Turning a Raspberry Pi Into a Sleek Home Assistant Kiosk

Ever wanted a dedicated touchscreen on the wall to control your smart home?

A Raspberry Pi combined with a touchscreen makes a great Home Assistant wall panel. With a little configuration, the Pi can boot automatically, launch directly into Home Assistant, hide the mouse cursor, and stay running as a dedicated touchscreen dashboard.

The goal is simple:

Power on → Raspberry Pi boots → Chromium launches → Home Assistant appears in full-screen kiosk mode.

No keyboard, no mouse, and no desktop to interact with.

1. Flash the Operating System

Start by installing Raspberry Pi OS with Desktop onto the Raspberry Pi’s SD card.

Using the Raspberry Pi Imager makes this part straightforward.

Once the Pi boots, configure it for:

Desktop environment
Automatic login
Correct touchscreen/display settings
Network connectivity

The important part is enabling Desktop Autologin so the Raspberry Pi can start the graphical environment without requiring someone to log in manually.

After the initial setup, reboot the Pi and make sure the desktop loads automatically.

2. Install the Required Software

The kiosk doesn’t need much software.

The main components are:

Chromium

Chromium is responsible for displaying the Home Assistant dashboard.

Instead of using the browser like a normal desktop application, it will eventually launch directly in Kiosk Mode.

Unclutter

Unclutter hides the mouse cursor after a short period of inactivity.

This is especially useful for a wall-mounted touchscreen where you don’t want a mouse pointer sitting over your dashboard.

3. Create the Kiosk Startup Script

The next step is creating a small startup script that handles the kiosk launch.

The script has three main jobs:

Prevent the display from going to sleep.
Hide the mouse cursor.
Launch Chromium in full-screen kiosk mode.

The browser is configured to open directly to the Home Assistant dashboard.

For example, instead of starting on a normal browser homepage, the Raspberry Pi goes straight to your Home Assistant instance.

The result:

Raspberry Pi Desktop → Kiosk Script → Chromium → Home Assistant

No desktop interaction is required.

4. Start the Kiosk Automatically

A kiosk isn’t very useful if you have to manually start it every time the Raspberry Pi reboots.

To solve this, create a systemd user service that starts the kiosk script when the graphical desktop session becomes available.

The service can also be configured to restart automatically if Chromium unexpectedly closes.

This gives the kiosk a simple recovery mechanism:

Power failure → Raspberry Pi reboots → Desktop loads → Kiosk starts → Home Assistant appears

This makes the setup much more suitable for a permanent wall-mounted installation.

5. Configure Home Assistant for Kiosk Mode

The Raspberry Pi can already display Home Assistant in full screen, but the Home Assistant interface itself can still contain navigation elements.

For a cleaner wall-panel experience, install Kiosk Mode through HACS.

This can remove elements such as:

Sidebar
Header
Navigation controls
Other unnecessary interface elements

The result is a much cleaner dashboard designed specifically for a dedicated touchscreen.

Instead of looking like a website running inside a browser, it starts to feel more like a purpose-built smart-home control panel.

6. Design the Touchscreen Dashboard

With the kiosk running, the final step is designing the Home Assistant dashboard.

For a wall-mounted display, keep things simple.

Large buttons and cards work much better than tiny controls.

Some useful sections could include:

💡 Lights
🌡️ Temperature
🚪 Doors
🔒 Security
🎵 Music
🌤️ Weather
⚡ Energy
🏠 Home status

The goal isn’t to put every Home Assistant entity on the screen.

The goal is to make the most important controls available with a quick tap.

7. The Final Result

After everything is configured, the Raspberry Pi becomes a dedicated Home Assistant wall panel.

There is no need to manually open a browser or navigate to Home Assistant.

Simply turn it on.

Boot → Auto Login → Kiosk → Home Assistant

And that’s it.

The Raspberry Pi is now a permanent touchscreen interface for the smart home.

Final Thoughts

This is one of those homelab projects that doesn’t require a huge amount of hardware or software but produces a really nice result.

A Raspberry Pi, touchscreen, and a few lightweight configuration changes can turn into a polished-looking Home Assistant control panel.

It also has the advantage of being easy to recover. If the Pi loses power or needs to reboot, the kiosk can automatically come back online without requiring manual intervention.

For a smart home, that’s exactly what you want.

Power it on and forget about it.

Project Overview

Hardware:

Raspberry Pi
Raspberry Pi touchscreen
MicroSD card
Power supply

Software:

Raspberry Pi OS with Desktop
Chromium
Unclutter
Home Assistant
HACS
Kiosk Mode

The end goal:

🖥️ Raspberry Pi + 📱 Touchscreen → 🏠 Home Assistant Kiosk