Device notifications

Device notifications

Send a silent banner or modal alert from Tablets → Send notification, a tablet's menu, or Home Assistant's remote_screens.send_notification action. Delivery uses the existing local player connection; no cloud account or Android notification permission is needed.

Choose individual tablets, all tablets showing selected screens, or explicitly All paired tablets. Selecting one tablet reaches only that tablet, even when others show the same screen. Overlapping recipients are deduplicated. Offline tablets are skipped and messages are not replayed on reconnect.

Update all three components

This feature changes three separately installed components:

1. Update the Remote Screens add-on (server and editor).
2. Update the Remote Screens integration through HACS, then restart Home Assistant. For a manual development install, copy this checkout's custom_components/remote_screens/ into HA's /config/custom_components/remote_screens/ before restarting.
3. Install the updated player APK on tablets for banners and alerts with wake disabled.

tools/deploy_ha_dev.sh deploys the server/editor/APK bundle only; it does not update the HA custom integration. An app rebuild or integration reload alone does not load newly changed Python modules. After restarting HA, verify remote_screens.send_notification appears in Developer tools → Actions. If HA reports “Action not found,” check that the updated custom integration has been installed and HA restarted.

Appearance

• Banner: dashboard stays interactive outside the banner. Default duration: 10 seconds.
• Alert: modal above the dashboard, with optional camera and up to two buttons. Default duration: 30 seconds.
• Until acknowledged: alert timeout 0. Without custom buttons, an Acknowledge button is added. Close, outside tap, and Back dismiss without acknowledging.
• Wake screen: off by default. Enable to wake a connected tablet from standby. Notifications are silent.

One banner and one alert can exist on a tablet. New messages replace the previous message of the same presentation. An alert hides a banner; the banner's expiry continues while hidden. Reconnection clears banners. No history or offline queue is retained.

Home Assistant

Choose screen/tablet devices in the action editor. For example:

action: remote_screens.send_notification
data:
  screens:
    - YOUR_TABLET_DEVICE_REGISTRY_ID
  title: Laundry is ready
  message: The washing machine has finished.
  presentation: banner
  timeout: 10
  wake: true
response_variable: notification_result

To broadcast, omit screens and set all: true. An empty selection alone never broadcasts with this new action. A screen selection reaches all its paired tablets.

A persistent alert with an action:

action: remote_screens.send_notification
data:
  all: true
  title: Garage door is open
  message: Please check the garage before leaving.
  presentation: alert
  level: warning
  timeout: 0
  wake: true
  tag: garage
  buttons:
    - title: Acknowledge
      action: acknowledge

Buttons fire the existing remote_screens_alert_action event with action, optional tag, screen, and device. An optional service: domain.service and data object use the existing server-side Home Assistant action handling. Camera entities are supported on alerts only.

The response contains devices, with deviceId, name, and status for each recipient: sent, offline, unsupported, or failed. Sent means dispatched to the connection, not displayed or read. An empty screen can produce an empty result.

API and compatibility

The editor uses POST /api/notifications through ingress. The integration uses POST /integration/notifications with its existing bearer API key. Both accept:

{
  "title": "Laundry is ready",
  "message": "The washing machine has finished.",
  "targets": ["tablet-device-id"],
  "presentation": "banner",
  "timeout": 10,
  "wake": false
}

Targets can be screen ids or player device ids. Use all: true instead of targets for broadcast. Title is required (100 characters maximum); message is limited to 500. Levels are info, warning, and danger. Duration is 1–3600 seconds for banners and 0–3600 for alerts. Optional fields: icon, tag, camera, and buttons (up to two).

Players advertise the notifications capability. Older players report unsupported for banners and alerts with wake disabled, because they cannot honor silent display without waking. Wake-enabled modal alerts continue to work on older players.

Existing remote_screens.show_alert, /alert APIs, and alert events keep their defaults and wake behavior. Legacy empty recipient lists still broadcast. Selecting a tablet in legacy HA services now correctly targets that tablet.