Home Assistant Voice Control Without the Cloud
You can control smart home devices by voice entirely offline, using Home Assistant with local speech recognition and text-to-speech instead of Alexa or Google Assistant. No audio ever leaves your network. Worth knowing before you build it: one of the standard components (Piper) was archived by its maintainer in October 2025, though it still works.
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A fully local alternative to Alexa or Google
Home Assistant, the popular open-source home automation platform, supports a fully local voice assistant stack: no cloud, no subscription, nothing sent outside your home. People assume voice control for smart homes always means Alexa or Google, sending audio to a big tech company’s servers. A fully local alternative exists and has matured significantly.
The pieces that make it work
5 steps
One thing worth knowing before you start
3 steps
Privacy and security basics
3 steps
Frequently asked questions
Does this replace Alexa or Google Home entirely?
For most common commands, yes, though a fully local setup can be less capable at open-ended questions than a big cloud assistant.
Is Piper still safe to use if it is archived?
Yes, it still functions and is widely deployed. Archived means no further updates, not that it is broken or unsafe.
What hardware do I need?
Modest hardware can run this, a Raspberry Pi 4 is commonly used for Piper, though Whisper and Ollama benefit from more power.
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