What's new in Kiosk Satellite 2026.9.87
This release brings Voice Satellite natively inside Kiosk Satellite. The kiosk now is an ESPHome Assist satellite on its own, with no Voice Satellite integration to install and no WebView in the way and voice is dramatically faster for it. It also adds a Local Media Session player for other apps on the device and a Home Assistant Dashboard screensaver.
New Feature: Native Voice Satellite
- Why native: Until now voice ran inside the dashboard's WebView. The Voice Satellite integration's engine loaded with the page, streamed the microphone through it and drew the overlay in HTML. On the wall tablets and Echo Shows most kiosks run on, that WebView was the bottleneck. Kiosk Satellite now does all of it itself, through its own ESPHome device, so voice no longer depends on a dashboard being loaded, awake or even on screen.
- Dramatically faster. The overlay and all ten skins are drawn natively on the GPU. On an Echo Show 8 the Waveform skin runs at 56 fps, the panel's full rate, where the integration managed about 9. Ink Blobs, which never rendered in the Echo's WebView at all, now runs there too. While the overlay shows, everything under it pauses: Weather Mood stops rendering, slideshows, web pages and camera grids hold and the dashboard keeps its last frame, so the device puts its power into the conversation.
- A real Assist satellite. Home Assistant adds the kiosk through ESPHome, the same way it adds a Voice PE. Timers, announcements, ask question and start conversation work through its satellite entity. The vs_wake, vs_show and vs_start_timer actions drive it from automations, and the Assistant, wake words and Finished speaking detection are Home Assistant's own selects.
- Every skin, element for element. All ten skins are ported line by line. The overlay keeps a whole conversation on screen, fades each answer in as it arrives, scrolls a long answer at the pace it is spoken and shows weather, stock, image, video and featured results in their panels.
- The screensaver is no longer dismissed. A voice turn no longer dismisses the screensaver. It pauses under the overlay with the brightness raised and carries on when the turn ends.
- Migrating is one wizard. On the Voice Satellite page, the migration wizard picks the integration's satellite this kiosk takes over, copies its settings and lists the automations and scripts that still point at it. Nothing migrates on its own. Run from the dashboard again switches back at any time.
- Onboarding sets it up. A new kiosk turns on Voice Satellite and ESPHome during setup and picks its Assistant, wake word engine and wake word, which are set once Home Assistant adds it. When Home Assistant runs the Voice Satellite integration, onboarding offers the migration instead.
- Fleets leader also syncs custom wake words. A fleet leader passes its Voice Satellite settings, custom models and Home Assistant picks to its followers. Each follower sets them on its own device in Home Assistant.
Improvements
- Local Media Session player. The floating player and Now Playing can follow another app playing on the kiosk, such as a Spotify Connect receiver or a podcast app, through its Android media session (#722). With This device as the Player source, pick Local Media Session in the Player dropdown. Track, artwork, progress, seeking and lyrics follow the app, the transport buttons steer it and the volume slider sets the device's media volume. It needs Notification access, which the page asks for.
- Home Assistant Dashboard screensaver. A new screensaver mode shows a Home Assistant dashboard view, picked with the Select dashboard button. It uses the dashboard's own page, so Home Assistant does not reload. A tap dismisses it without pressing a card, and the dashboard goes back to the view it was on when the screensaver ends.
- Timer pill scale. A new slider under Voice Satellite, Timers sizes the timer pills from 50% to 300%, whether Voice Satellite runs natively or on the dashboard.
- Fleet profiles leave Voice Satellite's mute and speaker out. Mute and Play sounds on belong to the room, so new profiles exclude them, and a profile still on the old default exclusions moves to the new one.
- ESPHome comes before Voice Satellite in Settings. Native Voice Satellite runs on the kiosk's ESPHome device, so ESPHome now leads the Home Assistant group on the device and in the remote admin.
- The Go to a dashboard view picker matches the rest of the app. The gesture's view list now uses the standard radio picker, with each view's path under its name.
- Slideshow videos pause while the screen is off. The Local, Gallery and Immich slideshows already held their photos with the screen off, but a video kept decoding. It now pauses and plays on when the screen comes back.
Fixes
- Go to dashboard now holds the page with view rotation on. The ESPHome Go to dashboard button loaded the start page, but the next rotation step navigated straight back off it (#719). It now pauses rotation for the Pause rotation on interaction window, like the Dashboard view select and a touch do.