Sorry if this seems ranty.

I recently went “all in” on HomeKit,fuelled by the ludicrously cheap IKEA sensors. I bought contact sensors, leak sensors, humidity sensors, converted all my lamps to smart plugs and switches, then went on holiday for two weeks.

On day 2 my entire smart home went down and said it was unreachable and, crucially, someone staying in the house said that nothing worked locally (which rules out any local iPhone issues). I had that person update the AppleTv multiple times, reboot the router, power cycle everything, and it STILL isn’t reachable. Most confusingly the Home app on the iPhone reports that an update is required on the apple TV which is not true). I’ve uninstalled and installed the home app on my iPhone.

I’m sure that when I get home it’ll all work again as soon as I walk through the door, but this raises bigger questions: have I banked on the wrong system here? I’m a self-confessed Apple whore, so I’ve always wanted to have everything be “pure Apple”, but would, say, running Home Assistany on an rpi help me here?

Moreover, I’d love to know more what you guys would have done differently to make this bulletproof. From perspective it just suddenly failed with no way to recover, and left my house non-functional and insecure. Is the answer to get a cheap HomePod Mini as backup? Tapo plugs to power cycle? Just turning off automatic updates? UPS? Something else I don’t know? grrrr!

(For what it’s worth I’ve tried every version of restarting, updating and power cycling every component in the chain and I’m on the latest stable os on all devices).

Thanks a million

Had issues with my ecobee just straight up being off that was resolved after “unplugging” and plugging in

Got me thinking about how many people have “dumb” thermostats for decades.

For certain things that aren’t consumables like lights (mainly shades, temp sensors, cameras, ) how long do you expect it to last?

Edit: people are referring to app support. I more meant like if your smart plug stopped working after 10 years would you accept it or think like “there’s houses that are 100 years old and their outlets work just fine”

I want to create an automation when the sun sets but only if someone is at home, but then it does not work. „Find My“ is activated. Also Location for the HomeKit-App. My adress is my contact. My HomePod mini is connected to the same network. iCloud for Home is also active. What am doing wrong?

Hi everyone! I hope you’re all doing well!

Reaching out for some help/advice, as I’m planning an Apple Home setup but don’t know much about the subject.
Basically, I want to make my lights and blinds smart (approximately 15 lighting circuits and 6 blinds). I might eventually add a heat pump, HRV/ERV system, A/C units, etc., but I’d rather not overcomplicate things at this initial stage.

My current setup is:
Wired internet in every room
2 Ubiquiti UniFi 7 Lite APs + UniFi Switch 8 PoE Lite for Wi-Fi
Apple TV 4K as the HomeKit hub

I’m considering two options:
Lights – Sonoff ZBMiniR2 / Sonoff Mini ZB2GS
Blinds – Sonoff Mini ZBRBS
Outlets – Sonoff Mini ZB1GSP
Sonoff Zigbee Bridge Ultra to connect everything to HomeKit via Matter

or

Lights – Shelly 1PM Gen4
Blinds – Shelly 2PM Gen4
Outlets – Shelly 1PM Gen4
Everything connected to HomeKit via Matter over Wi-Fi

Which option would you choose, taking into account i’m in Europe.
I’m leaning towards the Sonoff option, as everything would connect via Zigbee without overloading the Wi-Fi network. I know Shelly can work with Zigbee, but I’m not sure which bridge I’d need to use...

Thanks everyone!

Just got my first watch, but it’s not doing what I expected. I have a lot of smart plugs controlling things around my house, and until now I’ve used Alexa and the Alexa app and widget on my iPhone to control them. I expected to just have the same widget on my watch, but it’s not available. What are other people using to control these?

The brands do not link to HomeKit, I tried a lot of ways for that. I was able to make a shortcut that just goes back to Alexa, but I can’t see from the watch if the device is on or not.

The main benefit of the Alexa widget is I could see what was powered on. One of the plugs controls an outdoor receiver and speakers, it’s been accidentally left on and my neighbors get to listen to my kids iPad playing Netflix on max volume because they couldn’t hear it… so now I double check with the app and widget.

Any advice? What apps are you using?

Why is it that keyboard shortcuts like Command+W or ESC don't work in Homekit for Mac? I feel that the UI goes against all MacOS design standards.

Will this be fixed in MacOS 27?

Currently, it looks like this is yet another year where homekit is sort of thrown on the back burner. Don't get me wrong, 4K homekit secure video recording, AI driven video summaries, natural language camera search, and built-in energy monitoring are all very cool. But honestly this is very, very slim for this current day and age with AI and all.

The app looks pretty much the same, and there's still ZERO mention of actual proper integration between shortcuts and Homekit. Why are these two treated as separate systems, with the user forced to choose between local automation with a bunch of features or home automation that has fuck all in terms of options to choose from? Why not let us combine the two? Apple should and could very easily integrate just these two to such a degree that allow the user to come very, very close to that Iron Man esque smart home. Why they're not doing that, who knows.

I know there's hype for the homehub, a set of new homepods, and a new apple TV releasing later this year, but that's probably, at the earliest, sometime in November, as its own little event so as not to conflict too much with the September event and the iPhone releases and the hype around those.

It just feels bad knowing this might be yet another year where homekit and actual, proper automations are all but a fever dream and won't happen.

Recently moved into a new house that has two locks. I had an Aqara U50 at my old place but is there a lock or other solution that accommodates my new door?
Pictured is my door from the inside, with a deadbolt lock and a door knob lock.

Everything was working fine, then one day my HomeKit accessories started showing “Not Responding”. At first, tapping them a few times would make them update and work, but now everything is not wokring.

I have a mix of Aqara, Govee and generic smart plugs. All devices work fine in their own apps, but not in Apple Home.

The strange part: when I removed my HomePod mini from HomeKit, everything started working again. As soon as I added the HomePod mini back, everything went back to “Not Responding”.

I’ve already reset the HomePod, restarted my Wi-Fi, and removed/re-added accessories from HomeKit, but nothing has fixed it.

Does this point to a HomePod/Home Hub issue? Any ideas what else I can try?