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Apple Confirms iPad Will No Longer Be Supported as a Home Hub in iOS 16

UBS28 said:
Some older iPads that you do not use anymore can be used this way.
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Yes. Apple should have all the usage data and how reliable Home Hub on iPad is. Second, Apple encourage people to trade-in older gear or 'hand me down' to kids/family members than plugging it in 24/7 at home. I do have an iPad mini (5th gen) uses as a digital clock just sitting at home. Could be a niche feature at the end of the day.
 
I don't believe it. My iPad stays at home and is plugged/charged most of the time. iPad as Homehub has been flawless for me. I am not upgrading my iPad till I am forced to.
 
andyyau said:
Current iPads lack of Thread protocol. it is another kind of wireless protocol and is one of supported protocols for Matter. If a smart device uses Thread, iPad cannot communicate with it.

And only Apple TV 4K and the HomePod mini have Thread. So this is the reason.
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Do all HomePods support Thread, now? do all Apple TVs?
 
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This is a bad move by Apple. The ipad has a battery which means the Home Hub continues to work if power is out. Without this the other remaining devices will take longer to reset etc. when the power is restored. This is a security risk because now an intruder can turn off your house power from outside which will disable the remote access to your other battery powered Apple Home devices. Sorry Apple. Keep offering the iPad as a secondary home hub. I have one permanently attached to my wall for HomeKit and use it as a backup Home hub. I also don't want a home pod. I have really good quality hifi gear and in ceiling speakers throughout my property. I have no use for a home pod. Generally HomeKit is becoming a bit of a joke. You can't even run macros or schedules without third party software. Hardly any new HomeKit devices are coming out and now they are taking functionality away. Fail Apple!
 
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EntropyQ3 said:
I could argue against this (why does the hub functionality have to be grafted onto a speaker or a streaming/app/TV box, rather than just - a cheap hub? Do I have to care about the corner case that all my iDevices are discharged when I’m away from home? Isn’t this an ideal task for a pensioned iDevice? et cetera)
Rather, I’d prefer to argue against the hub concept, that functionality cannot be distributed. It’s not as though home automation takes much computing chops, and all the devices are obviously networked, so building the system around having a hub is a weakness in general. If that hub has any problem whatsoever, the system fails. Coordination through a graphical interface is going to require an active screen anyway Once it’s set up, exactly why does there have to be a hub at all?
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That doesn’t really argue against what I said at all it argues against the concept of a hub. A ‘distributed’ hub where any device can be it dynamically would absolutely be better from an scalability and availability point of view I absolutely agree. You don’t want your only hub to fail even if you are away from home as it acts as entry point for any cameras / smart gizmos you want to connect too from outside your network whilst you are away.
 
snooksy83 said:
The ipad has a battery which means the Home Hub continues to work if power is out. Without this the other remaining devices will take longer to reset etc. when the power is restored.
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Surely if the power is out then all your devices / wifi router / etc are going to be powered off, in which case what exactly is the battery powered iPad home hub actually going to be controlling? I don't see how the iPad being the home hub helps in this scenario?
 
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snooksy83 said:
This is a bad move by Apple. The ipad has a battery which means the Home Hub continues to work if power is out. Without this the other remaining devices will take longer to reset etc. when the power is restored. This is a security risk because now an intruder can turn off your house power from outside which will disable the remote access to your other battery powered Apple Home devices. Sorry Apple. Keep offering the iPad as a secondary home hub. I have one permanently attached to my wall for HomeKit and use it as a backup Home hub. I also don't want a home pod. I have really good quality hifi gear and in ceiling speakers throughout my property. I have no use for a home pod. Generally HomeKit is becoming a bit of a joke. You can't even run macros or schedules without third party software. Hardly any new HomeKit devices are coming out and now they are taking functionality away. Fail Apple!
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The HomeKit Hub feature works on iPads only when charging. So the idea that it can work as an additional security if electricity were removed, which among other things would turn off the router and therefore the response of the devices to the homekit hub, is without foundation.
 
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minik said:
I never understood the use of iPad acted as a home hub in the beginning. HomePod and Apple TV make more sense as they tend to be in home location and less likely to switch networks.
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1. No TV in house, so no Apple TV device will ever be in the house.

2. Don't use voice response, and don't need yet another audio source in the house, so HomePod not that exciting.

3. Have older iPad that's still new enough to be supported by the next few releases of iPadOS, so it serves that purpose well.

Yes, I'll likely buy a HomePod Mini to serve the hub role. Might wind up disassembling, disabling the audio features, and declaring it a home hub.
 
msackey said:
Perhaps initially it wasn't such a bizarre choice. But regardless, it seems to be a bit unreasonable not to allow existing iPads to continuing being Home Hubs (with upgraded iOS). They should just stop allowing it once such iPads can no longer be software upgraded. That would be more reasonable.
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Agreed. I wonder if there's a technical aspect here or if it's really just completely arbitrary.
 
So what’s the actual outcome? Have they removed the functionality completely? I’m keeping my iPad on version 15 for now… not going to buy a dedicated device just for this purpose. 🤦‍♀️ I might upgrade my Apple TV but not just yet, as they’re supposed to announce a new version in a couple of weeks…
 
Edit-Jumped the gun a bit, let me rephrase that. I'm still able to control all my Home devices on my iPhone 8 Plus running iOS 16.0 but my iPad mini is not supported for iPadOS 16 so cant say how it will effect iPad's being used as hub when they update to iPadOS 16. Sorry I misspoke
 
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Does anyone know if this is happening now with 16.2 adding Matter support?

I use my iPad as a home hub and don't really want to buy a HomePod, but I guess I will have to once I update.
 
mach said:
Does anyone know if this is happening now with 16.2 adding Matter support?

I use my iPad as a home hub and don't really want to buy a HomePod, but I guess I will have to once I update.
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I think someone mentioned that it’s related to whether or not you have Matter devices in your mix.
 
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