Third Party Integration (Home Assistant)
Can someone from TP-Link please explain why Home Assistant is now being classified as "unsecure"? I purchased Kasa/Tapo smart light switches specifically to build out my home automation system with Home Assistant. Everything worked perfectly for months—until a recent firmware update rendered all of them unusable with Home Assistant. Despite correct credentials and full internet access, my Tapo account now refuses to authenticate, effectively breaking the integration.
The Home Assistant and Tapo communities are filled with frustrated users in the same situation—unable to control their devices outside the official Tapo app. This undermines the very reason many of us chose TP-Link in the first place: flexibility and integration.
TP-Link needs to either:
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Provide a supported integration that bridges the Tapo API with Home Assistant, or
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Re-enable local control for these devices.
It’s frustrating that companies, including TP-Link, are moving toward locking consumers into cloud-only control under the guise of "security." If someone chooses to expose their devices to the internet and accepts the risks, that’s their responsibility—not the manufacturer’s. By removing local control, you're punishing knowledgeable users who take the time to secure their networks properly.
I’ve gone all-in with TP-Link, upgrading my entire network to Omada devices (which integrate with Home Assistant beautifully), and replacing switches and outlets throughout my home. I did this because I believed in the ecosystem and its potential.
TP-Link development team: I know you're monitoring this. Please fix this. And please do it quickly. The developer community is watching, and so are your customers. And for god sakes...Don't ignore VLAN support. Many of us more seasoned users have our smart stuff on segmented VLAN's.
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This was posted back in May 2025. At this point, with no official response or clear statement from TP-Link, it’s hard to believe one is ever coming.
They’ve almost certainly seen the backlash by now, and the ongoing silence feels intentional, either a decision to ignore it or to quietly double down on an anti–Home Assistant stance. That’s incredibly disappointing. I’ve been a TP-Link supporter for a very long time, long before their smart devices even existed, and this is enough to make me seriously reconsider that loyalty, and clear house of any TP-Link branded devices. When customers are clearly asking you to reverse a change that broke their setups, refusing to even acknowledge the issue comes across as a deliberate dismissal of the very people who helped build your brand.
Some users have reported Tapo devices working again with Home Assistant when everything is on the same subnet, but not when VLANs are involved, and even then it’s unreliable, and relies heavily on the cloud API. Disabling the “local first” option was an extraordinarily short-sighted decision by your R&D and security teams. Customers who have built their homes and ecosystems around your products for years, in some cases decades, deserve better than this.
I’ve spent the last six and a half months hoping TP-Link would recognize the mistake and roll it back. At this point, their refusal to address it publicly in any meaningful way makes it pretty clear they have no intention of doing so.
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