Smart home dashboards

A smart home dashboard is the screen where connected devices get grouped and controlled, rather than switched between a dozen separate apps. It suits someone who already owns smart devices and wants one place to check and change them. It is not the kind of dashboard built for glanceable widgets like weather or a calendar; the point here is control, not a passive display.

If every device comes from one brand, its own app is usually the simplest start: Apple Home covers HomeKit and Matter accessories, Google Home covers Nest and Matter devices, and Samsung SmartThings covers Samsung's own line plus a growing list of third-party gear. Once devices span brands, a hub platform does the grouping instead. Home Assistant and openHAB are open source and self-hosted, building a dashboard from whatever you connect and giving full control over layout after that. SharpTools takes a different approach: a hosted dashboard builder that plugs into SmartThings, Hubitat, Home Assistant and Homey at once, aimed at people who picked a hub already and want a better screen on top of it. Homey and Hubitat are physical hub devices with dashboards built in alongside their own automation tools.

Single-brand apps are the easiest to set up but stop covering anything outside that brand. Home Assistant and openHAB give the most control but expect you to run the server yourself, on a Raspberry Pi or similar. A hub-based dashboard is only as reliable as the hub it depends on, and none of these replace a dedicated security system.