jxlarrea/kiosk-satellite 2026.10.33

on GitHub

What's new in Kiosk Satellite 2026.10.33

This release adds Celestial, a screensaver that shows the night sky over the kiosk as it is right now, with stars, planets, the Moon, constellations and the Milky Way. On a device with a compass you can hold it up to the sky and see what is in front of you. The calendar can now be the screensaver, and the Clock screensaver's Night mode can turn the screen off once the room goes dark. Camera view links work by name, and plugins can open the calendar. This release also fixes location grants that Android stopped asking for and the default camera view link.

New Feature: Celestial screensaver

• The sky above the kiosk, right now. About 5,000 stars drawn from their real brightness and color, the planets, the Moon in its current phase, the Sun, constellation figures and names, the Milky Way and the brightest galaxies and nebulae, over hills, mountains, plains or no ground at all. Everything is computed on the kiosk from bundled data, so it needs no internet connection.
• Your location. Pick where the sky is seen from: the device's GPS, the Home Assistant home zone, a person, device tracker or zone, or typed coordinates. A Current location row shows what the source found. With the GPS, the Location grant shows under Required system permissions right below, and the sky starts at the last GPS fix while the receiver looks for a new one.
• Look around. Drag to look around and pinch to zoom. A double tap closes the screensaver, since a drag looks around. Star names, Bayer letters such as γ Cen and constellation names fill in as you zoom.
• Make it yours. Settings cover the daytime sky, the Milky Way, planets, galaxies and nebulae, a light pollution slider, twinkling stars, a larger Moon, constellation lines and names, star and planet names, compass points and the size of the labels. See Celestial.
• Point at the sky. On a device with a compass, turn on Point at the sky and the sky on screen turns with the device, so a tablet held up to the sky names what is in front of it. With the GPS, the sky also follows the device as it moves. While it runs, motion, face, person and proximity detection do not close the screensaver, and a note asks for a figure eight while the compass is uncalibrated. It is off by default.
• Controls for astronomy fans. A touch brings up a dim status bar along the bottom for five seconds with the position, the azimuth, altitude and field of view of the center of the screen, the Moon phase and the sky's time. A timelapse runs the sky at 60×, 600× or 3600×, with a Now button to return, and a button turns Point at the sky on and off. Widgets and the At a Glance row step aside while the bar is up. Each control has its own switch under Controls, and Controls size scales the bar.

New Feature: Calendar screensaver

• The calendar when the kiosk goes idle. A new Calendar screensaver mode shows the calendar on today, on the view picked under its new Calendar view row: Day, Week, Month or Schedule.
• Still usable. Tap events, switch views and hide calendars with their chips while it runs. A tap does not dismiss it, and the X button in its corner ends the screensaver. Widgets and the At a Glance row stay off it. See Screensavers.

New Feature: Turn screen off at night

• A dark screen for a dark room (#1060). The Clock screensaver's Night mode has a new Turn screen off at night after slider, from 0 to 60 minutes. Once the room has been dark for the set time, the screen turns off, and it comes back on when the room brightens.
• Safe by default. Like Turn screen off after, it shows a warning first, needs the Device Administrator permission, listed under Required system permissions at the end of the page, and offers Use a black screen instead. A voice conversation, a ringing alarm, Now Playing or another app keeps the screen on, and a screen turned off by hand stays off in the morning. See Clock.

Improvements

• Camera view links by name (#1058). ks://camera/<name> now opens a camera view by its name, so a link no longer needs an ID that was shown nowhere in the app. The name ignores case, and a dash or underscore can stand in for a space, so ks://camera/front-door opens Front Door. The ESPHome camera view buttons and the showCameraView command accept a name too.
• View ID in the camera view editor (#1058). Edit view in Settings > Camera Streams now shows the view's ID in a box that copies it, on the device and in the remote admin. A link by ID keeps working if the view is renamed.
• Plugins can open the calendar (#1062). A plugin with host.control can now open the calendar with openCalendar, on a view and day of its choice, and close it with hideCalendar, so a navigation plugin can offer a Calendar item next to camera views, Now Playing and Music Assistant. See Commands in the plugin docs.

Fixes

• Location grants that Android stopped asking for. After two refusals, Android never shows the location dialog again, so Grant on the GPS Sensor and Bluetooth Proxy pages did nothing. It now opens the app's page in the Android settings, where location can be allowed. On Android 12 and later, the GPS Sensor's Location row also says when only approximate location is allowed, since the GPS receiver needs precise location, and Grant asks to change it to precise.
• ks://camera opens the default camera view. The link without a view refused with "view not found" instead of showing the default view, as documented.
• Plugin screensavers show up in the remote admin right away (#1059). Enabling, disabling or removing a plugin now updates Screensaver mode in an open remote admin page. Before, a new plugin screensaver was missing from the list until the page was reloaded.