A private, fully-local chat for your Home Assistant dashboard.
Real-time messages, delete & admin moderation, emoji picker — no cloud, no servers.

✅ Stable release — v2.2.2. Production-ready and installable via HACS. See the latest release and the changelog.

Unofficial community integration — not affiliated with or endorsed by Home Assistant or Nabu Casa.

Home Assistant is the screen everyone in the household already looks at — yet there's no built-in way to leave each other a quick message on the dashboard. Notifications are one-way; chat-style alternatives need cloud accounts.

HA Local Chat adds a real chat card that runs 100 % inside your own instance. Messages live in Home Assistant's storage, sync in real time over the event bus, and never touch an external server.

See ROADMAP.md for what's planned next.

1. HACS → Integrations → ⋮ (top right) → Custom repositories
2. Add https://github.com/lupzn/ha-local-chat, category Integration
3. Install Home Assistant Local Chat, then restart Home Assistant

Manual alternative: copy custom_components/ha_chat into config/custom_components/, then restart.

Settings → Devices & Services → + Add Integration → search “Home Assistant Local Chat” → Submit.

That's the only setup step. No configuration.yaml, no www copying, no Lovelace resource — the chat card registers itself.

Edit a dashboard → + Add Card → search “Local Chat Card”.

First time the card isn't listed? Hard-refresh the browser (Ctrl/Cmd + Shift + R) — the frontend is cached — then reopen the picker.

You can also add it manually (+ Add Card → Manual):

type: custom:ha-chat-card
# title: Familien-Chat   # optional — omit for no header
# height: 320            # optional — chat-area height in px

Open the card's ⋮ → Edit to use the visual editor — or set the same options in YAML:

Example — post a note when someone gets home:

automation:
  - alias: "Chat: arrival note"
    trigger:
      - platform: state
        entity_id: person.daniele
        to: "home"
    action:
      - service: ha_chat.send_message
        data:
          message: "🏠 {{ trigger.to_state.name }} is home."

Hover a message and click the 🗑 icon. You can always delete your own messages; administrators can delete anyone's. The check is enforced in the backend, so it can't be bypassed from the UI.

• 100 % local — messages stay in your instance, no external servers, no telemetry.
• XSS-safe — messages render as plain text, so no HTML/script injection is possible.
• Server-side moderation — delete permission (author / admin) is verified in the backend.

Full policy: PRIVACY.md.

ha-local-chat/
├── custom_components/ha_chat/
│   ├── __init__.py                  ← backend: services, WebSocket history, storage, frontend registration
│   ├── config_flow.py               ← one-click UI setup (no YAML)
│   ├── const.py                     ← constants (events, limits, storage keys, URLs)
│   ├── manifest.json
│   ├── services.yaml                ← send_message / delete_message
│   ├── strings.json + translations/ ← setup dialog (en, de)
│   ├── frontend/ha-chat-card.js      ← Lovelace card (served + auto-registered)
│   └── brand/                       ← icon.png, icon@2x.png (HA 2026.3+ local brand)
├── hacs.json · icon.png
├── README.md · ROADMAP.md · PRIVACY.md · CHANGELOG.md
└── LICENSE · NOTICE

• Backend (__init__.py) registers two services and stores the last 100 messages in Home Assistant's Store (.storage/ha_chat_history).
• Sending fires a ha_chat_message event on the event bus; every open card appends it instantly.
• Deleting verifies author/admin server-side, then fires ha_chat_message_deleted so all cards drop the message.
• History is fetched point-to-point via the WebSocket command ha_chat/get_messages — no global broadcast, so other dashboards don't flicker.
• The card is served from the integration's frontend/ folder and registered (as a Lovelace resource + module URL) once Home Assistant has finished starting — so it appears automatically, no manual resource needed.

Card not in the picker, or “Custom element doesn't exist: ha-chat-card”:

1. Add the integration first. Settings → Devices & Services → it must be listed. This is a config-flow integration — it only loads (and registers the card) once it has been added.
2. Make sure you're on the latest version in HACS and restarted HA.
3. Hard-refresh the browser (Ctrl/Cmd + Shift + R) — the frontend is cached.

Quick checks:

• Open http://YOUR-HA:8123/ha_chat_frontend/ha-chat-card.js — you should see JavaScript, not a 404.
• The browser console should log HA-LOCAL-CHAT vX.Y.Z when the card loads.

Manual fallback (always works): copy custom_components/ha_chat/frontend/ha-chat-card.js to /config/www/, add a dashboard resource (Settings → Dashboards → ⋮ → Resources) with URL /local/ha-chat-card.js, type JavaScript Module, then hard-refresh.

If this saves your household some sticky notes, consider supporting development:

• ⭐ Star this repo on GitHub
• ♥ Donate via PayPal
• 🐛 Report bugs in the Issues
• 💡 Suggest features — same place

Apache License 2.0 © LUPZN — see LICENSE and NOTICE.

HA Local Chat is a third-party custom integration, not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Home Assistant or Nabu Casa, Inc. "Home Assistant" is a trademark of Nabu Casa, Inc., used here only to identify the platform this integration runs on.