Home Assistant wall tablet: panel, kiosk mode and common problems

A wall tablet is the most common way to give Home Assistant a permanent touch panel in one place in the home, for example by the front door, in the kitchen or in the living room. Instead of reaching for a phone, anyone in the house sees the state of the home and controls it straight from the panel.

A good wall panel is more than a tablet on the wall. It is made up of the choice of device, how the dashboard is displayed, power and mounting, screen behaviour and a separate, simplified layout suited to the location.

This guide explains the main decisions and trade-offs: what to choose, what to avoid and where problems usually appear. It is not a step by step tutorial, because a well finished wall panel depends on the specific home and hardware.

A wall tablet works well as quick access to the most important functions of the home: lights in that area, blinds, temperature, scenes, an alarm overview or the cameras at the door. It is a panel for everyone in the house, not an administration screen.

A wall panel does not replace a phone or a full dashboard on a computer. It should show few things, but the right ones for the place where it hangs. A panel by the entrance and a panel in the kitchen should usually look different.

It is worth deciding up front what the panel should do. If it should also act as an intercom, show a calendar or a shopping list, that affects the choice of device and the display method.

Both systems work as a wall panel, but they differ in flexibility and in how they keep the screen ready for use.

Android

An Android tablet gives more control: a full screen kiosk mode, control over screen dimming and wake, app autostart after a restart and running several tools at once. Cheap tablets are also available and are enough for a simple panel. The downsides are screen quality on the cheapest models and vendor support limited to a few years.

iPad

An iPad has a better screen and smoother motion, looks good on the wall and receives updates for a long time. It is less flexible, though: full screen is done through Guided Access or a profile managed kiosk mode, and keeping the screen on permanently and waking it on motion need additional solutions. An iPad also costs more than a comparable Android tablet.

For a simple panel in a visible place an iPad looks better. For a panel with motion wake, autostart and full control an Android tablet is usually more convenient.

The dashboard can be shown on a tablet in three ways. Each has different capabilities and different limits.

The Home Assistant app

The official mobile app has a built in kiosk mode that hides its own interface elements. It is the simplest to maintain and integrates well with notifications and the tablet sensors. It has fewer settings for the screen itself and for kiosk behaviour than dedicated solutions.

Fully Kiosk Browser

This is an Android app built specifically for wall panels. It keeps the screen on, wakes it on motion or sound, blocks exiting the app, starts after a restart and exposes its own sensors to Home Assistant. It is the most capable option, but it is another component to configure and maintain, and the full version is paid.

A plain browser

A browser in full screen mode is enough to show the dashboard, but on its own it will not keep the screen on, will not block exiting and will not wake the panel on motion. It suits a quick test or a panel that is always active anyway.

For an iPad the Home Assistant app is the usual choice. For an Android tablet that is meant to be a full wall panel, Fully Kiosk Browser is the most common.

For a wall panel a diagonal of 8 to 11 inches is usually enough. A smaller screen is harder to use from a distance, a larger one looks heavy on the wall and costs more.

More important than the spec sheet is screen brightness and viewing angles, because the panel is seen at an angle and often in a bright room. A matte finish or anti reflective glass clearly improves readability.

A new flagship tablet is not needed. A common choice is a mid range tablet or a used iPad a few generations old, as long as it still receives security updates. Very cheap tablets often have a poor screen, little memory and stop being supported quickly.

A note about the battery: a tablet mounted permanently and charged non stop will over time swell from a swollen cell. It is worth choosing a device that allows charging to be limited, or planning the power so that the battery is not permanently at full charge.

The simplest power is a USB cable run in a trunking or a chase to the nearest socket. It looks worse, but it works and does not require touching the electrical installation.

The target solution is power hidden in the wall. If there is a flush mounting box where the panel goes, a power supply can be routed there. A popular method is also PoE, that is power over the network cable: a single twisted pair runs to the panel and a PoE adapter turns it into power and optionally data. This needs a PoE switch or injector and planned cabling, ideally during a renovation.

Mounting is a separate topic: a surface or flush frame, alignment with the wall, access to the buttons and the charging port. Ready made frames exist for popular iPad models and selected Android tablets.

Before you cut into the wall: place the tablet temporarily in its intended spot for a few days. It quickly becomes clear whether the panel hangs too high, reflects light or is in the wrong place for daily use.

A wall panel only makes sense when the screen is ready for use. There are two approaches: the screen on all the time, or dimmed and woken when someone comes close.

A screen that is on all the time is the simplest, but on OLED panels it risks burn-in, that is a permanent trace of static dashboard elements. On IPS LCD screens, which most cheap tablets have, burn-in barely occurs, but constant brightness wears the backlight and uses energy.

The OLED burn-in risk is reduced by dimming the screen at rest, gently shifting the content, using a dark dashboard theme and avoiding bright static elements. This helps, but does not remove the problem completely.

A practical compromise is a screen dimmed at rest and brightened on approach. The panel is always visible, while the panel and the power draw are under less load.

For the panel to wake when someone approaches, presence detection is needed. There are three typical sources.

The first is a sensor on the tablet itself. Fully Kiosk Browser can wake the screen from motion seen by the front camera or from sound. It works without extra hardware, but a panel camera looking into the room can be a privacy concern, and the reaction to sound can be accidental.

The second is a separate PIR motion sensor by the panel, connected to Home Assistant. An automation wakes the screen when the sensor detects motion and dims it after a set time. This is a reliable and predictable solution.

The third is an mmWave presence sensor, which also detects a person standing still in front of the panel. The screen does not go off while it is being used, but the sensor has to be set up carefully, otherwise it reacts to movement across the whole room.

A common mistake: a dimming timeout that is too short and counted from the last motion rather than the last touch. The screen then goes off in the middle of using the panel.

A wall panel should show just the dashboard, without the Home Assistant sidebar, without the top bar and without browser elements. A member of the household should not be able to open Settings by accident.

Hiding the browser bar is handled by the full screen mode of the app or the kiosk. Hiding the sidebar and the Home Assistant header is a separate matter: it is done through the kiosk mode in the mobile app, a community interface add on or parameters in the panel URL. Each approach behaves differently after a Home Assistant update and for different users.

Community interface add ons give the most control, but they are another dependency to check after every major update. It is worth choosing the simplest method that gives the needed result.

Hiding the menu is not the same as securing it. Even if the menu is not visible, the account logged in on the tablet should have limited permissions. We return to this in the section on security.

A wall panel should have its own dashboard, not the same one as the administrator's phone. Home Assistant lets you create several dashboards and assign them to specific users.

Good practice is a separate user account just for the tablet, for example "entrance-panel". Such an account has its own dashboard as the default, limited permissions and does not mix with the household's login history.

A separate dashboard also lets you match the layout to the panel screen and to being used from a distance: larger buttons, fewer cards, one view instead of many tabs. A touch panel on the wall follows different rules from a panel on a phone held in the hand.

If the home has several tablets, each can have its own dashboard and its own account. The kitchen panel shows something different from the bedroom panel.

The panel does not come back after a restart. After a power cut or an update the tablet starts on the home screen, not in the panel. This is solved by app autostart for the kiosk and, if needed, a startup delay until the network is ready.

The screen goes off while it is being used. This is usually a dimming timeout that is too short, or one counted from motion rather than from touching the panel.

The panel logs itself out. The session token expired or the tablet lost its connection for a longer time. A long lived access token tied to the panel account and a stable, predictable server address both help.

The menu comes back after a Home Assistant update. The method of hiding the interface stopped working with the new version. This is why it is worth choosing simpler methods and checking the panel after every major update.

The panel is slow. A cheap tablet cannot keep up with animations, a map or a large number of cards. Simplifying the dashboard and reducing heavy elements helps, and sometimes a more powerful tablet is needed.

A tablet on the wall is physically available to anyone who enters the home, including guests and service crews. The account logged in on the panel should have access only to what the panel actually shows.

The panel account in Home Assistant should not be an administrator. A limited account will not see Settings, integrations or the configuration, even if someone gets around the kiosk mode.

The access token stored on the tablet is in practice a key to that part of the system. If the tablet is lost or replaced, the token has to be revoked.

If the panel controls a lock, a gate or the alarm, it is worth considering an extra confirmation for those actions, for example a PIN on the dashboard. The convenience of the panel should not mean that anyone passing by can open the house.

A good wall panel shows in one view what the household needs in that place, and nothing beyond that. By the entrance that is usually leaving the house, the alarm, the gate and the weather. In the kitchen it is light, timers, music and a task list.

The buttons are large and spaced so that they can be hit without looking. Colour carries meaning, for example a warning or an alarm, and is not there for decoration. The theme is dark, because the panel hangs on the wall and glows in the room, including in the evening.

The panel can change its content depending on the time of day or presence: in the morning it shows the weather and the calendar, in the evening scenes and the alarm, at night it is dimmed. This makes it look designed for the home rather than just showing a list of entities.

This effect needs a designed layout, a consistent theme and a few automations around the panel itself. That is no longer a tablet setting, it is an interface project.

I can help choose the tablet and the mounting method, set up kiosk mode, screen wake and a separate panel profile, and above all design the wall dashboard itself: the layout, the theme and behaviour that changes with the time of day. The result is a panel matched to a specific place in the home, not just a tablet with a list of devices.

This guide draws on the official Home Assistant documentation and the Fully Kiosk Browser documentation:

• Home Assistant: dashboards and views
• Home Assistant Companion: dashboard and app kiosk mode
• Fully Kiosk Browser: documentation and features
• Home Assistant: users, permissions and access tokens