Difference official and community app

Apps
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Hi, as a newbie I see aps have the ‘official’ or the ‘community’ badge.
What’s the exact difference?
Some are clear: some ‘official’ apps are made by the ‘official’ owner/maker of the products. But some ‘official’ apps like the zonnepanelen app to connect among others is developed and maintained by an individual developer.

What conditions are guarantees are there for these kind of apps? Are these developers payed by Athom?

Community apps on the other hand are voluntary developed apps; great value and a deep bow. I also find community app like the Tuya api app that are abandoned but I only found out by looking in the GitHub.

I hoped to find more official support when buying the Homey pro ecosystem over the Open source Home Assistent. I assume now after some comparison this is only true for the hardware not the software?

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Athom only wants “official” (endorsed by the brand) apps for Homey Cloud/Bridge. However, if an app helps to sell Homey Cloud/Bridge (like I assume the Zonnepanelen app does), Athom will set aside their own principles and allow such apps (thus making the “official” branding basically like a blue tick mark on Twitter/X: meaningless).

None.

I don’t think so, but possibly their “verified developer” fees get waived. Some community developers are paid by brands (either monetarily or by being provided with devices)

I think Home Assistant has more official device support than Homey has.

1 Like
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Thanks! HA more support? For the ‘apps’ you main or the backbone. You have experience with both systems?

When reading the -biased- comparison from home itself, no word about the apps official versus community apps.

But also par example: when the residio company official app for Evohome is malfunctioning, you are also depending on there updates.

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Home Assistant doesn’t work with apps. A lot of device support is built-in, especially official (as in “brand-supported”) integrations.

There is also a sort-of community store, HACS, where you can find a lot of integrations that are made by community members.

Yes, Home Assistant has been my main home automation platform for years, and I would never ever go back to Homey.

That comparison is mostly marketing BS.