Control Home Assistant Media Players
A Media card controls a Home Assistant media_player. Choose a small one-job card, or use All Controls for the main playback screen.
Add your Sonos, Spotify, Apple TV, Plex, Music Assistant, or other player integration in Home Assistant first. Basalt uses the entities and capabilities that integration exposes; it does not connect a speaker or streaming account for you.
Set Up a Media Card
- Select a card and change its type to Media. New Media cards start as Cover Art.
- Choose a Type and enter the player entity, such as
media_player.living_room. - For Cover Art and All Controls, enter a Name below Entity. This appears in the clock bar while the media popup is open. All Controls also uses it on the card when Label is selected. Other types offer a label or icon where supported.
| Type | Best for |
|---|---|
| All Controls | Playback, volume, progress, and any supported power or speaker controls in one popup. |
| Cover Art | Showing current artwork; tapping it opens All Controls. |
| Track, Album or Playlist | Playing a saved playlist, source, URL, or other media content. |
| Speaker Group | Opening the speaker-group screen directly. |
| Play/Pause, Previous, Next | A simple playback shortcut. |
| Volume | Opening a volume control. Maximum Volume can cap the level. |
| Track Position | Seeing and, where supported, seeking through the current item. |
| Now Playing | Showing title and artist, with optional progress or play/pause. |
What to Expect
- Playback buttons send the matching Home Assistant media action.
- Titles and artists display fullwidth Latin characters as ordinary letters (for example,
ＯＳＡＫＡbecomesOSAKA) and omit emoji. This also applies to the Cover Art screensaver. Supported accented, Greek, and Cyrillic text is preserved; other scripts still depend on the panel's font coverage. The original Home Assistant metadata is unchanged. - Shuffle and Repeat appear in All Controls only when the player advertises support for them. A supported control stays disabled until Home Assistant reports its current state, then continues to follow changes made elsewhere.
- Repeat cycles through Off, All, and One. Its icon changes to Repeat Once in One mode, while active Shuffle and Repeat modes use the accent colour.
- Volume and track position follow changes made elsewhere in Home Assistant. Some players show progress but do not support seeking; some only support volume up and down rather than an exact level.
- All Controls hides tabs that the selected player does not support. Its speaker tab appears only when compatible speakers are available.
- For Track, Album or Playlist, choose the speaker, then provide the content ID or URI. You can also set the player source or input when the integration uses one.
Cover Art
Cover Art is available in square 1×1, 2×2, and 3×3 card sizes. It uses one of the panel's shared image slots. ESP32-P4 screens have six slots shared between Camera and Cover Art cards across all pages. If the card shows Too many, remove one of those image cards.
Speaker Groups
Use Speaker Group to open the speaker controls directly, or access them from All Controls. Follow the Speaker Groups setup guide for the Home Assistant discovery sensor templates, Music Assistant options, card setup, group volume, and troubleshooting.
Requires Home Assistant actions
Media cards send Home Assistant actions. If a control does not respond, check Enable Actions.