What's new in Kiosk Satellite 2026.10.29
Kiosk Satellite can now be an AirPlay speaker, so an iPhone, iPad or Mac can play straight to the kiosk. Voice Satellite also gains a HAL 9000 skin, and this release fixes the remote admin's Player row, the update notice and weather states in the wrong language.
New Feature: AirPlay
- An AirPlay speaker. AirPlay is a new player under Settings > Media Player > Player, with "This device" as the source, next to the Sendspin player and the Local Media Session. With it picked and Enable AirPlay receiver on, the kiosk shows up in the AirPlay menu of an iPhone, iPad or Mac and plays what is sent to it. The Sendspin player goes offline while AirPlay is the player. See AirPlay.
- Now Playing for AirPlay. The floating player and the Now Playing view show the track, artist, album, cover art and progress.
- Remote control back to the sender. An iPhone or iPad takes play, pause, next and previous. A Mac also takes seeking, shuffle and repeat, and the queue panel lists its Up Next and plays a tapped song.
- Its own page. The new AirPlay page sets the speaker name, whether the sender's volume control counts, an audio sync offset and whether a second sender can take over. AirPlay is audio only, over AirPlay 1.
New Feature: HAL 9000 skin
- HAL's eye for Voice Satellite. The new HAL 9000 skin draws HAL's eye from 2001: A Space Odyssey: a fisheye lens in a polished chrome ring, its dark glass lit from within by a red light with a hot yellow center.
- Placed like Jarvis and KITT. It sits at the top of the screen with the conversation under it. Docked during a realtime conversation, it floats on a dark disc above the bubble, with a red ring around the chrome that unwinds as the conversation ends.
Improvements
- What a Player pick turns off. The notice under Media Player > Player now names what the pick turns off on this device: the Sendspin player, the AirPlay receiver or both, each only while switched on. Picking a source with no player yet names the source.
- A fleet profile for devices without a screen. The Echo Dot guide now recommends giving a headless device its own fleet profile, without the Gestures category. A leader with a screen does not offer the Button gesture trigger, so a synced gesture list would replace the device's button gestures. See Fleet Management.
Fixes
- Switching the player in the remote admin. Changing Player source or Player under Media Player rebuilt every page of the remote admin, and for a few seconds the Player row showed a plain text field instead of its picker. The pages that come and go with the pick now change in place.
- Sendspin Player's icon in the Player row. With the Sendspin player picked, the Player row showed a generic icon and dimmed text, as if nothing were picked. It now shows the speaker icon and the name like any other pick.
- File Manager on a device without a screen. The Permissions page now lists All files access on a headless device with its adb command, and the File Manager shows that command instead of a grant button. The Echo Dot guide includes the storage grants, which give Android 7 the same access. See Echo Dot.
- Update notice on a kiosk that installs silently. The Overview said every update has to be confirmed on the tablet screen, even on a kiosk that installs without confirmation, such as a device owner, one using Shizuku or one without a screen. It now says the update installs without confirmation, or explains how to install it on a device with no screen to confirm it on.
- Weather and entity states in the user's language (#900). The weather widget, Weather Mood, the entity widget and the At a Glance chips used Home Assistant's server language, so a Dutch user on an English server saw "Rainy" while the dashboard said "Regenachtig". They now follow the language in the user's Home Assistant profile and fall back to the server's language only when the user never picked one.
- Hardware buttons switched on but not started. On a device without a screen, the Hardware buttons permission row only checked whether the button service was running. A service switched on over adb but not yet started read Not offered and listed the same commands again. The row now says the service is switched on but has not started, and asks for a reboot. Android 7 starts it only after a reboot or the next app update.