HomeKit Home app SUCKS!!

[Mark Booth]

iPhone 13 Pro running iOS 16.4. All HomeKit Apple devices (1st gen HomePods and Apple TV 4Ks) are on 16.4.1.

Inside the Home app/automations, ALL of my automations are turned off. I am unable to enable them. The reason: Because the Home app seems to think I don't have a Home Hub.

I have SEVEN Apple devices that count as Home Hubs. Four HomePods and three Apple TV 4K. ALL of them are on the SAME network. The SAME network that my iPhone is on.

Inside the HOME app settings, it clearly shows that I have seven Home Hubs and one bridge. The Home Hubs are all on StandBy. Yet, in Automations, the Home app says I don't have a Home Hub installed.

I'VE GOT SEVEN OF THEM!!!!! And the Home app knows about them because they are there, VISIBLE in Home app settings.

I am so sick and tired of FIGHTING with my HomePods to get them to work as they should. I'm stick and tried of lights that won't turn on or off at the right time because the HOME APP SUCKS!

Doesn't Apple actually TEST this stuff in real world settings?

How can a company, with so much money and so much talent be so INCREDIBLY bad at software design?

AAAAAAAARGH!!!

Mark

 

[russell_314]

iPhone 13 Pro running iOS 16.4. All HomeKit Apple devices (1st gen HomePods and Apple TV 4Ks) are on 16.4.1.

Inside the Home app/automations, ALL of my automations are turned off. I am unable to enable them. The reason: Because the Home app seems to think I don't have a Home Hub.

I have SEVEN Apple devices that count as Home Hubs. Four HomePods and three Apple TV 4K. ALL of them are on the SAME network. The SAME network that my iPhone is on.

Inside the HOME app settings, it clearly shows that I have seven Home Hubs and one bridge. The Home Hubs are all on StandBy. Yet, in Automations, the Home app says I don't have a Home Hub installed.

I'VE GOT SEVEN OF THEM!!!!! And the Home app knows about them because they are there, VISIBLE in Home app settings.

I am so sick and tired of FIGHTING with my HomePods to get them to work as they should. I'm stick and tried of lights that won't turn on or off at the right time because the HOME APP SUCKS!

Doesn't Apple actually TEST this stuff in real world settings?

How can a company, with so much money and so much talent be so INCREDIBLY bad at software design?

AAAAAAAARGH!!!

Mark

You should have one default home hub that's running. I'm pretty sure only one can be active at a time. Unplug it and plug it back in.


Yes HomeKit sucks. I have a simple set up with a few lights and when it works it works but sometimes it wants to be weird. My biggest piece of advice is don't change anything once it's working. When I did the update to 16.4 everything stopped working. I think I had to delete the Home and reset it all up again. That was a mess..

 

[Mark Booth]

Here's what's showing in the Home App on my iPhone for Home Hubs:

The Bedroom and Dinning room HomePods have already been power cycled multiple times today. I've rebooted the Living Room Apple TV twice too. I also removed both of those HomePods and added them back. No change.

They ALL still show Standby. I can't get any of them to show "connected".

Apple's Home app is TRASH!

Mark

 

[Mark Booth]

These solved the problem with a Home Hub not being active:

How to fix an Apple HomeKit hub stuck in Standby mode - Stacey on IoT | Internet of Things news and analysis

On our latest IoT Podcast episode, we take a question that Chris left on our IoT Voicemail hotline. Chris has a pair of Apple TV 4K boxes and one HomePod mini, all of which can be used as an Apple HomeKit hub. You can use HomeKit without a hub, but if you want to run […]

staceyoniot.com

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/did-tvos-14-nuke-your-remote-access-with-solution.2257867/

It is beyond IDIOTIC that rebooting or power cycling a device does not restore its functionality as a Home Hub.

The Home app is a piece of trash!

Mark

 

[sparky672]

These solved the problem with a Home Hub not being active:

So you had to toggle the Home Hub setting on each device to get it working?

I agree... you'd think one line of code would be in there to read and apply the settings after any power failure or reboot. I suspect that one of the updates or the new architecture left some settings corrupted or missing, forcing one to toggle (or re-set) a setting. No excuse.

There seems to be a lot of little programming oversights lately, but they never neglect keeping the emojis up to date with the spec.

 

[Mark Booth]

I only needed to toggle the home hub setting in ONE device (my Apple TV 4K in the Living Room). There's no need for more than one Home Hub.

As for Apple... SCREW their emoji updates. There are SO MANY little issues with Siri, HomeKit, Home App, HomePod, Apple Music, etc. Every software engineer should be fixing the BUGS and actually testing the stuff in real-world situations.

My buddy with an Alexa/SONOS set up laughs out loud every time he's over here and I tell Siri to play something on my HomePod and, inevitably, Siri is unable to follow the command. He NEVER has those issues when asking Alexa to play from Amazon Music or his own library of music.

HomePod and HomeKit could be SO GOOD but it SUCKS because Apple has NEVER been able to follow through with this type of software.

Mark

 

[sparky672]

I know.

What's even more annoying than a bug is the crap that seems to get fixed and then breaks again later.

For almost a year, I ask my phone connected with CarPlay to resume Podcasts, but instead just plays random music. Suddenly this started working properly since 16.4.1. The thing is, prior to a year ago, this had always been working fine.

With Apple lately it seems to be a merry-go-round of bugs, they get fixed and then randomly come back later along with a few new bugs... everywhere... but mostly with Siri commands, Find My AirPods, Handoff/Continuity, CarPlay, and HomeKit. At this point, I'm just thankful that my iPhone can still make/receive calls and take photos.