Turn any Android tablet into a beautiful, voice-enabled Home Assistant kiosk in about two minutes.

Kiosk Satellite is an open source lightweight kiosk browser built specifically for Home Assistant, and the official companion app for Voice Satellite. Mount a tablet on the wall, run the setup wizard, and you get a locked-down, always-on dashboard that listens for your wake word natively, even while the screen is off or another app is in front. And it is built to stay smooth on the low-powered, older tablets that usually end up on walls.

What it does

• Guided setup: a five-step wizard connects to Home Assistant, picks the dashboard, detects Voice Satellite, and requests only the Android permissions your choices need. Run it on the tablet or from a browser on your computer.

• Voice Satellite, natively: the kiosk gets its own assist_satellite entity and the app's built-in engine takes over wake-word detection: it keeps listening with the screen off, at a fraction of the CPU a browser needs. No configuration in Voice Satellite; everything is inherited.

• Plain HTTP instances, fully unlocked: a loopback proxy inside the app makes an http:// dashboard a genuine secure context, so the microphone and the rest of the https-only browser surface work with no certificates or reverse proxy. Enabled automatically during setup.

• Fast dashboards on slow tablets: optionally filters Home Assistant's state stream down to just the entities on the view currently on screen, turning constant stutter on older tablets into smooth scrolling. Any view it cannot fully resolve is left unfiltered, so nothing ever breaks.

• Kiosk lockdown: exit gesture with PIN, blocked back/volume/home buttons, a status-bar shield, instant re-wake on power button, and lock-task support on device-owner provisioned tablets.

• Screensavers: dim, black, clock, Home Assistant media, local folders, a photo gallery picked straight from the system picker, or an Immich library or album as a full photo frame with metadata overlay, all with crossfade / slide / zoom / Ken Burns transitions and an optional corner clock.

• Remote administration: an embedded web admin at http://<device-ip>:2324 mirrors every setting, shows a live screenshot, web console and logs, and exports the entire configuration as a single backup file.

• Dashboard view rotation: cycle through a chosen set of dashboard views in an endless loop, each on screen for a configurable number of seconds.

• Sendspin player: the tablet doubles as a synchronized Sendspin speaker for Music Assistant, in sample-accurate sync with every other Sendspin player in the house, with metadata, artwork and volume in Home Assistant.

• DLNA renderer: push images, video and live cameras full screen onto the kiosk with media_player.play_media, from Home Assistant automations, the media browser or any DLNA app.

• Ready-made Home Assistant entities over MQTT: point the app at your broker and every tablet appears as its own device via MQTT discovery, no YAML needed: a screen light, battery, charging, current page, volume and screensaver sensors, all with live availability.

• Kiosk conveniences: pull-to-refresh, start on boot, keep screen awake, default brightness, scheduled light/dark theme, custom JavaScript injection, and self-signed certificate support.

Kiosk Satellite + Voice Satellite

Voice Satellite turns a Home Assistant dashboard into a full hands-free voice assistant with wake word, conversations, timers and announcements. It runs entirely in the browser, which is exactly its limit on a wall tablet: browsers can't listen while the screen is off, browser-side wake-word engines are expensive, and on a plain http instance the browser refuses the microphone altogether.

Kiosk Satellite removes that limit. The app runs Voice Satellite's own wake-word models natively and transparently: Voice Satellite detects it is running inside Kiosk Satellite and hands detection over on its own. You keep configuring everything in Voice Satellite as usual; the kiosk just makes it always-on, cheaper, and screen-independent.

The performance difference is one of the main reasons to use Kiosk Satellite. Native inference runs the entire wake-word pipeline many times faster than realtime on the CPU alone (tens of times faster on a modern tablet) at a fraction of the CPU and battery a browser-side engine burns, and it keeps the dashboard perfectly smooth while listening. It is efficient enough that vsWakeWord now runs even on an Amazon Echo Show 5, on CPU, with no GPU or accelerator needed.

Detection also no longer depends on the page being visible: with background listening enabled, the wake word keeps working while the screen is off or another app entirely is in the foreground. Say the word and the kiosk brings the dashboard back and answers.

Voice Satellite is not required, since Kiosk Satellite is a complete Home Assistant kiosk on its own, but together they make a tablet into something very close to a purpose-built voice hub.

Installation

Kiosk Satellite is distributed as a free APK for sideloading:

1. Download the latest APK from the releases page.
2. Copy it to the tablet (or download it there directly) and open it. Allow installing from unknown sources when Android asks.
3. Open the app and follow the setup wizard. Tip: enable remote administration in the first step and finish the setup from a browser on your computer, where pasting the Home Assistant access token is much easier than typing it on glass.

Requirements: Android 7.0 or newer, a Home Assistant instance you can reach from the tablet, and a long-lived access token (HA profile → Security → Long-lived access tokens). For voice, install Voice Satellite from the default HACS repository.

Everyday use

• Menu: swipe from the left edge for Dashboard, Settings, Web Console, Clear web cache, Log out, Exit.
• Remote admin: http://<device-ip>:2324 in any browser on your network, protected by the password you chose during setup.
• Kiosk mode: once enabled, the menu swipe is replaced by the exit gesture (fast taps) and your PIN.

Status

Kiosk Satellite is in beta. It runs day and night on the author's own wall tablets, but expect rough edges. Bug reports and feature requests are very welcome in the issues.

Documentation

• JavaScript API: window.kioskSatellite, wake-word handoff protocol
• Remote API: REST + WebSocket surface
• MQTT: Home Assistant entities via MQTT discovery, topics, troubleshooting
• Sendspin: the built-in synchronized Music Assistant audio player
• DLNA: push images, video and cameras to the kiosk from Home Assistant or any other DLNA app.
• Immich: the Immich photo-frame screensaver, metadata overlay, local cache.