Home Assistant ESP Screens

A Home Assistant control screen that you lay out yourself. ESP Screen Manager manages your tiles and builds and installs the ESPHome firmware from Home Assistant. No blueprint, MQTT, or long-lived token needed for normal use.

New screen? Follow the complete installation guide. For every new user and every new device, you create your own profile.

_{A Guition ESP32-S3-4848S040 at home, and the ESP Screens page in Home Assistant with a demo home.}

Supported screens

Screen	Resolution	Display / touch
CYD ESP32-2432S028	320 × 240	ILI9341 / resistive XPT2046
Guition ESP32-S3-4848S040, 4 inch	480 × 480	ST7701S RGB / capacitive GT911

Use these exact board variants: similar-looking product names can have different controllers or connectors. Wallbox relays are not controlled. The firmware and built-in CLI are tested with ESPHome 2026.6.2.

_{Guition 4-inch, 480 × 480 (top) and CYD 2.8-inch, 320 × 240 (bottom), rendered from the firmware's own LVGL code with a demo home.}

What you can configure

• Up to twenty tiles, spread across up to four fixed pages of six tiles each. Search by entity, device, or room, and drag to reorder.
• Per-tile settings: a custom name, click behavior, a small slider where supported, or a large value for things like temperature and power usage. From firmware 0.2.13, the large value shows a small domain icon next to the title; a number that's too long is truncated with an ellipsis, the unit stays visible.
• Pastel backgrounds per tile: choose red for an all-off script, green for all-on, or any other color. The title and status stay dark and readable. The color also appears in the screen preview; Default restores the normal colors. Requires firmware 0.2.10 or newer. None drops the card entirely: the content then sits at the same size directly on the screen background (firmware 0.2.16).
• Clock: digital or analog. The analog clock has tick marks at 12, 3, 6, and 9 and, on a single tile, shows a calendar block (weekday, day, month) next to the dial; double-width shows the digital time with the date beside it.
• Light control: brightness, rainbow color, and white temperature according to the light's capabilities. Open the detailed control with a long touch.
• More cards: climate, vacuum, fan, cover, media player, sensors, select/input_select, number/input_number, switches, scenes, scripts, and buttons. A sensor can open a history card for 1, 6, or 24 hours.
• Special cards (firmware 0.2.14+): a clock (digital or analog) as a built-in tile, a weather forecast with five days on a double-width card, a graph of the sensor history in the tile, a sun path (sun.sun: horizon with the sun between sunrise and sunset), a timer (timer.*, tapping starts or pauses it), and presence (person.*). Pick them in the picker like any other tile, or drag them straight into the screen mockup; Double-width is an option for every tile.
• Direct control on double-width tiles (firmware 0.2.19+), like the rows in Home Assistant: temperature − / + or mode buttons (climate), a toggle (switch, light, fan), start/stop/dock (vacuum), open/stop/close or a position slider (cover), volume with mute or previous/play/next (media), − / + or a slider (numbers), previous/next (select), start/pause and cancel (timer), and a single button for scenes, scripts, and buttons. Configurable per tile; None keeps the regular card.
• Weather card with current weather, the coming hours and days including chance of rain or millimeters; climate card with an on/off button, mode, fan, and swing settings. The target temperature sits big between − / + keys with one row of mode keys below; the Guition shows fan and swing right away on a card of their own, the CYD behind ···.
• Vacuum card with the state, battery and charging, start and dock, and how the robot cleans: vacuum, vacuum and mop, or mop only for robots that offer a cleaning mode in Home Assistant (such as Roborock), then suction and water. Only the rows the chosen mode uses are shown (app 0.2.46 / firmware 0.2.39). Scenes, scripts, and buttons show when they last ran. A tile that's waiting on Home Assistant shows a small spinner on a light overlay.
• Top bar per screen (firmware 0.2.32+): the name on the left, up to six items of your choice on the right: the time, an analog clock, the date, or an entity from Home Assistant with an icon, such as temperature, humidity, power usage, a door (open/closed), the alarm, who's home, or when something or someone last changed ("5 min ago", "Yesterday"). See Top bar.
• Screen settings: standby time, normal and dimmed brightness, night hours, 24- or 12-hour clock, return to the home page, and optional swiping between pages. Home Assistant automations can turn Auto standby off and on per screen (firmware 0.2.41+), for example to keep a screen on while someone is home.
• Guition rotation: 0°, 90°, 180°, or 270°, directly from the management page. Native LVGL rotation turns the display and touch together. The CYD keeps its fixed orientation and its own calibration.
• Inspector: check entities, status, and configuration in ESP Screens. Action feedback shows that a command is on its way.

Features depend on the capabilities Home Assistant reports for an entity. The app must keep running to keep the screens supplied with current data.

From firmware 0.2.12, a long press on a switch shows a large toggle. A short tap switches immediately; the off state gets a gray icon. The feedback stops as soon as Home Assistant reports the changed state, with a minimum of 150 ms for switches. Tiles with a mini-slider keep their icon; on the CYD, the icon and text block are vertically centered.

Alert from an automation

Every screen has the action esphome.<screen>_show_alert (firmware 0.2.31+). It places a card over the entire screen, wakes the screen, and keeps the backlight at normal brightness until someone taps OK. In an automation:

action: esphome.kitchen_screen_show_alert
data:
  title: "Someone is at the door"
  subtitle: "Door 3, back"
  icon: doorbell
  color: orange
  button_text: "Coming"
  timeout: 0
  flash: true

• title and subtitle: a single-line title (truncated with an ellipsis if too long) and an explanation that wraps across multiple lines. Empty is allowed; an empty title becomes "Notification".
• icon: a name from the tile picker, such as doorbell, bell, alert-outline, lock, door-open, motion-sensor, smoke-detector, water-alert, mailbox, car, or account. mdi:doorbell and the hex codepoint (F12E6) also work, as long as the glyph is included in the firmware. Unknown falls back to the warning triangle.
• color: red, orange, yellow, green, mint, blue, purple, pink, or gray — the same pastel shades as the tiles. Empty gives the white card.
• button_text: the text on the button; empty is "OK".
• timeout: seconds after which the card disappears on its own; 0 means it waits for the button, however long that takes. The button always closes the card immediately, even with a timeout. Standby and night mode wait as long as the card is showing.
• flash: true makes the backlight blink four times when the alert arrives.

In ESP Screens, Settings → Alerts opens a cheatsheet with the exact action name for each screen, a ready-to-paste example, and all fields, icons, and colors. Home Assistant asks for all seven fields; leave a field empty ("", 0, false) if you don't use it. A new alert replaces the current one. Every end is reported as the event esphome.screen_alert with action (ok, timeout, replaced, or remote), title, screen, and the device_id that Home Assistant adds, so an automation can wait for OK. esphome.<screen>_dismiss_alert clears the card remotely.

All screens at once

From app 0.2.45, one event reaches every screen that is online, screens you add later included. ESP Screen Manager passes it on to each screen's show_alert action. The fields are the same; the ones you leave out stay empty:

actions:
  - event: esp_screens_show_alert
    event_data:
      title: "Mail!"
      subtitle: "There is post in the mailbox"
      icon: mailbox
      color: orange
      timeout: 0
      flash: true

esp_screens_dismiss_alert clears the alert on every screen. The app has to be running for these two events; the per-screen actions work without it.

Ask Claude

Use Claude Code in Home Assistant? Settings → Claude → Install for Claude Code writes an ESP Screens skill to /homeassistant/.claude/skills/esp-screens, so Claude knows the events, the tile settings and every field, color and icon. Then ask, for example: "Put the vacuum on the living room screen", "Give the living room lights a brightness slider and make that tile wide", "Move the vacuum to page 1" or "Show an alert on all my screens when the mailbox is full." Claude reads what a screen shows from sensor.esp_screens_<screen> and asks before it changes anything. Download for claude.ai gives the same skill as a zip to upload in Claude under Customize → Skills. Nothing is written until you press the button.

Installing from Home Assistant

Do I need ESPHome?

You don't need to install the separate ESPHome Device Builder app. ESP Screen Manager already includes the ESPHome CLI and can build firmware itself, install it via USB, and later update it wirelessly over OTA.

You do need to pair the flashed screen via the ESPHome integration in HA. That pairing lives under Settings → Devices & services, not in the App store. Add the discovered device there. If it doesn't appear automatically, choose Add integration → ESPHome and enter the screen's IP address. If asked for a key, use the api.encryption.key from your own device YAML, and grant the device permission to perform Home Assistant actions.

Component	Needed?	What for?
ESP Screen Manager app	Yes, for this installation route	Installing firmware, managing tiles, and sending current data to the screen
ESPHome Device Builder app	No, optional	Alternative editor and firmware installer; the same CLI is already in ESP Screens
ESPHome integration in HA	Yes, pair every screen	The connection between Home Assistant and the physical screen

So a fresh installation without ESPHome Device Builder also works. If there's no ESPHome secrets.yaml yet, our wizard asks for Wi-Fi once and stores it locally. Existing Wi-Fi secrets are reused. API and OTA keys are generated per new screen and stay in that device's own profile.

Step by step

For Home Assistant Container (Docker) without the App store, follow ESP Screens with Docker.

For Home Assistant OS with Apps/Add-ons on aarch64 or amd64:

1. Open the App store and add this repository: https://github.com/MaxGramser/homeassistant_espscreen.
2. Install ESP Screen Manager, start the app, and open ESP Screens. ESPHome Device Builder is optional: the ESPHome CLI is already in this app.
3. Connect the screen with a USB data cable to the Home Assistant machine and choose Settings → New screen: CYD or Guition, a name, the USB port, and Install. If Wi-Fi is missing from the ESPHome secrets.yaml, the window asks for it once and ESP Screens only adds the missing lines. The profile with unique API and OTA keys goes into the ESPHome folder; the build and flash run in the same window (a first build takes a few minutes on a Raspberry Pi). Each screen gets its own profile.
4. CYD: go through the calibration on the screen. Guition: uses GT911 without resistive calibration. Then pair the discovered ESPHome device in Settings → Devices & services using the API key the window shows after installation (copy button). Grant the device permission to perform Home Assistant actions.
5. Select the screen in ESP Screens, choose your tiles, and click Save & send to screen. Then test the physical controls.

_{New screen (step 3) and choosing your tiles (step 5).}

You can install new firmware later from Settings → Firmware & USB → Wi-Fi / OTA. For an existing screen, always use the existing profile; creating a new installation profile generates new keys.

Customizing tiles and colors

Click a tile in the screen preview. Under Pastel background, choose a color, such as red or green. Optionally adjust the name, click action, mini-slider, or large value. Click Save & send to screen to apply the changes. After the first supporting firmware update, this requires no new flash.

_{The settings of the Heating tile, and that tile on the screen: double-width with temperature − / +.}

A color is a fixed choice for that tile: it stays red, for example, even when you run the all-off script. The entity status and action feedback stay separately visible.

Top bar

At the top of the editor, each screen has its Top bar: the name on the left, up to six items on the right. ＋ Add offers the time, an analog clock, and the date (which keep ticking on the screen itself, even without Home Assistant), suggestions from your own home (temperature and power usage from the screen's room, the weather, how many people are home, sunrise and sunset), and a search field for any entity, including a phone (device_tracker), a lock, the alarm panel, or zone.home. Drag the items to change their order; tap one to configure it:

• What to show: the state as Home Assistant writes it (21.3 °C, 65%, 1,249 W, Open/Closed, Home/Away, Armed away), or Last changed: "Just now", "5 min ago", "Yesterday". A timestamp sensor can also count forward ("In 2 hours").
• Icon: automatic, matching Home Assistant (an open door gets an open- door icon), a custom icon from the list, or no icon.
• Show: always, or only when active: the item only appears when it's on, open, home, or greater than 0. Handy for an open door or a running washing machine. Active items are colored like in Home Assistant (open door amber, alarm armed green, alarm triggered red).

The screen preview draws the bar with the same letters and rules as the screen: all values on one line with the name, icons aligned to digit height, equal spacing. If not everything fits next to the name, the name gets an ellipsis and the screen drops the leading items; the editor marks those with dashes. Until updated, older firmware shows only the name and the time (if that's in the bar).

Updates and keeping your settings

Change	Action
Tiles, names, colors, order, or screen settings	Save in ESP Screens; no firmware flash
New version of the management page	Update ESP Screen Manager in the HA App store
New feature on the physical screen	The Update button on the screen (badge Update x.y.z), or Update automatically every night under Settings

Every app version belongs to one firmware version. After an app update, the list shows per screen whether newer firmware is available. Update builds that screen's own profile with the built-in CLI, installs it wirelessly, and waits until the screen is back. With the checkbox enabled, that happens automatically at night, one screen at a time; a failure stops the round and posts a notification in Home Assistant. Firmware 0.2.17+ reports its own device name and IP address for this; an older screen asks for the IP address once. You can still do it manually via Settings → Firmware & USB → Wi-Fi / OTA.

The device's own YAML and Wi-Fi/API/OTA settings stay in the ESPHome config folder. Tile layouts and options live in the app's persistent data. CYD calibration and screen preferences stay stored on the device. Updates don't replace this user data. Do still make normal Home Assistant backups and keep your device profiles; removing an app or wiping flash memory is not an update.

Efficient, even with many screens (0.2.39 / firmware 0.2.33). The app sends a screen only the tile that changed, as a single action (esphome.<device_name>_screen_message) instead of chunks in a text field. Every two minutes, a small ping follows with the layout revision; if the screen reports that it doesn't match (after a restart, for example), everything is resent. Graphs on sensor tiles come from Home Assistant's statistics, in one query for all screens. Older firmware still works via the text field and the full resend every two minutes. The diagnostic sensor Uptime has been replaced by the Last boot timestamp.

See the release history and releases and protocol compatibility.

If you publish your own fork: every push to GitHub is a release. Always also bump the add-on version in screen_manager/config.yaml and log the change in the CHANGELOG, otherwise the HA App store won't offer an update. A change to the screen also gets a new SCREEN_FIRMWARE_VERSION in both board profiles.

Guides and installation help

• Complete installation from ESP Screens
• Guition hardware, mounting, and rotation
• CYD calibration and USB diagnostics
• Instructions for developers and LLMs

Give a developer or LLM a clean copy of this repository and, for example:

Read AGENTS.md, README.md, and docs/EASY_SETUP.md. Help me install this CYD or Guition screen via USB on my Home Assistant. Identify the board and use my existing profile if one already exists. Guide me through calibration, HA pairing, tile selection, and physical tests. Keep keys local, and state which checks were actually carried out.

A successful build doesn't prove the physical touch or panel image is correct. The owner must check the display and perform the requested taps.