.
Both read the short list you curate under Settings › Android Auto & Wear OS instead.
Does my watch need my phone nearby?
No. The watch talks to Home Assistant directly, so it works with the phone in another room or switched off.
It does need Home Assistant to be reachable from wherever the watch is. If your only address is
a local one like 192.168.1.10, the watch works on your home Wi-Fi and nowhere else.
Do I have to sign in on the watch?
Usually not — if HKI 7 is on your phone, the watch is set up from there with no typing.
If it is not, the watch can sign in by itself: you type only the Home Assistant address, and the login page opens on your phone's browser. Your password is never typed on a watch.
Does the watch report my location?
No. It can optionally report its own battery, so an automation can remind you to charge it, and nothing else. That is off until you turn it on.
Family sharing¶
Can I hide entities from my kids?
You can hide views, rooms and individual items from specific people in the app's interface.
That is not a security boundary. Home Assistant has no per-entity read permission for non-admin users, so anyone in the household can still reach those entities through Home Assistant directly. Treat it as decluttering, not as a lock.
Who counts as an admin?
Whoever is an owner or administrator on your Home Assistant. HKI 7 does not maintain its own account system.
Do I have to pass backup files around to share a dashboard?
No, that is exactly what family sharing removes. An admin publishes once and everyone pulls it; changes are pushed to the same published copy.
Miscellaneous¶
What languages does it speak?
English plus 35 translations: Dutch, German (also Austrian and Swiss), French, Spanish (also Latin American and Mexican), Italian, Portuguese, Brazilian Portuguese, Turkish, Japanese, Korean, Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, Norwegian, Swedish, Finnish, Danish, Arabic, Hebrew, Polish, Russian, Czech, Slovak, Hungarian, Romanian, Bulgarian, Greek, Croatian, Lithuanian, Latvian, Estonian and Thai.
Arabic and Hebrew mirror the whole interface right to left, rather than only reversing text.
How do I report a bug?
Open an issue at github.com/jimz011/android-hki7/issues. Attach the Connection log from Settings › Connection if the problem is connection-shaped — it has a copy button.
How do I help without buying Premium?
Settings › HKI 7 › Support lists the ways. Bug reports with the connection log attached are genuinely among the most useful.