Ava 0.6.5 - Endurance
Most of the time, Ava looks a little lazy. Music plays at its own pace, lyrics drift quietly by, and when nobody is watching, Ava settles into the screensaver while even the browser takes a rest. But it never truly leaves: one wake word or touch brings everything back. This laziness is not inactivity. It is energy saved for the moment it matters.
That is Endurance: never straining, yet patiently running all the while. Ava 0.6.5 makes music sound better, lyrics look better, and voice problems easier to understand, while the browser and screensaver become better at resting and returning. Ava does more, but feels calmer, simpler, and more capable of lasting.
Voice Stats
When voice behavior looks wrong, users no longer have to begin with guesswork or logs. Voice Stats now covers the complete Voice Config experience, not only the microphone page. Open any of the following locations and pull up the bottom handle to see live status focused on that page:
- Voice Config overview: quickly confirm whether the complete voice channel is healthy.
- Wake Word: see the active wake method, the latest detection, and recognition behavior.
- Wake Word Library: confirm local wake models, availability, and current detection state.
- Microphone: see whether sound is arriving, which input is active, and the current level and recording state.
- Smart Noise Suppression: confirm which suppression method is active and whether it is working.
- Echo Cancellation: compare microphone, playback echo, and the resulting voice path at a glance.
- Voice Print: see enrollment, verification, quality, and the most recent recognition state.
- Audio Event Detection: see monitored sound types, recognition behavior, and the latest event.
- Streaming TTS: see whether a voice reply is playing, queued, or complete.
- Feedback Accent: confirm the active feedback state used during wake and reply.
Each location shows only information relevant to the page that is open, so users can go directly to the feature they want to verify. Long values expand on demand and time is presented in a readable form. Voice Stats starts only when opened and stops immediately when closed. Sensitive audio, voiceprint data, and Home Assistant credentials are never displayed.
Special thanks to @lone-baggie for the report in #157. Rather than stopping at “voice recognition sometimes gets it wrong,” he saved the WAV received by Home Assistant, compared it with another voice device at the same distance, and continued tracing the differences caused by microphone gain and software versus hardware echo cancellation. That feedback made one thing clear: users need more than additional switches; they need to see whether every part of voice processing is behaving correctly. Without his careful investigation, Voice Stats would not have grown into a tool spanning the complete Voice Config experience. Work that once required logs, recordings, and repeated comparisons is now available as expert-level diagnostics directly from each page.
Path: Ava Settings -> Voice Config -> any page above -> bottom-page handle
Just a heads up, he created a fantastic blueprint library: https://github.com/lone-baggie/home-assistant-blueprints, which supports everything in the AvaPro interface. I'm incredibly grateful for everything he did; it gave me a lot of confidence to update it. Thanks again!
Five-Band EQ for Home Assistant and Music Assistant
Many older tablets and entry-level devices make excellent Ava displays, but their speakers are often where the hardware budget was cut first: bass sounds thin, voices feel muffled, and treble can become harsh. These devices rarely offer a useful system equalizer, and improving their sound should never require rooting them.
That is why Ava Pro does not leave better sound to the hardware. Its custom mixing and sound-shaping system works directly inside Ava's own music playback, with no root access and no manufacturer EQ required. Home Assistant music output and Music Assistant / Sendspin each receive an independent five-band equalizer covering 80 Hz, 250 Hz, 1 kHz, 4 kHz, and 10 kHz, with every band adjustable from -10 dB to +10 dB.
It cannot change the physical limits of a speaker, but it can bring out sound the device was failing to deliver: fuller bass, clearer voices, and smoother, more open treble. Each music source remembers its own curve and changes take effect immediately. The equalizers are disabled by default and do not alter TTS, wake sounds, or calls. Use matching curves across a synchronized group for a consistent multi-room sound.
Path: Ava Settings -> Interaction -> Media & Playback -> Home Assistant / Music Assistant -> Audio equalizer
Music Overlay and Expanded Lyrics
The Detailed player is no longer only a place for cover art. It can become a proper lyrics wall. Tap the cover to enter Expanded Lyrics: the current line stays prominent, surrounding lines dissolve naturally, and portrait and landscape layouts rearrange the cover, title, artist, and lyrics around the most comfortable reading area.
Swipe up or down whenever you want to look through the lyrics; after a moment, the view returns to the line being sung. Tap any line to adjust lyric timing. With Music Assistant / Sendspin, double-tap a line to start playing from that point. Tap the cover again to return to the full player.
When music is paused, the mini overlay moves out of the way and gives the screen back to what you were doing. Once playback truly resumes, it returns naturally with the current song instead of flickering in and out or lingering on the previous track.
A More Enduring Home Assistant Browser
Complex dashboards can remain open for the long haul without steadily becoming heavier. The new WebView Health Steward (Beta) reduces work that is not helping the page currently in use and gives the visible dashboard priority. The current view follows the states it actually needs; unusual or unrecognized pages automatically retain full compatibility, so speed never comes at the expense of correct controls.
When hidden, the browser enters a rest state appropriate for the device. Returning preserves the address, login, and page content. Brief switches do not require a reload, prolonged inactivity does not keep every resource busy forever, and the page being actively used remains the priority even when memory is tight.
WebView Health Steward can be switched independently in Browser settings. These improvements apply to the main System WebView browser; Gecko retains its existing behavior.
Path: Ava Settings -> Browser -> Page Display -> WebView Health Steward (Beta)
A Truly Resident Web Screensaver
Web screensavers now make sense as long-running idle pages on a wall display. Leaving the screensaver lets the page rest quietly; returning restores the same content and catches up Home Assistant states received while it was hidden. Normal wake and idle cycles no longer mean repeatedly cold-loading the page.
Ava continues watching the screensaver while it is visible. It can recover from failed loads, temporary network loss, and an exited page. The page is fully released only when the screensaver is disabled, Ava exits, or its service ends. The main browser handles complex interaction, while the Web screensaver follows a lightweight, warm, and recoverable path of its own.
Pixel Shift is also more complete across Web screensavers and Simple Clock. Ava now moves the content instead of the entire window, so the Home Assistant dashboard underneath is never exposed around the edges. Web screensavers keep a small, safe movement range that reduces burn-in risk without disturbing layouts such as Dawn. Thanks to @pantherale0 or first calling out the exposed edge in a follow-up comment on #132, and to @deergitseason for providing a complete reproduction in #160.
Kiosk and Dual-Page Browser
Home Assistant can now switch directly between Kiosk Collapse and Kiosk Expand from Ava's sidebar. The change is immediate: it does not reload the page, step backward through history, or break pull-to-refresh. Common Home Assistant pages work without an additional Kiosk integration. Ordinary websites are left untouched, and the sidebar tool can be enabled only when needed.
Dual Pages now use empty space intelligently. Clearing one address lets the remaining page fill the display; clearing both closes the browser instead of leaving an empty split. Remote refresh updates every active page, while manual pull-to-refresh remains local to the side being touched. Both pages now share one clear Web Console timeline as well.
Path: Ava Settings -> Browser -> Browser Sidebar -> HA Kiosk Mode
Smart Echo Cancellation
With software echo cancellation enabled, Ava can keep hearing wake and stop words even while playing music, TTS, or a timer alarm. It identifies and reduces Ava's own speaker output inside the microphone signal, leaving the voice that actually came from the room. The result is immediate: there is no need to pause the music first, walk closer, or raise your voice before waking Ava. While an alarm is sounding, Stop (or Ok Stop with the VS wake engine) is also much easier for Ava to hear correctly.
Software echo cancellation can now be matched to the room. Cancellation strength offers Light, Standard, and Strong: Light favors natural speech, Standard fits most everyday environments, and Strong is intended for rooms where speaker echo is more noticeable. Room type offers Near, Living, and Open, adapting Ava for close-range use, an ordinary room, or a larger space with longer reflections. The default Standard + Living combination balances reliable wake-up with clear speech for everyday use.
When echo cancellation helps Ava wake reliably but makes speech after wake sound over-processed, enable Pause while speaking. Ava continues cancelling its playback while listening for the wake word, temporarily releases the software processing while you speak, and restores it automatically afterward. Software and hardware echo cancellation are never stacked: choosing one keeps the other out of the way, preventing double processing from damaging speech.
This is not a switch users have to judge by guesswork. Voice Stats can be pulled up from the bottom of the same page whenever needed to confirm that playback echo is being reduced and the resulting voice remains healthy.
Path: Ava Settings -> Voice Config -> Microphone -> AEC technology
Smart Noise Suppression
Speech can now stay clearer in noisy rooms. Software noise suppression provides Light, Standard, and Strong levels: Light keeps speech natural, Standard suits everyday use, and Strong targets more persistent background noise. Changes apply immediately without restarting voice service.
Ava prevents software and hardware suppression from being stacked accidentally. Users can choose the method that best suits their device without risking hollow speech, distortion, or poorer recognition from double processing.
Path: Ava Settings -> Voice Config -> Microphone -> Smart NS technology
Dark-Room Screen-Off for Simple Clock
Simple Clock now has its own Turn off in dark setting. Ava can turn off the display after the room remains dark and restore it when the room becomes bright again. Simple Clock and the Web screensaver store this choice independently, so each idle experience can behave differently.
Simple Clock's Pixel Shift no longer moves the entire window either, preventing the page underneath from appearing at the edges with black or custom backgrounds.
Path: Ava Settings -> Interaction -> Information & Scenes -> Simple Clock -> Appearance & Status
Bluetooth Tracking and Proxy Fixes
Paired devices can obtain IRK automatically when permission allows, preserving identity for phones and watches that keep advertising under changing addresses. Pairing guidance, automatic retry, and manual entry are available from device details. Older Android Bluetooth proxies no longer repeatedly restart the adapter during quiet periods and interrupt scanning. IRK cannot detect a device that has stopped advertising completely.
Path: Ava Settings -> Bluetooth
Long-Run Improvements
also resolves a group of problems that appeared only after a device had run for a long time, settings had been switched repeatedly, or services had restarted many times. Cameras now leave cleanly when closed, voice restarts do not retain old work, Mods return from a clean state, music fades stop with the player they belong to, and Quick Entity cameras stop working in the background after leaving the view.
None of this adds another step for the user. The conclusion is the point: Ava can be left on the wall with greater confidence, ready to continue day after day.
