#Remote access (sorry!)

1 messages · Page 1 of 1 (latest)

trim edge Dec 2, 2025, 11:05 PM

I am 100% sure this has been asked and answered many moons ago and equally sure it's something I should not be struggling with... sorry to be so far behind the curve... I'm new to HA. The whole thing (HA OS running on Pi 5) is right on the edge of my technical skills.

In short. How do I make remote access work?! I signed up for the Nabu Casa cloud access. Everything else is so slick, I just assumed that once I'd signed up for that, as soon as I left home, the app would magically realise it was no longer on-net and flip to my cloud access.

I suspect the issue is something to do with:

I can't tell what is the point of the so called "companion app" (which looks like a classic IOS app) versus the downloadable "app" from Apple's app store.
This 'app within the app' seems to want to know about more than one server. Maybe I can create a second server from the cloud info but is this the right thing to do?
I've seen references to manual versus auto switchover. Everything else with HA is so slick, surely I don't have to manually tell it when I am on my LAN and when I am not?
Could it maybe be something to do with location awareness?

Any help appreciated!

Tks

unborn coyote Dec 3, 2025, 9:27 PM

Yes, Nabu Casa is the least headache version of remote access. Did you follow this?
https://support.nabucasa.com/hc/en-us/articles/26474279202973-Enabling-remote-access-to-Home-Assistant

Nabu Casa

Enabling remote access to Home Assistant

Remote access allows you to connect to your Home Assistant instance from outside of your home network. So that you can start the vacuum cleaner from your phone while you are on the train for your d...

There should only be one native app on iOS. The Android and iOS apps are called companion apps. The app should include a webview where you see your homeassistant dashboard and also offer a native settings menu in settings -> companion app. There you can configure things specific to the app like the connection to the server, which device sensor to share and setup native operating system features like quick tiles etc...

You shouldn't add multiple servers for the same physical server. One physical server should always correspond to one server in the app

Correct, you don't have to manually switch over. If you go to the settings for the server in the companion app, you will find both a field for "Home Assistant URL" and a field for "Internal Connection URL". Internal Connection will be the IP address or locally reachable hostname of the server. The other one should be the one provided by nabu casa