--- title: "Vulpo vs the official Home Assistant Companion app" description: "Vulpo and the official Home Assistant Companion app both connect an iPhone to a Home Assistant server, but they take different approaches. The official app embeds the Home Assistant web frontend in a web view and adds native features around it. Vulpo renders every screen natively in SwiftUI and does not use web views at all. The table below compares the two as of Vulpo 1.2 and the official app in August 2026." canonical: "https://vulpo.app/compare/home-assistant-companion" url: "https://vulpo.app/compare/home-assistant-companion.md" last-updated: "2026-08-25" version: "1.2" --- # Vulpo vs the official Home Assistant Companion app > Vulpo and the official Home Assistant Companion app both connect an iPhone to a Home Assistant server, but they take different approaches. The official app embeds the Home Assistant web frontend in a web view and adds native features around it. Vulpo renders every screen natively in SwiftUI and does not use web views at all. The table below compares the two as of Vulpo 1.2 and the official app in August 2026. ## Feature comparison | Feature | Vulpo 1.2 | Home Assistant Companion | |---|---|---| | Rendering | Fully native SwiftUI on every screen; no web views | Home Assistant web frontend (Lovelace) inside a web view, plus native settings | | Dashboards | Built in the app from 30+ native card types, drag to reorder, synced through iCloud | Your existing Lovelace dashboards, configured in Home Assistant (UI editor or YAML) | | Custom Lovelace cards (HACS) | Not rendered; Vulpo has its own card set | Rendered, because the web frontend runs as-is | | Platforms | iPhone, iPad, Mac (native), Apple Watch | iPhone, iPad, Mac (Catalyst), Apple Watch, CarPlay, plus a separate Android app | | Apple Watch | Full native app: entity control, Glances, scenes, sensor history, complications, standalone over Wi-Fi/LTE | Actions and assist; complications with limited data | | Home Screen and Lock Screen widgets | Eight widget types incl. group, camera, chart, solar, lock, cover, person | Actions, assist, gauge, details and sensor widgets | | Control Center | Controls for lights, switches, covers, scenes and scripts, plus a launcher | Action controls | | Live Activities | Appliances, vacuums, solar, climate and people on the Lock Screen and in the Dynamic Island, with buttons (Pro) | Not available | | Siri and Shortcuts | Natural questions ("how many lights are on") plus scene and toggle intents | Run actions, call services, get entity state, Assist | | Push notifications | Via the mobile_app integration: standard and image notifications | Via the mobile_app integration: standard, image, actionable, critical, and command notifications | | Device sensors reported to Home Assistant | Opt-in location reporting and an app version sensor | Location plus a wide set of device sensors (battery, activity, connectivity, focus, storage) | | Cameras | WebRTC with HLS fallback, stills fallback, camera widget | As rendered by the web frontend | | Energy | Native Energy tab with a 3D scene, per-device costs (Vulpo Labs, Pro) | The web Energy dashboard | | 3D room view | Vulpo Lumen: LiDAR scan, furniture catalog, entity linking, path tracing | Not available | | CarPlay | Not available | Available | | Remote access | One server with internal and external URL, automatic switching and failover; works with Nabu Casa, own domain, VPN | Internal and external URL with automatic switching; works with Nabu Casa, own domain, VPN | | Server requirements | Any Home Assistant installation; no add-on or custom integration | Any Home Assistant installation | | Price | Free core app; Vulpo Pro $4.99/month, $24.99/year or $59.99 one-time | Free | | Source code | Closed source, independent developer | Open source (Apache 2.0), maintained by the Open Home Foundation community | ## When Vulpo is the better fit - You want dashboards that feel like an iOS app: native cards, controls, haptics and animations instead of a web page. - You want widgets, Control Center controls, Live Activities and an Apple Watch app that control entities directly. - You do not want to maintain Lovelace YAML or card configurations; Vulpo builds cards from your entities. - You use a Mac and want a real Mac app rather than an iPad port. - You want a 3D view of your home linked to your devices. ## When the official app is the better fit - You rely on custom Lovelace cards from HACS or heavily customized dashboards. - You need the full set of device sensors reported to Home Assistant (battery, activity, focus mode, connectivity). - You need CarPlay or an Android app. - You want an open-source client. ## Can Vulpo and the official Home Assistant app be installed at the same time? Yes. Vulpo and the official Home Assistant Companion app register as separate mobile_app devices in Home Assistant and do not interfere with each other. Many users keep the official app for device sensors and use Vulpo for daily control, widgets and the watch. ## Does Vulpo show my existing Lovelace dashboards? No. Vulpo does not render the Home Assistant web frontend. It builds its own dashboards from your entities using native cards, and syncs those dashboards between your Apple devices via iCloud. Your Lovelace dashboards stay untouched and remain available in the browser and in the official app. ## Do notifications from Home Assistant work in Vulpo? Yes. Vulpo registers with the mobile_app integration, so Home Assistant automations can send push notifications and image notifications to Vulpo using the notify.mobile_app_* service created for it, exactly as they would for the official app. Actionable notifications with buttons are not supported yet. ## Is Vulpo an official Home Assistant app? No. Vulpo is an independent, third-party app developed by Joshua Dessol. Home Assistant is a trademark of the Open Home Foundation, and Vulpo is not affiliated with, endorsed by or sponsored by the Open Home Foundation or Nabu Casa. Vulpo 1.2. Last updated 2026-08-25. Source: https://vulpo.app/compare/home-assistant-companion --- - HTML version of this page: https://vulpo.app/compare/home-assistant-companion - Site index for agents: https://vulpo.app/llms.txt - Everything in one document: https://vulpo.app/llms-full.txt - All pages: https://vulpo.app/sitemap.xml