QuickBars

A TV overlay app for Home Assistant, honestly reviewed. Built for the couch, not the server rack.

TL;DR

• What it is: An Android/Google TV app that puts Home Assistant controls — lights, climate, cameras, scripts — in a sidebar overlay on top of any app you’re already watching [1][Play Store].
• Who it’s for: Home Assistant users who want to control their smart home from the couch with a TV remote, without opening a separate app or hunting for their phone.
• Cost: Free tier covers one QuickBar and one Trigger Key. Plus is a one-time purchase (exact price not listed publicly) for unlimited QuickBars and advanced layouts [Play Store].
• Key strength: TV-first UX that maps smart home controls to remote button presses — single, double, and long-press actions. 4.8/5 from 102 Google Play reviews [Play Store].
• Key weakness: Requires an existing Home Assistant instance. Android/Google TV only. Camera PiP and remote key capture require two sensitive permissions (Accessibility + Display over other apps). One-screen-at-a-time device — not a multi-room dashboard solution.

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What is QuickBars

QuickBars is a client app for Android TV and Google TV that surfaces your Home Assistant entities as a quick-access overlay — a “QuickBar” — that slides in over whatever you’re currently watching. You press a button on your TV remote, a sidebar appears, you tap the lights or adjust the thermostat, and the overlay disappears. No switching apps, no fumbling for a phone.

The app was published by an independent developer (handle: Trooped) and recently went open source at https://github.com/Trooped/QuickBars — the Play Store changelog notes this explicitly [Play Store]. It has 10,000+ installs and a 4.8/5 rating across 102 reviews as of March 2026 [Play Store]. The project is explicitly not affiliated with Home Assistant or the Open Home Foundation [Play Store].

What makes it more than a simple remote shortcut: it supports multiple QuickBars (each a named collection of entities), maps remote key presses to specific actions (open a QuickBar, toggle a switch, launch an app), shows Home Assistant notifications as TV overlays with rich content, and displays camera feeds as picture-in-picture on any corner of the screen. The whole thing runs locally — it connects directly to your Home Assistant instance via IP address and a Long-Lived Access Token [Play Store][1].

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Why people choose it

The Home Assistant community thread [1] launched August 2025 and ran to 210 replies. The developer (Trooped/Omri) describes the origin problem clearly: the official Home Assistant Companion App doesn’t have a proper Android TV interface, and there’s an open GitHub feature request titled “WTH don’t we have a Companion App for Android TV?” with 13.8k views [1]. QuickBars is a direct answer to that gap.

Community reactions split into two groups. The majority: immediate praise for setup simplicity and feature completeness. A reviewer on the Play Store writes: “This does everything you would want it to. It’s slick, easy to use and is packed with features. A few min using it and I was sold, bought the full version even though I don’t need it just to support the dev.” [Play Store] Another: “Love it. Have camera pop-ups teamed with Frigate and Sighthound alerts, whilst watching TV or streaming services thanks to the blueprint — brilliant.” [Play Store]

The second group: power users asking for additions. Auto-close the overlay after tapping an entity [1]. Sensor/text entity display inside QuickBars [Play Store]. Smaller tab size option [Play Store]. A request to keep the camera PiP window on top of the overlay [Play Store]. None of these are bugs — they’re signs of a user base that adopted the app and immediately wanted more out of it.

Two usability issues came up repeatedly in the community thread. First, contrast in the app’s selection UI: on an LG C2 OLED and a Xiaomi projector, the highlighted and non-highlighted states were hard to distinguish at couch distance [1]. The developer acknowledged this. Second, entity renaming had a reproducible bug on at least one device (Xiaomi Smart Projector L1 Pro) where the text edit window didn’t save [1]. The community thread predates the open-source announcement; these kinds of issues tend to get more visibility once a GitHub repo is public.

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Features

Based on the Play Store listing and community thread:

Core overlay (QuickBars):

• Sidebar overlay launches over any app on tap of a mapped remote key [Play Store]
• Shows live entity states (lights on/off, climate temperature, etc.) [Play Store]
• Toggle, adjust, run scripts without leaving the current app [Play Store]
• Free tier: 1 QuickBar. Plus: unlimited QuickBars [Play Store]
• Advanced layout positions (Top / Bottom / Left / Right) on Plus [Play Store]
• Left/right positions support 1-column or 2-column grid layout [Play Store]

Remote key actions:

• Map any TV remote button to: open a QuickBar, toggle an entity, launch another app [Play Store]
• Single, double, and long-press support on every button [Play Store]
• Free tier: 1 Trigger Key. Plus: unlimited [Play Store]

Camera PiP (Picture-in-Picture):

• Open camera feed by HA entity ID, QuickBars alias, or direct RTSP URL [Play Store]
• Size options: auto / small / medium / large / custom [Play Store]
• Placement: any corner of the screen [Play Store]
• Auto-hide, mute RTSP audio, custom title overlay [Play Store]
• Can be triggered from a Home Assistant automation (requires persistent background connection) [Play Store]

TV Notifications:

• Rich overlay banners with title, message, icon, optional image, sound [Play Store]
• Action buttons on notifications [Play Store]

Privacy and connectivity:

• Local connection: IP address + Long-Lived Access Token [Play Store]
• Hardware-backed encryption stored on-device only [Play Store]
• Optional remote access via HTTPS for out-of-home use [Play Store]
• No data collected, no data shared with third parties (per Play Store data safety declaration) [Play Store]

Setup helpers:

• Guided onboarding explaining where to find HA URL and how to create a token [Play Store]
• QR Token Transfer: scan a code on your phone to paste the token on TV — avoids typing a long token string with a remote [Play Store]

Entity management:

• Import entities from HA, rename with friendly names, choose icons [Play Store]
• Customize single/long-press actions per entity [Play Store]
• Reorder entities freely [Play Store]
• Orphan detection: flags entities removed from Home Assistant [Play Store]

Backup & Restore:

• Manual backup of Entities, QuickBars, and Trigger Keys [Play Store]
• Restore to a different TV (useful when replacing hardware) [Play Store]

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Pricing

QuickBars isn’t a SaaS subscription you’re escaping — it’s a one-time purchase mobile app. The pricing model is:

Free tier:

• 1 QuickBar
• 1 Trigger Key
• Full styling and customization options
• Single/double/long-press action support
• All features except layout positions and multiple QuickBars/keys

Plus (one-time purchase):

• Unlimited QuickBars and Trigger Keys
• Advanced layout positions: Top / Bottom / Left / Right
• 1-column or 2-column grid for left/right positions

The exact Plus price is not listed on the Play Store listing or in any scraped data. Android TV app prices typically range from $2–$10 one-time. What’s notable is the model: no subscription, no per-device licensing, no “cloud feature” paywalls. You pay once and own it.

Comparison context:

The closest paid alternatives are ActionTiles (a SmartThings/HA dashboard service at ~$28 one-time plus optional subscription for updates), Fully Kiosk Browser ($7–$10 per device for pro features), or building a custom Lovelace dashboard in a browser kiosk mode (free but significant setup time).

For most Home Assistant users, the relevant cost comparison is: a few dollars once for QuickBars Plus vs. the ongoing annoyance of reaching for your phone every time you want to dim the lights mid-movie. The money is not the decision — the question is whether the setup overhead is worth it.

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Setup reality check

QuickBars doesn’t require a server deployment — you install it from the Play Store. But the setup path has real steps:

What you need before starting:

• A running Home Assistant instance, accessible on your local network (or via HTTPS for remote access) [Play Store]
• An Android TV or Google TV device (not Fire TV — the Play Store listing is Android TV specific) [Play Store]
• Your Home Assistant URL (e.g., http://192.168.1.100:8123) and a Long-Lived Access Token

The permissions question: The app requires two permissions that Android flags as sensitive: Accessibility access (to capture remote button presses) and Display over other apps (to show overlays on top of running apps). These are architecturally necessary — there’s no way to intercept remote keypresses without Accessibility, and overlays require the second permission. The app explains both during guided onboarding [Play Store]. Some users will hesitate here; it’s worth knowing these are the same permissions used by password managers and screen readers, not spyware.

QR Token Transfer: The token import flow deserves specific mention. Typing a 20-character Home Assistant token with a TV remote is painful. The app lets you generate a QR code on your phone containing the token and scan it on the TV. This is a small UX detail that signals the developer thought about the actual couch experience [Play Store].

What can go wrong:

• The contrast issue in the app’s own menus (highlighted vs. non-highlighted states) was documented on at least two TV types in the community thread [1]. Navigating the setup UI is workable but not comfortable at couch distance on all screens.
• Entity renaming had a bug on at least one device in early releases [1]. Open-sourcing the project should accelerate fixes for device-specific issues like this.
• Camera PiP via RTSP requires that the stream URL be accessible from the TV’s network — obvious but worth stating if your cameras are on a separate VLAN.
• The “launch from Home Assistant” feature (trigger a QuickBar or camera PiP from an HA automation) requires persistent background connection to be enabled, which keeps the app active in memory [Play Store]. This may affect older or lower-RAM Android TV devices.

Realistic time estimate: 15–30 minutes from Play Store install to working QuickBar with mapped remote keys. Getting camera PiP set up adds another 10–15 minutes. The QR token transfer removes the biggest friction point from earlier Android TV HA setups.

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Pros and cons

Pros

• TV-native experience. Designed from the ground up for remote control navigation, not a phone interface squeezed onto a TV screen [1][Play Store].
• Overlay-first. The core value — controls appear over whatever you’re watching and dismiss cleanly — is something the official Home Assistant Companion App doesn’t deliver on Android TV [1].
• Open source (recently). The codebase is now on GitHub at https://github.com/Trooped/QuickBars, meaning bugs can be fixed by the community and the project isn’t held hostage to a single developer’s availability [Play Store].
• One-time purchase model. No subscription. No per-device recurring fees [Play Store].
• Local-only, no telemetry. Credentials stay on-device, encrypted. No data collected or shared per Play Store safety declaration [Play Store].
• Camera PiP with RTSP. Full camera support including direct RTSP streams — useful for Frigate or other NVR integrations without going through HA’s camera entities [Play Store][1].
• Automatable. Home Assistant can push a QuickBar open or launch a camera PiP — so a Frigate motion event can automatically pop up the camera feed on your TV [Play Store][1].
• Solid ratings. 4.8/5 across 102 reviews is a genuine signal for a niche TV app [Play Store].

Cons

• Android/Google TV only. No Fire TV, no Apple TV, no Roku, no smart TV OS [Play Store]. If your TV isn’t running Android TV or Google TV, this doesn’t exist for you.
• Requires Home Assistant. This isn’t a standalone smart home app — it’s a companion interface to an existing HA instance. If you don’t already run Home Assistant, this isn’t your entry point [Play Store].
• Two sensitive permissions required. Accessibility and Display over other apps are legitimately necessary but will give some users pause [Play Store]. The use cases are explained during onboarding, but the trust ask is real.
• UI contrast issue in menus. Flagged by multiple users on different TV hardware: the selection highlight in the app’s own configuration screens isn’t distinct enough at couch distance [1]. Fine once QuickBars are set up; annoying during initial configuration.
• Entity renaming bug (early build). Documented in the community thread [1]. May be fixed in later releases — the project moved to open source since these reports.
• No multi-room or multi-device sync. Each TV is its own instance. Backup/Restore lets you copy config to a new device, but there’s no shared config across multiple Android TVs [Play Store].
• Plus pricing opaque. The one-time price isn’t shown in the Play Store listing or public documentation — you have to open the in-app purchase flow to see it. Minor friction for evaluation.
• New to open source. The GitHub repo was announced in the Play Store changelog accompanying the March 2026 update — it’s a very recent move. Star count starts at zero; community contribution ecosystem doesn’t exist yet [Play Store].

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Who should use this / who shouldn’t

Use QuickBars if:

• You run Home Assistant and watch TV on an Android TV or Google TV device.
• You want to control lights, climate, or cameras without picking up your phone.
• You’ve tried pinning the HA web interface on your TV and found it clunky to navigate with a remote.
• You want camera alerts (Frigate, Reolink, etc.) to pop up on your TV automatically via HA automations.

Skip it if:

• Your TV runs Fire TV, webOS, Tizen, Roku, or any non-Android TV OS.
• You don’t run Home Assistant — this is a companion app, not a smart home hub.
• You’re managing smart home devices across multiple rooms and need a centralized dashboard view rather than per-TV overlays.
• Granting Accessibility access to third-party apps is a policy you don’t allow on your network.

Consider alternatives if:

• You want a browser-based dashboard accessible from any device, not just Android TV.
• You need multi-user account management or per-user permission controls for who can control which devices from the TV.

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Alternatives worth considering

• Home Assistant Companion App (official) — The official app has no meaningful Android TV interface as of this writing. The open GitHub feature request at 13.8k views [1] shows the gap QuickBars fills. Check official channels for any updates; if HA ships a native TV companion, it would be the default choice.
• Fully Kiosk Browser — $7–10 per device one-time, puts a locked-down browser on Android TV that can display your HA Lovelace dashboard full-screen. More flexible for custom dashboards but requires building and maintaining the Lovelace UI. No overlay-over-other-apps capability.
• HADashboard / Wallpanel — Free, browser-based. Works on Android TV but requires kiosk mode setup and doesn’t integrate with the TV remote in the way QuickBars does. No overlay.
• ActionTiles — Web dashboard service for Home Assistant and SmartThings. Works in a browser on any device. One-time license ~$28. No TV-remote integration, no overlay.
• Google Home on Android TV — Built-in on Google TV devices, supports some smart home control. Covers only Google Home-connected devices; doesn’t reach into HA’s full entity model or custom scripts.

For a Home Assistant user on Android TV who wants couch-friendly control without a full kiosk dashboard setup, the realistic choice is QuickBars or nothing. The alternatives serve different form factors.

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Bottom line

QuickBars solves a real, underserved problem: Home Assistant has no good TV remote interface, and QuickBars is a direct answer built by someone who actually uses it. The overlay model — controls appear on top of whatever you’re watching and dismiss cleanly — is the right UX for a TV context, and the remote key mapping (single/double/long-press to trigger any HA action) shows genuine platform-native thinking. For a Home Assistant user with an Android TV device, the free tier is worth installing in under 30 minutes, and the one-time Plus upgrade is defensible if you run a more complex smart home setup with multiple QuickBars. The recent move to open source is a positive sign for long-term reliability. The limitations are real — Android TV only, sensitive permissions required, UI contrast issues during setup — but none of them are disqualifying for the target use case.

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Sources

1. Trooped (Omri), Home Assistant Community — “QuickBars for Home Assistant - instant HA controls over any app on Android TV” (Aug 2025, 210 replies). https://community.home-assistant.io/t/quickbars-for-home-assistant-instant-ha-controls-over-any-app-on-android-tv/920989

Primary sources:

• Google Play Store listing: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=dev.trooped.tvquickbars
• Official website: https://quickbars.app
• GitHub repository (open-sourced March 2026): https://github.com/Trooped/QuickBars