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Best experience

HaCasa Nova looks and works best when it fills the whole screen and is the first thing you see. Three small changes get you there.

1. Make it your start page

Open HaCasa Nova and go to More → Panel settings → General → HA start page, then press Make HaCasa Nova the start page. From then on Home Assistant opens on HaCasa Nova instead of the Overview.

This is a setting per user, so do it once for every person in the house (and on their own login).

2. Hide Home Assistant's sidebar

HaCasa Nova has its own navigation, so Home Assistant's sidebar on the left only takes up room.

  1. Open your profile: click your name at the bottom of the sidebar.
  2. Turn on Always hide the sidebar.

The panel now uses the full width of the screen.

Getting back to Home Assistant

Need the rest of Home Assistant? Go to More → Home Assistant in the panel. That opens Home Assistant's settings, where the menu button top left brings the sidebar back. More → Profile takes you straight to the setting above if you want to turn it off again.

Like the start page, this is a per-user setting: each person chooses for their own login.

3. Wall tablets

For a tablet on the wall:

  • Use a kiosk browser, such as Fully Kiosk Browser on Android, so the browser bars disappear and the screen stays on.
  • Log in with a separate Home Assistant user for the tablet, and give that user the start page and hidden sidebar from steps 1 and 2.
  • Turn on the idle screen under More → Panel settings → General → Idle screen after: after a few minutes without touch the panel dims to the clock, the weather and a status line, and a touch wakes it.
  • Set up the doorbell popup under Settings → Motion & doorbell, so the camera appears when someone rings.

Also worth it

  • Room photos make the biggest difference of all. See Room photos.
  • On a phone, add Home Assistant to your home screen (or use the Companion app); the panel adapts to the small screen by itself.