Frontend requires manual cache reset after HA restart on iOS Companion App

[MisteurZZ]

Hi,

Since a few months (possibly since Home Assistant 2025.6), I’ve been experiencing a persistent frontend issue exclusive to the iOS Companion App.

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❗ Problem summary

After restarting Home Assistant (or after a reboot of the system), the iOS app frequently loads with major frontend issues:
• Most Lovelace cards (even core ones) appear with “configuration error” messages.
• The interface is almost completely broken.
• A manual cache reset via
App Settings > Companion App > Debug > Reset frontend cache
immediately fixes the problem — until the next HA restart.

This issue does not affect web browsers (Safari, Chrome, etc.).

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🧪 Diagnosis & Context
• The problem only occurs on iOS
• The bug survives app restarts but disappears after clearing the frontend cache.
• All custom cards (via HACS) are up to date.
• There’s a chance the issue is triggered by browser_mod (v2.x), though I cannot confirm this with certainty.
• The issue started shortly after browser_mod 2.0 was released.
• Some popups or templates using browser_mod may inject frontend JS or state during app startup, but again, I can’t isolate it fully.

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✅ What I’ve tested
• Full reboot of Home Assistant OS (Green).
• Using a clean dashboard with only core cards → no issue.
• Logs in HA show no visible errors during these events.

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📱 Environment
• Device: iPhone 15 Pro Max / iOS 18.5
• HA Companion App version: 2025.7.1 (App Store latest)
• HA OS: Home Assistant Green, HA Core 2025.7
• Browser_mod: 2.4.2 via HACS
• Frontend: Dashboards use a mix of Mushroom, mod-card, apexcharts, and browser_mod-based popups

What do you think about this?
Thanks a lot for your amazing work on the iOS app!

[bgoncal]

Can we isolate the problem by disabling browser_mod and rebooting?

Have you tested on iOS Safari? (You mentioned Safari, but just to be sure it is the one in iOS and not mac/windows)

[MisteurZZ]

After further testing, I can reliably reproduce the issue only when I launch the iOS app during Home Assistant’s startup process.

If I:
1. Restart HA,
2. Wait for the system to be fully booted,
3. Then open the iOS app,

The frontend loads correctly every time.

But if I open the iOS app during HA startup, the dashboard consistently breaks with red “configuration errors”.

This suggests a frontend race condition: the app loads Lovelace before custom JS modules (like extra_module_url entries) are ready to be served.

[bgoncal]

What happens if you keep the app open during restart?

[MisteurZZ]

As cloudflared stops i'm kicked out, so i have to close the app and then reopen

[bgoncal]

You can pull to refresh as well

[MisteurZZ]

You can pull to refresh as well

Same problem if stay in the app

[MisteurZZ]

After more testing, the problem is confirmed to only happen when accessing Home Assistant via my Cloudflared tunnel domain.
When using the local IP address directly (http://192.168.x.x:8123), even if I open the iOS app during startup, there is no issue at all.
This suggests that Cloudflared may be serving incomplete or invalid responses (e.g. 502s) during the first seconds of HA boot, which causes the iOS frontend to crash when loading JS modules.