HomeKit Help please - no Home notifications

[rossy100]

Hi - at end of my tether now trying to solve what seems to be a mystery!!

So I have a shared 'Home' with my wife where we have numerous devices connected (lights, door lock, thermostat etc).

Has been working fine for years, but as of last few days my wife is no longer receiving any home notifications (e.g. when door unlocked) on her iPhone. All of her other devices receive the notifications (as do all of mine).

Have checked all notification settings (in main settings and homekit device) have tried restarts, updated software to 16.5, removed her from home and re-added, toggled notifications on and off....... but nothing works.

Any suggestions??

 

[srl7741]

Does she wear an Apple Watch? If she does are those missing notifications getting acknowledged on the Watch and cancelling out the iPhone notifications?

 

[rossy100]

Does she wear an Apple Watch? If she does are those missing notifications getting acknowledged on the Watch and cancelling out the iPhone notifications?

She does wear an Apple Watch - which is also not receiving the notifications. They are however received on both her iPad and MacBook

 

[rossy100]

Am still having this issue - any ideas??

 

[dotme]

I assume there's no active Focus running that might suppress notifications on the device? Other than that, it sounds like you've checked everything I could think of. Final last-ditch effort would be to sign the device out of iCloud, reboot it, sign back in. That's a hassle especially if it resets Apple Pay etc.

I solved a no-notification situation with another App by deleting it (the app itself) from the phone and then re-downloading it. Not sure if you can do that with the Home app (never tried) but if so, maybe that's something else to try. Just be sure to remove the App, not the Home

 

[rossy100]

I assume there's no active Focus running that might suppress notifications on the device? Other than that, it sounds like you've checked everything I could think of. Final last-ditch effort would be to sign the device out of iCloud, reboot it, sign back in. That's a hassle especially if it resets Apple Pay etc.

I solved a no-notification situation with another App by deleting it (the app itself) from the phone and then re-downloading it. Not sure if you can do that with the Home app (never tried) but if so, maybe that's something else to try. Just be sure to remove the App, not the Home

Thanks - I've tried all of that, and no joy :-( ...... + i did delete the home app and reinstall but again nothing. It really is a mystery.

I guess only thing left is a complete device reset/restore.

 

[dotme]

The mechanics of a push notification in HomeKit is a mystery to me, but I suspect they originate from a HomeKit hub... depending on how many of those you have and what they are, that may be another factor to explore. Maybe remove/add one hub (if you have multiples) and then once it's back up, unplug the others and force it to take over. Then test a notification.

All of this because of the "it just works" mentality that leaves us all fumbling in the dark when it doesn't. No logs, no error messages, nothing to work with. You have my sympathies.

 

[rossy100]

Update on this........ did a full reset/restore on phone and notifications are working again. No idea what issue was but thankful it is now resolved.

Separately (I think unrelated) I do get quite a few missing notifications from devices - randomly and sporadic. I think this might have something to do with the home hubs, so have reset all and tried to keep my Apple TV (ethernet connected) as the active hub rather than HomePod (original HomePod).

My Apple TV is a 1st gen 4k......... would upgrading to latest version that has thread support make any improvement to overall Homekit performance/stability??

 

[dotme]

Unless you have Thread devices, I'd say not to spend the money on those at the moment. I run a lot of OG HomePods (and I disabled Hub functionality on my AppleTVs - still on old Architecture) and notifications work fine.

Resetting all hubs would be first step for sure. Also making sure your WiFi node(s) aren't overloaded with devices I suppose, in case it's a matter of a Hub being unable to push a notification to iCloud when it occurs.

 

[rossy100]

Update on this and issue is back again (in fact it wasn’t solved for very long at all!!). This time though, I am also getting sporadic notifications (sometimes work and sometimes don’t). I even tried deleting home completely and re setting everything up (including HomePod) - but made no difference. Any bright ideas???

 

[dotme]

Next time you're away from home (or you could disable WiFi on your iPhone to force cellular data) open the Home app, and in settings where your HomeKit hubs are all listed, are they all either in "Connected" or "Standby" status? They should be. This is a quick and easy way to see if one or more HomeKit hubs is unable to see iCloud. If one or more hubs seems to be "No Response" when away from home, you may have a firewall/AP issue where it can't see the internet and that could explain sporadic notifications. Other than that, I'm not sure what else to look for. Internet is solid I assume?

 

[rossy100]

Thanks. Internet is very solid and WiFi signal very strong to all devices. The hubs all show as you describe when away from home.

However, over weekend notifications suddenly started to come through again on all devices. Not perfect and occasionally some get missed - but certainly better than before. All very odd and inconsistent!

 

[HDJulie]

I have the same problem. It's just me, & my iPad gets the notifications but not the phone or the watch. I've checked focus & it is not on. I've rebooted the phone, iPad, Watch. I even had the iPad & watch off & still did not get a phone notification. It's driving me nuts.