If you’re shopping (online) for smart home devices, you might want to know if the device is supported by Homey. But you can’t always find it in the Homey App Store
Many smart home brands use “Tuya“ to handle their smart home cloud/services.
What is Tuya?
Many manufacturers want to build smart home devices. But not all of them know how to build everything (app, server, firmware, smart modules, compliance, integrations) themselves. For this, the brand can use Tuya to do it for them. Tuya will publish the app on their behalf and operate the cloud services. The app usually doesn’t differ very much from the base “Smart Life” or “Tuya Smart“ apps (which are general apps to control the devices) other than some color and branding changes. Tuya will often also sell pre-flashed modules which the manufacturer can simple solder onto their devices. It will all be done by Tuya and the manufacturer doesn’t have to think about smart home at all, while they can then sell their device as a smart device
Hopefully that explanation was good enough, if you have other questions about this feel free to ask them in the replies
How to recognize Tuya-based devices
Mobile app
All Tuya-based devices work with both the Tuya Smart and the Smart Life mobile app. If any of these is mentioned, you can safely assume it’s a Tuya device
There is also a list of Tuya-based apps here, devices compatible with these apps should also work with the Tuya Smart and Smart Life app.
Powered by Tuya
On some devices, you can see a “Powered by Tuya - Intelligence Inside“ logo on the box. These devices also work via Tuya
Pencil icon
If this icon is shown in the app screenshot, it’s almost always a Tuya device:
This icon is almost exclusively used by Tuya as the “settings“ icon.
Google Home integration
If the brand has a Google Home integration, you can check by clicking the + symbol in the Google Home app, selecting “Device“ and “Link apps or services“. In this page, you can search the brand and add it. You don’t need to own the device itself, it will open a page and it should show the domain. If the domain is any of these:
Then it’s a Tuya based device.
App privacy policy
When you open the app in the Play Store, you can open the privacy policy. If it’s any of these domains:
Then it’s likely a Tuya device.
All Tuya-based devices work with Homey, via the Tuya app for Homey. All Tuya-based devices work with Smart Life and Tuya Smart apps, all Tuya-based devices can be linked to all Tuya-based apps.
