What's new in Kiosk Satellite 2026.10.22
This release lets a Home Assistant motion sensor take the camera's place for waking the screen, and sends Android broadcasts so apps like Tasker can react to voice, intercom, alarms and the screensaver. Kiosks behind a reverse proxy can now be opened by name from Switch kiosk, and plugins get a secret setting type. It also moves the kiosk menu and settings up to the top of the screen on Lenovo's Android 15 tablets.
Improvements
- Use a Home Assistant motion sensor in place of the camera. A new External Motion Sensor group under Settings > Screensaver > Motion Detection has a Use Home Assistant entity switch that reveals Motion sensor entity, which lists occupancy, motion and presence binary sensors. With it on, the sensor drives Dismiss on motion, Only when screen is off and Postpone screensaver on motion, and the camera no longer runs for them, so a tablet whose camera does not work, or has none, can still wake when someone walks up and stay on while they are around. The sensor turning on dismisses the screensaver. Staying on postpones it but never dismisses one that started with the sensor already on. Once it clears, the idle timeout and Turn screen off after take over as usual. The row shows whether the sensor reads Detected or Clear. The Motion entity, face detection and the Show fingers gesture keep using the camera. Both settings stay per device in new fleet profiles.
- Android broadcasts for voice, intercom, alarms and the screensaver. Kiosk Satellite now sends a broadcast when a Voice Satellite interaction starts, listens, thinks, speaks, announces and ends, when a timer changes, when an intercom call rings, connects or ends, when an alarm changes or rings and when the screensaver starts or stops. Apps on the device like Tasker, MacroDroid or tvQuickActions can react right away without Home Assistant, for example to bring their own app back to the front on
me.jxl.kiosk_satellite.event.VS_ENDED.VS_ENDEDfires once per interaction, after follow-ups and after the answer leaves the screen. Timer and alarm broadcasts carry the same fields as their Home Assistant events as extras. See Android Broadcasts for the full list. - Open kiosks behind a reverse proxy by name from Switch kiosk. A new Admin URL setting under Settings > Device > Remote Administration takes the address other kiosks should open for this one, such as
https://kiosk.example.comfrom Caddy or nginx. The kiosk announces it to the others and shares it through the fleet directory, and Switch kiosk shows and opens it instead of the IP address. It accepts a scheme, a host and an optional port, with no path. Leave it blank to keep today's behavior. Fleet sync and the intercom keep using the IP address, since the proxy name may lead to a different server. Each kiosk keeps its own Admin URL, and it never syncs from a fleet leader. - Secret settings for plugins. Plugins can now declare a
secretsetting for a password, token or API key. It works like a text setting and reaches the plugin as a string, but the Plugin Manager and Remote Admin mask it and only let you replace it. While you type, an eye button at the end of the field shows the text. The saved value is never shown.listPluginsand the other admin responses report a saved secret as__set__instead of its value. See Creating plugins.
Fixes
- The kiosk menu and settings reach the top of the screen on Lenovo's Android 15 tablets. 2026.10.21 moved the dashboard up to the top edge on a Lenovo Tab One and similar ZUI tablets, but the kiosk menu and the settings screens still sat one status bar lower. The app's own screens left room for the same multi-window handle at the top. They now ignore it too.