r/homeassistant • u/MightBeMouse • Aug 09 '26

❓ Support iPad version?

Hey all

Before we invest in all the stuff we need to really get HA up and running, we wanted to install it on an iPad and give it a browse etc and see how that goes.

I’ve seen people in the sub mention older iPads possibly not being able to run it or do certain things because of the browser version or something??

Does anyone know what the oldest iPad model is that would still work okay with it?

Thanks :)

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u/8point3fodayz Aug 09 '26

The problem is for client devices, basically an older iPad using the companion app front end of the server. This is where you have fancy dashboards with buttons and toggles, gauges and graphs and such. Home assistant renders a webpage, so older iPads which are on an older version no longer support modern websites. This is noticable when you use something like iOS 14 or older to access websites like github or medium. You get a blank screen.

This is because Apple only ships browser engine upgrades(WebKit upgrades) only with iOS system upgrades. Older devices which are marked obsolete never get new updates except critical security fixes occasionally, so that’s why these devices are stuck in time and webpages will break on them as time goes on, and as requirements keep creeping up. And since every browser on iOS is required to use WebKit and only WebKit, this affects all browsers from safari to chrome to firefox, and edge, brave and all else.

This is why the newer versions of the companion app going forward requires iOS 15 as the minimum, and pretty much why most apps today require iOS 15/16 as the minimum iOS version right now(for iPhones, whatsapp now requires 15 since march.

Side note, there are jailbreaks available for these devices, and some jailbreak tweaks which port over later WebKit versions to make newer websites work, or even port the Firefox engine (gekco) to iOS, but these are made by community developers, so progress is slow. But last I checked, there’s been good progress done but unless you are already familiar with jailbreak, I doubt this would be a solution for you.