Ava 0.6.9 - HERITAGE 2

Some devices have already been part of the home for years. They may hang on a wall or rest beside the bed, their cases marked by time, still showing a familiar dashboard and playing familiar sounds every day.

HERITAGE 2 is about carrying that life forward. A brief network problem should preserve the screen being viewed and the music being heard. Older devices should not carry extra weight simply to gain new features, and connected features can be used separately or left at any time. Version 0.6.9 makes reminders, screensavers, music, and everyday settings feel more at home on the displays that have stayed with us.

Better reminders around the home

When the washing finishes, a window is left open, or the doorbell rings, the wall panel can now show a more suitable notification. Important messages can fill the screen. Everyday reminders can use a small banner placed at the top, center, or bottom. A long message begins on one line and expands when tapped.

Thank you to @matkastner for sharing this everyday need in #173. 0.6.9 adds a notification scene library where built-in, URL-based, and locally created scenes live together. Each scene can be previewed, copied, and edited. Its title, message, color, animation, and sound can all be configured directly.

The icon library is also much larger. Search by name or scroll to reveal more choices. Icons load as needed, keeping the picker comfortable on older tablets. A banner now uses its selected color as a soft wash, while a white banner keeps a clear edge in the light theme. An optional, faint Home Assistant mark can also sit in the corner.

After saving, new and recently edited scenes appear near the top. Leaving after a temporary preview does not create an unfinished scene, and returning from preview or editing brings the list back to the same place. On landscape screens, the preview and save controls stay centered instead of stretching across the display.

These scenes can be triggered through the Notification Scene entity in Home Assistant, making them useful for doorbells, washing machines, windows, and air-quality automations.

Path: Ava Settings -> Interaction -> Displays & Scenes -> Notification Scenes

Camera views can temporarily use the screensaver

When motion is detected at the door at night, Home Assistant can display the camera on the screensaver layer. Closing it returns to the dashboard exactly where it was.

Thank you to @matkastner for sharing this setup in #174. The screensaver timeout can now be set to 0. The dashboard then remains visible during ordinary idle time, while Home Assistant can still open the screensaver when needed. To restore an automatic screensaver later, simply choose a normal waiting time again.

With the two-way screensaver switch enabled, the panel and Home Assistant show the same state. Dismissing the screensaver on the panel turns the HA switch off. Opening or closing it from HA updates the panel immediately.

Calibrate each Ava separately

When the same song is playing in the living room and kitchen, a slight timing difference may become noticeable while standing between them. The sync delay control in the Music Assistant console can adjust one Ava until the beat from both rooms meets again.

Every device also has a different speaker. A bedside unit may have too much bass, while voices may sound dull on an older kitchen tablet. The new five-band equalizer can tune each Ava separately instead of applying one sound to every room.

Sync delay and the five-band equalizer are controls made specifically for Ava devices. They work through local communication between Ava players, so both the device showing the controls and the player being adjusted need a current Ava version that supports them. Other Music Assistant players can still join playback and synchronization normally; their sound can be adjusted through the controls they provide themselves.

When several current Ava devices are available, the music console lists the adjustable players together. From the living room, the timing and sound of the living room, bedroom, and kitchen can each be calibrated. The console continues to support phones, portrait wall panels, landscape displays, and tablets.

Adjust lyrics by ear

Some lyric sources naturally run a little early or late, while an older device may add a small amount of playback delay. The music console now includes lyric controls. Offset moves the lyrics within a 500 ms range in either direction, helping the highlighted words meet the voice again. Changes appear immediately and are remembered.

Follow offers five levels: Steady, Calmer, Default, Closer, and Tight. Default suits most listening. Move toward Steady for gentler transitions, or toward Tight when lyrics should return to the current line more quickly after scrubbing, skipping a track, or a brief network disturbance. With the three-line lyric view, tapping the lyrics also reveals a temporary fine-adjustment bar without leaving the player.

A music overlay that is easier to enter and leave

When the player opens before a song arrives, it shows a waiting state. If no media arrives, the overlay closes itself. Clearing the queue or leaving a synchronized group also clears the previous cover, title, and progress.

At a track change, the cover and backdrop move naturally to the next song. Playlist covers that have already loaded remain visible when scrolling back. If the fullscreen player has no visible back button, holding an empty area for two seconds reveals it.

After the player collapses into the music orb, hidden lyrics and backdrop animation stop refreshing. Expanding it again returns to the current song. A network recovery or playback-state refresh now respects the shape the user chose, so the orb does not suddenly expand by itself. Stopping the service also closes its music connections and playback work.

While scrubbing, reading lyrics, or using a player control, the surface remains present instead of hiding halfway through the action. In portrait, the entire right edge no longer opens the music console over the lyrics. A touch can reveal the handle, and the visible handle can then be tapped to enter, reducing accidental openings while scrolling lyrics. Long song and artist names also adapt to the available room instead of sending both lines across the screen at once.

More reliable pause and track changes

When music is paused, the progress bar holds at the audible position. After resuming, progress moves again when sound actually returns. Scrubbing also keeps lyrics and the progress bar closer to what is playing.

If a playlist briefly stalls while moving naturally to the next track, playback can recover. A pause requested by the user remains paused.

When the network slows and Music Assistant cannot return the queue in time, the current cover and progress remain visible. After Sendspin reconnects, a later outage begins again with a short retry delay.

Clearer speech while audio is playing

While Ava is playing music, a prompt, or a long spoken reply, software echo cancellation works to preserve the nearby person's voice. Several sounds playing together are handled as one playback mix, reducing speaker audio without making the person's words unnecessarily thin.

The processing stays on the device. Most homes can keep the default Adaptive + Standard setting. Increase cancellation strength gradually only when recordings received by Home Assistant still contain clear playback from Ava.

Expressions that follow the reply

The orb can show happy eyes for good news and different expressions for an apology or an important warning.

During a long answer, the expression can change as the captions move to the next page. The eyes change during a blink while the orb color stays steady. The text is evaluated directly on the device.

An update page made for reading

The software update page now shows the release cover and full notes. Portrait screens read from top to bottom. Landscape screens place the release notes and installation choices in separate columns. Recent installable versions can be selected directly.

Recently viewed notes and covers remain available on a slow network. Chinese and Russian network environments can try available mirrors. Ava keeps only the three latest covers and clears them over time. If a cover has not loaded yet, a soft transition background is shown instead of leaving an empty area.

When the same version number has a newer build, the button says Update. When the same content is already installed, it says Reinstall, making the next action clearer.

Ava Pro built-in firmware package updated to 2026.09.1

Version 0.6.9 officially updates the built-in Ava Pro firmware package to 2026.09.1. It provides one matching foundation for Pro voice, audio, and long-running operation, allowing the related app fixes to work against the same firmware generation.

From 0.6.8 to 0.6.9: 30 fixes

These fixes were developed continuously from 0.6.8 through 0.6.9. They came from consecutive voice sessions, all-day playback, repeated screen changes, and panels left running for long periods. Each issue may look small alone, but together they can make an everyday display gradually slow down or fail at an awkward moment.

TTS replies (5 fixes)

1. Standard TTS no longer waits for the entire floating caption to be laid out before speaking, so a long reply starts promptly.
2. Floating captions now appear reliably over the screensaver during standard TTS, avoiding replies that can be heard but not seen.
3. During consecutive requests, playback events left by the previous reply cannot end or stall the new one.
4. When a reply finishes, is cancelled, or fails, its progress following and sound monitoring stop with it instead of continuing in the background.
5. Streaming replies have a firm limit on queued audio. Closing voice service stops and clears both standard and streaming TTS so sound cannot accumulate.

Interface fixes (5 fixes)

1. Recognized speech and replies find a suitable place below the orb in portrait and landscape, remain within three lines, and no longer crowd the bottom animation or cover a large part of the dashboard.
2. The music console fits phones, portrait wall panels, landscape screens, and tablets. Once collapsed into the music orb, a state refresh no longer expands it on its own.
3. Portrait lyrics keep only a clear side handle. Reveal it first and then enter the console, reducing accidental openings while scrolling lyrics.
4. Returning from a settings subpage restores the previous position, while dialogs, descriptions, and bottom controls fit small, portrait, and landscape displays.
5. Notification banners keep a visible edge on light backgrounds and long text can be expanded. Leaving a preview also no longer creates an unsaved scene.

Other memory and resource leaks (10 fixes)

1. Swiping Ava from Recents now ends dashboard pages, network observers, and recovery timers together instead of leaving them in memory.
2. Closing the screensaver removes its views, state observers, and waiting work, preventing repeated sleep and wake cycles from accumulating layers.
3. When a notification ends, its animation, sound, dismissal timer, background work, fullscreen view, and banner all stop with it.
4. Closing the music overlay stops artwork loading, lyric prefetching, and backdrop animation, then releases images it was holding.
5. Leaving Music Assistant closes its connection, refresh work, lyric preparation, and sleep timer, and drops playback state that is no longer valid.
6. When Sendspin stops or reconnects, it clears old audio, timing measurements, and discovery work so the previous connection does not remain behind.
7. Finishing photo or video capture now closes the camera and its worker threads, avoiding a camera that remains occupied after the view is gone.
8. Restarting or closing voice service also releases sensors, Bluetooth work, sound detection, and pending microphone audio, reducing growth over long runs.
9. Closing remote management ends its connections, screenshot cache, and running commands, avoiding idle work after a device goes offline.
10. When the floating orb and wake animation disappear, their views, buffers, and windows are released so repeated wake-ups do not stack old surfaces.

Other reliability fixes (10 fixes)

1. Software echo cancellation now follows music, prompts, and spoken replies together. In a busy sound scene it preserves nearby speech more naturally and reduces breaks and rough edges.
2. If Music Assistant temporarily fails to return the queue, the current cover, lyrics, and progress remain in place until a later refresh succeeds.
3. After Music Assistant reconnects, late messages from the old connection cannot replace the new state, and simultaneous actions complete independently.
4. Sendspin playback, stopping, buffering, and timing have been hardened for rapid track changes, reconnects, and synchronized rooms.
5. After a voice request changes volume, pauses, or skips a track, Music Assistant playback now returns correctly when the reply ends instead of occasionally staying stopped.
6. During natural track changes and crossfades, late progress from the previous track no longer pulls the new progress bar and lyrics backward.
7. Clearing the queue or leaving synchronization removes the cover, title, progress, and peer queue together, preventing the previous track from returning later.
8. The dashboard retries only when a remote page genuinely failed to load and the network comes back, allowing a wall panel to recover after a brief home-network outage.
9. Updating now blocks duplicate installations, recognizes a new build with the same version number, and limits artwork cache, making repeated taps and long-term release browsing safer.
10. A waiting player that receives no real music closes fully after two minutes and turns off its Home Assistant display switch, so an empty player cannot remain on screen indefinitely.