Hey yall, looking to get some help with something in home assistant. I am able to connect with my phone and other laptop with tailscale but i cant access home assistant at all on my phone if not using tailscale even when on the same network. anyone able to help diagnose
12 replies
Chris wrote:
That pattern tells us a lot, and it's good news: Tailscale reaching Home Assistant means it's running fine. Your phone missing it without Tailscale means the phone can't see the box itself on your home network — not that Home Assistant is broken. Quick check: in the box's terminal run the command sparkbox urls and look at the Home Assistant address (port 8123). If it's a normal home address like 192.168.x.x, open exactly that on your phone while it's on the same Wi-Fi. If it prints a warning that the address only works on this PC, that's the answer, and I have the exact fix. What's SparkBox running on — Windows, or a dedicated Linux machine/NAS?
dominic16 wrote:
It is a standard 192x ip address. when i put it in my phone browser it just never loads. I am running sparkbox on a linux computer
Chris wrote:
Got it — Linux rules out the Windows-only cause, so this narrows down nicely. Tailscale reaching it tells us Home Assistant is healthy and listening on port 8123; what's failing is the direct phone-to-box path across your Wi-Fi. One test splits it cleanly: on the laptop, turn Tailscale off, stay on the same Wi-Fi as the box, and open that 192.168.x.x:8123 address in a browser. If the laptop loads it but the phone won't, your Wi-Fi has client isolation on (devices can't see each other — common on guest networks). If the laptop fails too, the box isn't reachable over the LAN at all, and I'll give you one command to check what's listening. Which do you get?
dominic16 wrote:
With tailscale paused on sparkbox, I am still able to access home assistant on the linux computer
Chris wrote:
Good — that's a helpful signal, and it confirms Home Assistant itself is healthy, because the box can always reach its own apps. But that test used the box's own connection, and the path that's failing is a different one: your phone to the box across your Wi-Fi. Let's test that path directly. On your laptop, turn Tailscale off on the laptop (leave the box alone), make sure the laptop is on the same Wi-Fi, then open the Home Assistant address in a browser — the 192.168.x.x one with port 8123. If the laptop loads it but the phone won't, that's client isolation on your router (devices can't see each other). If the laptop times out too, I'll give you one command to check what's listening.
dominic16 wrote:
the laptop timed out aswell
Chris wrote:
Thanks for running that — the laptop timing out too settles it: the box isn't answering Home Assistant over your home Wi-Fi at all, even though the app itself is running fine (that's why Tailscale and the box's own browser both reach it). Here's the one command I promised — run it in the box's terminal and paste back what it prints: sudo ss -tlnp | grep :8123 If the line starts with 0.0.0.0:8123, Home Assistant is listening on the network and something on the box — most likely its firewall — is stopping the traffic, so that's what we check next. If it only shows 127.0.0.1:8123 or prints nothing, that points us in a different, clearer direction.
dominic16 wrote:
LISTEN 0 128 0.0.0.0:8123 0.0.0.0: users:(("python3",pid=60548,fd=12)) LISTEN 0 128 [::]:8123 [::]: users:(("python3",pid=60548,fd=13)) this is exactly what it prints
Chris wrote:
That output is the clue we needed. 0.0.0.0:8123 means Home Assistant is listening on every network interface, so the app itself is healthy and your phone and laptop should be able to reach it. The fact they can't — while Tailscale can — points to the box's own firewall. On a Linux install SparkBox uses UFW, and port 8123 has to be explicitly allowed for normal home-network traffic. Run this in the box's terminal and paste back what it prints: sudo ufw status If 8123 isn't in that list, that's the whole problem and I'll give you the one command that opens it. If it says Status: inactive, the box isn't blocking anything and we look at your router next.
dominic16 wrote:
8123 is not on the list
Chris wrote:
That is the whole problem, and the fix is one command. Home Assistant is healthy and listening on 0.0.0.0:8123, but SparkBox's firewall is not allowing outside connections to that port, so your phone and laptop get silently dropped. Open it the same way SparkBox's installer opens its other app ports: sudo ufw allow 8123/tcp No restart needed — the rule applies right away. Then open the Home Assistant address on your phone again while it is on the same Wi-Fi and it should load. If it still times out, run sudo ufw status once more and paste what it prints so I can confirm the new rule is there.
Chris wrote:
Just checking back on the Home Assistant access problem from your phone and laptop. After you applied the last step, can either device load Home Assistant on your home Wi-Fi now? If not, paste the current result rather than any passwords or keys. Our team follows every thread through to a fix, and I’ll use what you see now to keep this moving without sending you through the same checks again. — checking in