Appearance

How the glass looks, for every screen and for one screen, and whether Home Assistant’s header and sidebar show.

Every screen

All Screens → Appearance. How the glass looks on every screen that doesn’t choose its own.

Setting	Default	What it does
Glass Style	Glass	How pills, tiles, chips, scenes and keypads look: Glass, the original see-through glass, with the status chips and the round menu button beside them blurring what’s behind them. Frosted, a milky material with no blur: it costs nothing per frame on any device. Tinted, the Home app’s look: a flat dark plate with no blur anywhere on the page, the lightest on any device — see Tinted below. Blur, what’s behind the glass blurred — choose how with Blur Mode.
Blur Mode	Shared Layer	Shown when the Glass Style is Blur: Shared Layer, Pre-rendered (Experimental) or Each Card. What each costs and can’t do: Blur Mode below.
Frost	50%	Shown when the Glass Style is Frosted. How milky it is, 0 to 100%.
Tint from Background	Off	Shown when the Glass Style is Frosted. On: each card's frost takes the color of the page behind it (the sky at the card's height, the scenery's ground lower down) instead of one gray, at one darkness so white text reads the same on every page. It changes with the live sky through the day. Cards in pop-ups, the screensaver and Music (album art) keep the gray. Costs nothing per frame.
Blur	50%	Shown when the Glass Style is Blur, in any Blur Mode. How strong the blur is, 0 to 100%: 50% is 20 px, 100% is 40 px.
Darkness	50%	Shown when the Glass Style is Tinted. How much of the background shows through an off card: 0% is 40% dark, 50% is 75%, 100% is 90%.
Icon Circles	Dark	Shown when the Glass Style is Tinted. Dark, as the Home app draws the circle behind an off accessory’s icon, or Light, which keeps its shape over dark scenery.
Page Pills	Default	Every page pill: the pills in a screen’s Scenes row that open a page. Tap one to set its name, icon and color, the same on every screen (Home Page).

All Screens → Appearance → Glass Style: the four styles, and with Blur chosen, its Blur Mode below.

The four styles side by side:

Style	What blurs	What it costs	Best for
Glass (the default)	Only the status chips and the round menu button	Little	Most screens
Frosted	Nothing: a milky plate	Nothing per frame	Any device; the plate can take the page's color (Tint from Background)
Tinted	Nothing on the page: the Home app's flat dark plate	The least of all	A slow wall tablet, or anyone who wants the Home app's look
Blur	Whatever is behind the glass, made as Blur Mode says	From light (Pre-rendered) to the heaviest (Each Card)	The see-through look; see Blur Mode

Blur Mode

With the Glass Style on Blur, Blur Mode chooses how the blur is made. All three look alike standing still; they differ in what they cost and what they show while things move.

Mode	Good at	Gives up	Best for
Shared Layer (the default)	Live: the sky blurs as it moves, drifting clouds and rain included. One blur for the whole page, so a wall tablet keeps its frame rate standing still.	While the sky moves, the device blurs it again on every frame, and scrolling pays for it. Something fixed over the page that blurs live — the Now Playing bar — adds to it.	Most screens; wall tablets that rarely scroll.
Pre-rendered (Experimental)	A picture of the sky, blurred once, behind every card. The lightest blur: almost nothing per frame, so scrolling stays smooth on a wall tablet even with the bar up.	Motion that doesn’t drift across the sky — rain, a passing flock, a flicker — doesn’t show through the glass. The picture is painted again as the sky changes: at once for a new page, size, weather, season or song; every 2 seconds while clouds drift (a little work each time, never while a finger is on the page or it scrolls); and as the light changes. It can still trail the sky a moment or briefly not match it, which is why it is marked Experimental. Pop-up sheets and pages with no sky blur live, as in Shared Layer.	Wall tablets, especially ones that scroll or show the Now Playing bar.
Each Card	Live, and every surface blurs exactly what is behind it, so a sliding sheet or a scrolling row never leaves its frost behind.	The heaviest by far: one blur per card (over a hundred on a typical Home).	Phones, iPads and computers, not wall tablets.

Scrolling Home on a wall tablet (a Samsung Galaxy Tab A9+, sky animations on), measured for 1.7:

Mode	Bar off	With the Now Playing bar
Pre-rendered	59 frames a second, 1.5% of frames late	59, 1.8% late
Shared Layer	58, 3.6% late	54.5, 10.3% late
Each Card	32, 72% late	28, 83% late

Standing still, every mode is close to 60 frames a second; on these tablets most of the work is the animated sky itself, whatever the glass. Glass and Frosted scroll about as smoothly as Pre-rendered, and Tinted, with nothing on the page blurring at all, is lighter still.

A screen or All Screens set to Baked, a mode tried before 1.7 and taken out, now uses Pre-rendered.

Tinted

Home in the Tinted look.

Tinted draws every card the way the Home app does: a flat, dark, see-through plate, opaque white when the accessory is on, and a tight shadow right under the edge instead of a soft glow. Nothing on the page blurs: no shared layer, no picture of the sky, no card blurring itself. The status chips, the menu’s edge tab and the round menu button are Tinted plates too, and the menu panel and the tab bar (set to Same as Screen) are near-solid.

The Home app’s plate blurs the wallpaper behind it, so it can stay light. Tinted doesn’t, so the scenery shows through sharply, and it is darker to make up for it. Choose how dark with Darkness.

Detail sheets, pop-ups and notifications still blur what is behind them while they are open, as the Home app’s do. Cards inside a sheet get a lighter plate, so they never turn into dark holes on the dark sheet.

A card can stay out of the shared blur with glass: false. Whether tapping an accessory opens an HK detail sheet is HK Detail Sheets, under Library → Accessories.

One screen

Screens → (a screen) → Appearance.

Setting	Default	What it does
Glass Style	Same as All Screens	Same as All Screens (the row says Same as All Screens under its name, and the glass it follows, Glass), or under Just This Screen Glass, Frosted, Tinted or Blur — and with Blur, its Blur Mode: Shared Layer, Pre-rendered (Experimental) or Each Card. See Appearance for what each looks like and costs.
Frost / Blur / Darkness	Same as All Screens	Shown for the amount this screen’s glass uses. Moving it gives this screen its own amount.
Icon Circles	Same as All Screens	Shown when this screen uses Tinted. Choosing one gives this screen its own; Reset to All Screens goes back to following All Screens.
Reset to All Screens (50%)	—	Shown once the screen has its own amount, with All Screens’ amount. Goes back to following All Screens.
Tint from Background	Same as All Screens	Shown when this screen uses Frosted. Turning it on or off gives this screen its own; Reset to All Screens goes back to following All Screens.
Sky / Background	Same as All Screens	The screen’s Sky / Background page, which starts with its Background: Live Sky, Color, Photo or Landscapes, Same as All Screens until changed. With the Live Sky, its own Moving Things, Pause When Not in Focus, Rain & Snow, Clouds and the rest are there too, each Same as All Screens until changed. Reads Black for a screen whose Live Sky was turned off before (it shows Black; any choice there turns it back on). A YAML screen shows the Background wherever its YAML puts the sky.

Home Assistant header & sidebar

Screens → (a screen) → Header → Home Assistant Header & Sidebar. Whether Home Assistant’s own header and sidebar show around the screen. The row reads Off, Both Hidden, Header Hidden, Sidebar Hidden or Kiosk Mode Plugin.

Setting	Default	What it does
Hide Header & Sidebar	Off (Wall Tablet, Car and Energy Display presets: on)	The whole window is the screen. HK Frontend does it itself, on any screen, an existing dashboard too. The menu’s Home Assistant section still reaches Home Assistant (Show Menu). The settings below show only while it is on.
Hide Header	On	Hides Home Assistant’s header: the bar with the dashboard’s name, its views and its menu.
Hide Sidebar	On	Hides Home Assistant’s sidebar.
For Admins Too	On	Off: someone signed in as an admin still sees them.
Use the Kiosk Mode Plugin Instead	Off	A generated screen, where Kiosk Mode is installed from HACS. The plugin hides them instead, with its own Kiosk Mode Options: Hide Header, Hide Sidebar, Show Header for Admins, and any other of its options in YAML. A screen that had Kiosk Mode Options of its own before 1.3 moves over to these settings when they can say the same (hiding the header, the sidebar, and admins seeing both), and otherwise keeps the plugin.

Leaving the screen, for Settings say, always brings them back. ?hk_kiosk=off on a screen’s address shows them until the page is reloaded (a tablet you are working on).