wtf is homeassistantforlegacyios?

Home Assistant Legacy is a companion app that lets people control their Home Assistant smart home system from very old iPhones, going back as far as iOS 4 and forward through iOS 14. Home Assistant's current official app needs iOS 16.4 or newer, so this project is a separate Objective C application built specifically for jailbroken older devices that can no longer run the modern version. The app lets you log in with your normal Home Assistant username and password, including two factor codes, and it automatically refreshes your access when it expires. It shows a native list of your smart home entities such as lights, switches, locks, covers, scenes, scripts, and automations, along with brightness and color controls for compatible lights, so you do not have to rely on loading the web based dashboard on an old device. You can save multiple homes and switch between them, organize your own list of favorite devices separate from the full device list, and view a live camera feed if you have connected security cameras. There is also a companion app for very old Apple Watches that mirrors device states and sends control commands back through your iPhone. The project is upfront about its limits. Push notifications still require Apple's own server credentials, so jailbreaking does not get around that requirement. Because iOS suspends apps running in the background, the app can only reliably check for updates while it is open. Some modern Home Assistant dashboard code may not run properly in the old web engines these devices use, and old TLS security may not connect to current servers, so the author suggests placing a modern reverse proxy in front of Home Assistant instead of weakening security settings. To build the iPhone app you need a tool called Theos and you run separate build commands depending on which iPhone chip and iOS version you are targeting, then install the resulting file through a jailbreak package manager. Building the Apple Watch companion instead requires a Mac with Xcode. Unsigned app files are also provided for non jailbroken devices, installed through a sideloading tool with your own Apple account.