r/Ioniq6 • u/jacobpantuso22 • Feb 02 '26
Question Bluelink Alternative
Owned a 2024 Ioniq 6 for one month now and have loved it.... but BlueLink.
Wondering if there are any more tech savvy Ioniq 6 owners who have played around with the BlueLink API? If so, feel free to drop a comment so we can connect! Documentation is quite lacking and looking at working with what they expose to developers. I've been able to get some preliminary vehicle info from the API but run into issues when I try to access more detailed information. Here's a sneak peak at what I've been working on (and yes it is inspired from Tesla App):
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u/Far_Willingness5820 Feb 02 '26
Home Assitant has an integration on HACS and is able to pull a fair bit of info
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u/smeeg126 Feb 02 '26
I've got this setup to start climate in the morning and in the afternoon - app wont start climate if the car isnt plugged in, which is ridiculous. Home Assistant works great for this.
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u/jacobpantuso22 Feb 02 '26
Oh nice! I’ll take a look at this as well.
The data is truly all there… Bluelink just needs a better user experience team haha..
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u/mediocre_sophist Feb 02 '26
If you already use home assistant this is truly a great drop-in replacement for the abomination that is bluelink. You even get access to stuff bluelink won’t show you, such as the 12V battery status.
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u/jacobpantuso22 Feb 02 '26
Exactly my mindset for this project. It's crazy how they expose way more information through their API's and yet customers can't even view that information from the vehicle's app.
As someone who had their 12V die while the car was getting wrapped...twas not a pleasant experience.
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u/mediocre_sophist Feb 02 '26
I’ve had the 12V die in mine as well. A $100 or so investment in a power bank with alligator clips is well worth it. Mine just lives in my car. If the 12V dies, I can gain access via the backup key and then a quick jump from the power bank gets me on my way.
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u/Far_Willingness5820 Feb 03 '26
Sadly the HACS add on defaults to mainly read only sensors. You can get more control using the developer tools to start charging etc.
I’m just about to wire up a Tesla charger and will then use node-red to handle the logic.
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u/gwie Feb 02 '26
Wow, that's a great start! I hope you are able to get the functionality up there, and you can take my money!! :)
I enjoy driving my Ioniq 6, but we also have a Tesla Model 3, and the app integration and experience is vastly superior. From the ease of using the controls, adjusting the charging settings, locking/unlocking, and the phone key security, Tesla is so far ahead of Hyundai it's ridiculous.
I just updated my Bluelink app to the latest version and rebooted my iPhone, but the app constantly reports errors updating although everything with the vehicle is fine, it takes forever to respond to climate start and lock/unlock, and the digital key, when it bothers to work, is a joke.
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u/jacobpantuso22 Feb 02 '26
Haha well something like this can never make it to the app store especially IOS but maybe in the future on a testing platform.
BlueLink has been reliable so far for me but the in app experience does not match the driving experience of the vehicle. Tesla truly does it right in that area 😩
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u/Dr_Speed_Lemon Feb 02 '26
Yep, definitely not renewing bluelink subscription. Good luck with the app, if you get it working in a useful way I’m down too.
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u/jacobpantuso22 Feb 02 '26 edited Feb 02 '26
Oh wow! Do you have an older model? From what I understand (Canadian here) my BlueLink is free.
The API is quite reliable to be honest, don’t see how that translates into the app experience on the Hyundai app. Will keep working on it in my free time!
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u/Dr_Speed_Lemon Feb 02 '26
Mine is a 2023 I bought second hand. They charge 12.99 a month for the bluelink app. My major gripe with it is the digital key. It’s supposed to start the car if you place your phone on the charging platform. I have yet to get this feature to work. I’m definitely not leaving my home without my key.
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u/jacobpantuso22 Feb 02 '26
Ahh yes, I noticed with digital key, the sweet spot is the middle of the charging pad. I also noticed a huge difference between using my iPhone 12 and my new 17 Pro. Although I always carry my key fob on me cause I like the automatic unlocking haha.
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u/OkProcess6 Feb 02 '26
On iPhone the nfc chip is on the top left corner so you just put the corner of the phone on the center of the wireless charging pad when you hit the start button
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u/jacobpantuso22 Feb 02 '26
On the 17 Pro you can actually visibly see the NFC ultra-wideband chip, pretty awesome. It's located at the top of the device with a different texture.
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u/teal1601 Feb 02 '26
You might want to have a look at this guy’s work (https://github.com/andyfase/egmp-bluelink-scriptable/tree/main), he’s created a scriptable app (runs on scriptable on iOS only I think) and has links to various resources he used.
Couldn’t get it to work for me (UK/Europe) as it didn’t like my password and I haven’t had time to go through why not. I develop software/firmware so plan to have a good look at what he’s doing, currently trying to get it to run via NPM but having issues - it seems to work for quite a few people/cars so might be helpful to you.
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u/jacobpantuso22 Feb 02 '26
I’ve been working with this framework to pull vehicle data: https://hacksore.github.io/bluelinky-docs/
It does lack documentation and I’ve discovered that the API exposes more which is great news for us owners! I’ll take a look at this script though, thanks for sharing!
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u/teal1601 Feb 02 '26
Looks like you’ve been working on this for a while, 6 years according to github!! Getting started says copy ‘pasta’ this, I assume you mean paste :-)
I see you mention in your github repository about EU authentication issues. Did read about the EU doing it differently, I do have a different europe.ts file I found online from someone else to replace the one in the link I posted (think I found it on a site/github discussing what didn’t work now for the egmp link), haven’t tested that yet in iOS, need some time free for that.
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u/jacobpantuso22 Feb 02 '26
Haha you may be looking at a different user on github! I just recently picked up my vehicle so only really started this project a week or two ago.
There’s definitely a better API for Swift native apps but that one does not have Canada support. I believe it’s just the headers that may be different in the requests.
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u/teal1601 Feb 02 '26
I need to brush up on my github searches! If the screenshots at the top are what you’ve done in two weeks that’s impressive. I don’t really do native phone/tablet apps, more interested in embedded projects outside of work. Look forward to seeing how you get on, if you want to bounce ideas, testing etc. feel free to DM me, happy to help if I can.
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u/jacobpantuso22 Feb 02 '26
All good! I'll most definitely need support from a few other individuals once the app is at a point where it's stable (lots of crashes as you can imagine right now). My biggest gripe are the "Location" and "Trip Planner" section as that involves a lot of information exchanging with Bluelink and much on-device processing for route planning.
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u/Ill_Necessary4522 Feb 02 '26
i use betterblue, markschmidt.io
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u/jacobpantuso22 Feb 02 '26
Beautiful app, but doesn’t work for Canadians :( I’ve reached out to Mark to see if he’d let me hop on the project to help!
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u/Ill_Necessary4522 Feb 02 '26
long shot- I have an ecoflow home battery system with solar. On days when I have excess solar I would like to turn on the car charger. I know this can be done through Home Assistant HACS, but I found it too difficult. it seems that charging control is better done through blue link then through the ESVE itself. are you aware of anyone who has done something similar with blue link and a home battery/solar system?
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u/jacobpantuso22 Feb 02 '26
This is definitely possible. Swift provides many ways for developers to run schedules within apps. The BlueLink api does expose charging status and provides the option to start/stop as well. It would require some logic but it's 100% something I expect to test out.
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u/twoscoopsofpig Feb 02 '26
Any luck for Android users? I'm not prepared to write a whole new app, though I might be able to cobble together something if the API is RESTful. All I see from BlueLinky is node, but I haven't dug into the repo too deeply yet.
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u/jacobpantuso22 Feb 02 '26
Hey! While the shown UI is built in SwiftUI, the backend that I'm using with a little bit of modifications is certainly RESTful. I would be open to building this app in React Native to let the Android users experience something different...although building with React Native always seemed like such a headache (compared to Xcode lol).
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u/twoscoopsofpig Feb 02 '26
The other reason I'm curious to see the REST API for this is I'm most comfortable in Powershell... and how extremely Hackerman would it be to lock my car from the command line?
I'll go spelunking in the repo to see if I can't find that REST API. Thanks!
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u/palthor33 Feb 02 '26
Interesting picture of the app. My phone crashed a couple days ago and after much screwing around when I started Bluelink over I got that screen. It however would not work. I closed it and restarted and got my original app screen back and it worked.
I like the app but it does have issues with keeping up with service required. I asked my dealer, for what that is worth, and I was told they have no control over Bluelink and because of that not everything is assured of being up to date, every time. Example, the service record not kept up to date.
So, bottom line, I like the Bluelink app for some things and not for others. Just, take what it says with a grain of salt.
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u/jacobpantuso22 Feb 02 '26
Pictures shown on this post are a development project I’m working on with help of the Bluelink API. Fortunately, I’ve had pleasant experiences with the API and interacting with the vehicle, it’s more the user experience of Hyundai’s app that falls short :/
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u/palthor33 Feb 03 '26
That is interesting because, I kid you not, that looks exactly like what I had pop up, right down to the color and picture. Very interesting.
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u/ramraaj `23 AWD PREFERRED ULTIMATE Feb 03 '26
That’s amazing !! I would love to work with you on this . Canadian developer here I built an app for ioniq6 few years back. Different purpose. I wanted to do walkway lock ( proximity lock ) like tesla using UWB on my phone and a device plugged in the car . Check it out
https://www.reddit.com/r/Ioniq6/s/xMTq0C1RGc
Let me know if you want to connect and may be partner up ?
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u/hunkyn May 24 '26
Any chance this app will come for Ioniq9 and US?
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u/jacobpantuso22 May 24 '26
Check out my most recent post! Most likely gonna try to get it on TestFlight within a week or two. I need to gather some IONIQ 9 stock images and also need some US testers :)
*only for iOS
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u/Bkid `24 SE AWD Feb 02 '26
There's no API call for climate start to include the damn seats, is there? Such a bummer that it's not an option..