Home Assistant Companion for Android: Native Client
/android
Home Assistant Companion for Android is the official Android client for a self-hosted Home Assistant instance, not a smart home platform by itself. Reach for it once you already run Home Assistant and want native widgets, push notifications, and location-based automation triggers on your phone instead of a browser tab. Skip it if you haven't set up a Home Assistant instance yet — this app has nothing to connect to without one.
What is Home Assistant Companion for Android?
Home Assistant Companion for Android is the official companion app that links an Android phone, tablet, or wearable to a Home Assistant instance you host yourself. It's written in Kotlin and licensed Apache-2.0. Per the README, it layers native Android integration — home-screen widgets, push notifications, and location tracking — on top of the Home Assistant web dashboard alone.
Key Features for Smart Home Control
- ✓Home-screen widgets for toggling entities or checking sensor states without opening the full app, per the README's native Android integration.
- ✓Push notifications tied to your own Home Assistant automations, delivered as real Android notifications instead of something you catch in a browser tab.
- ✓Built-in location tracking that feeds presence data back to your Home Assistant instance for arrival/departure automations, per the README.
- ✓Customizable themes and dashboard layout, so the app's look isn't fixed, per the README's 'Customizable' feature.
- ✓A Play Store Beta program, linked from the README, for trying upcoming builds before they reach the stable release.
- ✓Repo topics tag 'wear' and 'automotive' alongside 'android,' pointing to Wear OS and Android Auto support beyond the phone app.
- ✓Built in Kotlin, and the repo's 'compose' topic tag points to a Jetpack Compose UI rather than the older View system.
- ✓Apache-2.0 licensed and open source, with GitHub issue templates for bug reports and feature requests.
How to Get the App
Download Home Assistant Companion for Android from the Play Store listing the README links to (package id io.homeassistant.companion.android); the README also mentions availability on other app stores without naming which ones. For early access to upcoming builds, join the Play Store Beta program the README links to. None of this replaces setting up Home Assistant itself — this repo is only the Android client, and instructions for standing up a Home Assistant instance live outside this README. Once the app and your instance are both running, the README points to companion.home-assistant.io for usage documentation.
Strengths
- ✓It's the official Android client for Home Assistant, not a third-party integration, per the README.
- ✓Native Android touches — home-screen widgets, push notifications, location tracking — instead of a browser tab for your dashboard.
- ✓The interface's theme and dashboard layout are customizable inside the app, per the README.
- ✓Open source under Apache-2.0, with public issue templates for bugs and feature requests plus a #Android Discord channel for live discussion.
- ✓Tagged for Hacktoberfest with a documented contribution path: a Developer Guide plus a standard fork/branch/PR workflow.
Things to Consider
- △This is only a client — you need a separately hosted Home Assistant instance to connect it to, and setting that up isn't covered by this README.
- △The README names the Play Store plus unspecified 'other app stores' as distribution channels but doesn't say which additional stores.
- △No minimum Android version, current app version number, or release/changelog history appears in the README.
- △Wear OS and Android Auto support show up as 'wear' and 'automotive' topic tags on the repo, but the README text itself doesn't describe what that support actually covers.
- △Contribution steps point to an external Developer Guide rather than documenting build requirements inside this repo's README.
Other Smart Home Control Options
Common Questions
Home Assistant Companion for Android is open source under the Apache-2.0 license and distributed through the Play Store; the README lists no purchase price or in-app charge, consistent with free distribution.
Home Assistant Companion for Android adds home-screen widgets, push notifications, location tracking, and customizable themes and dashboards on top of the Home Assistant web interface, per the README.
Home Assistant Companion for Android is available from the Play Store link in the README (io.homeassistant.companion.android), plus unspecified 'other app stores'; a Play Store Beta program is also linked for early builds.
Yes — Home Assistant Companion for Android is released under the Apache-2.0 license and its source lives at home-assistant/android on GitHub.
The README points to companion.home-assistant.io, called the Home Assistant Companion Documentation, for guides on using the installed app.
Yes — the README links a Developer Guide at developers.home-assistant.io/docs/android/ and describes a fork-branch-pull-request workflow; the repo is also tagged for Hacktoberfest.
The problem it solves
Home Assistant itself runs as a self-hosted server you reach through a web dashboard, which works fine in a browser but doesn't give you Android-native touches: no home-screen widget for a light switch, no push notification for your own automation, no background location data to trigger arrival or departure scenes. Home Assistant Companion for Android exists specifically to close that native-integration gap for people who already run Home Assistant, not to add smart home features Home Assistant itself is missing.
Best use cases
- •Home Assistant self-hosters who want home-screen widgets for flipping a light or scene without opening the full app.
- •Anyone who wants their own Home Assistant automations to land as native Android push notifications instead of a browser tab alert.
- •Presence-based automations — using the app's location tracking so Home Assistant knows when you've left or come back home.
- •Wear OS or Android Auto users, per the repo's own topic tags, who want Home Assistant control extended past the phone.
- •Kotlin developers who want to contribute to a Hacktoberfest-tagged project with a documented Developer Guide and PR workflow.
Who should try it — and who should skip
Try Home Assistant Companion for Android if you already self-host a Home Assistant instance and want native widgets, notifications, and location-based triggers on your phone instead of just the web dashboard. Skip it if you haven't set up Home Assistant yet — the app has nothing to control on its own — or if you'd rather have a closed, pre-configured ecosystem like Google Home or SmartThings than manage a self-hosted platform.
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