Home Assistant's own camera view is getting two-way audio. Changes merged on 22 October 2026 in the core, the frontend and the iOS app add a Talk control to the live stream, so you can speak through a camera's or doorbell's speaker without opening the manufacturer's app. Reolink is the first integration to support it. The core and frontend code is in the development branches and should ship with Home Assistant 2026.11, as an opt-in Labs preview.

How it works

When you press Talk, the frontend closes the current stream and opens a new WebRTC stream with an audio back channel. The camera's more-info dialog shows the Talk button only when three things are true:

  • the integration says the camera supports two-way audio;
  • WebRTC is available, either natively or through a WebRTC provider, because HLS cannot carry audio from the viewer;
  • the "Two-way audio" Labs preview is turned on.

The preview's description puts it simply: if you do not see the button for a camera, either the camera or its integration does not support two-way audio yet.

The work comes from starkillerOG, who maintains the Reolink integration, and builds on two older pull requests by sdb9696. As a side change, the snapshot download button moves to the overflow menu of the camera dialog.

Reolink, with one condition

Reolink cameras get the feature when the channel supports two-way audio and the integration is set to the RTSP protocol. Cameras streaming over RTMP or FLV do not get the back channel, because those protocols cannot carry it.

HTTPS, or the iPhone app

Browsers allow microphone access only over a secure connection. In a browser, the feature therefore needs Home Assistant opened over HTTPS, which is also the reason it starts as a Labs preview.

The iOS app works around this. A change by Bruno Pantaleão Gonçalves lets the app capture the microphone itself and send it to the camera over an audio-only WebRTC session when the dashboard is loaded over plain HTTP. This route is not available on Mac Catalyst. The core pull request notes that app store review takes weeks, which is another reason the feature stays opt-in for now.

Matter cameras, which have only just gained live video in Home Assistant, are not covered by this change.