iOS 16 Introduces Entirely Overhauled Home App to Focus More on Reliability and Ease of Use

[bbednarz]

People complaining about Hue with HomeKit, are you having some kind of network issue? Are you living in an apartment with a lot of interference? I have had Hue since 2016 and used it with 3-4 different routers and its ALWAYS been rock solid with HomeKit. Every now and then I'll press a button on one of the Hue switches and it'll take a second to complete the request, but thats fairly rare.

Its always impossible to truly diagnose, but I feel like so many of these issues are caused by bad network conditions. Hopefully whatever Apple is doing will help with that.

 

[sdwaltz]

I don’t know if you’re familiar with it, but the Starling hub allows you to use Nest products with HomeKit/Siri.

It is a bit pricey, but for being an unofficial solution to Nest HomeKit support, I am shocked at how well it works. Never had an issue since setting it up a year ago.

My Nest cameras and thermostat are accessible via HomeKit now (and even show up on my Apple TV). My Nest smoke detectors can give critical and motion alerts via HomeKit. And all my Google Home devices are now AirPlay compatible.

I usually don’t like promoting products on the forum, but the Starling hub works so well integrating Nest and HomeKit that I had to mention it. If you don’t mind shelling out some money to add the functionality, I highly recommend it.

Thanks for the tip!

 

[_Spinn_]

I can't wait to try it out.

Also excited for Matter to officially launch.

 

[KENESS]

Matter protocol was designed with low power devices than previously ran on bluetooth. I’m guessing high bandwidth items like cameras might not be compatible, at least initially.

You're thinking of Thread... Thread is a fast, low power low resource connectivity for things like sensors and other smart devices which don't need to send lots of data and/or need to run a long time on small batteries. Thread is currently supported by a few devices and hubs, notably the most recent Apple TV's and the HomePod minis.

Thread can typically replace Bluetooth devices as well as Zigbee devices, which up until now always needed a 3rd party hub to connect to HomeKit. (Thread is, in many ways, just a modern upgrade of ZigBee.)

Matter, however, is the "umbrella" framework that can USE Thread or WiFi or other supported protocols to talk to devices.

So, it is Matter that you want to look for if you are looking for a device that will interoperate with different ecosystems. It is the framework that ensures any Matter compatible device can work with any Matter certified ecosystem (like Apple's or Google's or Amazon's).

Technically it would be possible to have a Thread device which is NOT Matter certified. In fact, since Matter hasn't been released yet, that's ALL we have. It might not be compatible with all ecosystems. The current Thread devices are using a special "Thread over HomeKit" mode since Matter hasn't been released. Ultimately, they are almost certain to be upgraded to Thread over Matter once Matter is finally released. (And therefore, by default, also HomeKit since HomeKit is going to be Matter certified.) But the current "Thread over HomeKit" devices which support Thread likely DON'T support Google or Alexa yet, because it isn't the Thread which makes them interoperable, it is the Matter.

I know, I know, clear as mud.

 

[ehrens]

People complaining about Hue with HomeKit, are you having some kind of network issue? Are you living in an apartment with a lot of interference? I have had Hue since 2016 and used it with 3-4 different routers and its ALWAYS been rock solid with HomeKit. Every now and then I'll press a button on one of the Hue switches and it'll take a second to complete the request, but thats fairly rare.

Its always impossible to truly diagnose, but I feel like so many of these issues are caused by bad network conditions. Hopefully whatever Apple is doing will help with that.

Network guru here. Yes, Hue just sucks when in tandem with HomeKit.

If anything interrupts the statis of my Hue's connection with the greater LAN, it hobbles almost all of my automations. This is now compounded by the latest major release of Hue that disables syncing between Hue and Home after the initial pairing, where Hue switch commands will override HomeKit mappings. The only way to mend it is what I lovingly refer to as "the Comcast" which is just power cycling it and hoping everything turns out okay. If I could just pair the Hue bulbs directly with HomeKit rather than having to use the hub, that would be grrreat.

 

[alexandr]

Does Control Center finally prioritize the lamps which are actually on instead of showing me random lights and I have to dig deeper to finally turn them off?

Oh you'd like that wouldn't you??

 

[ipedro]

The hue app is better, and it demonstrates how bad Homekit was because when home kit became inaccessible the hue app often continued to work. But lights aren't something I want to use an app for. We also invested in smart switches, and we use them most of the time. Homekit is mostly limited to turning off lights once we are in bed, or if we want to simulate being home.

If you're turning off lights manually through the Home app or Siri, you might be missing out on the limitless possibilities of a smart home. I rarely ever switch lights off individually. That's an old habit that people often bring along from a lifetime of using manual switches. The Home app and Siri really shine when you've set scenes that involve the whole home and multiple categories of devices.

The other habit people have carried forward is preserving energy by switching off lights. Incandescent lights were literally burning energy and turning them off when not in active use made sense. LEDs are so efficient that energy use from a single bulb is pennies and not worth concerning over single lights.

I have scenes set up that respond to activities. Most of the time, my home is acting automatically according to the status of the people in the home and my schedule. If I have work on my schedule or am in my office, my lights are brighter and whiter for better concentration. If it's after sunset and I have no work events in my schedule, my lights automatically go to soft reds and blues, stimulating relaxation.

The times in which I prompt Siri to change the lights are regarding activities: Get ready for dinner, set the scene for Cooking, watch TV, Get ready for bed, Good night. Each of these control multiple lights, set the temperature in the home and turn TVs on or off. I rarely, if ever try to turn off a light in a specific room. My scenes are set in a way that makes that light being on, make sense.

When I have someone new in my life, I've often had to retrain their habits but within a few weeks, they love it and don't want to go back.

 

[4jasontv]

If you're turning off lights manually through the Home app or Siri, you might be missing out on the limitless possibilities of a smart home. I rarely ever switch lights off individually. That's an old habit that people often bring along from a lifetime of using manual switches. The Home app and Siri really shine when you've set scenes that involve the whole home and multiple categories of devices.

The other habit people have carried forward is preserving energy by switching off lights. Incandescent lights were literally burning energy and turning them off when not in active use made sense. LEDs are so efficient that energy use from a single bulb is pennies and not worth concerning over single lights.

I have scenes set up that respond to activities. Most of the time, my home is acting automatically according to the status of the people in the home and my schedule. If I have work on my schedule or am in my office, my lights are brighter and whiter for better concentration. If it's after sunset and I have no work events in my schedule, my lights automatically go to soft reds and blues, stimulating relaxation.

The times in which I prompt Siri to change the lights are regarding activities: Get ready for dinner, set the scene for Cooking, watch TV, Get ready for bed, Good night. Each of these control multiple lights, set the temperature in the home and turn TVs on or off. I rarely, if ever try to turn off a light in a specific room. My scenes are set in a way that makes that light being on, make sense.

When I have someone new in my life, I've often had to retrain their habits but within a few weeks, they love it and don't want to go back.

I think you grossly overestimate the number of lights I have in each room. As for brightness and color, I adjust that with switches and home kit. I am not even sure how I would go about automating a scene. I can't do it based on time, and if I have manually tell it what scene I want why can't I just adjust the color and brightness?

If I had a studio I could see how that might make more sense but I don't see how I can implement that when every task you described has it's own room.

The only thing I use Siri for is driving directions. Talking annoys me. I did try geolocation automation for a bit but it never worked.

 

[Shin-Ra]

The main thing I wanted (apart from lots more attractively-priced Thread devices) is Home buttons on the iPad Lock Screen instead of being squished into Control Centre.

But no Lock Screen widgets for iPad this year!

 

[ZeebUK]

What I really want is the ability to specify which devices users have access to. So someone who is staying for a week can control heating and lighting in their room and a couple of other areas. But not control my room or speakers!

 

[ipedro]

I think you grossly overestimate the number of lights I have in each room. As for brightness and color, I adjust that with switches and home kit. I am not even sure how I would go about automating a scene. I can't do it based on time, and if I have manually tell it what scene I want why can't I just adjust the color and brightness?

If I had a studio I could see how that might make more sense but I don't see how I can implement that when every task you described has it's own room.

The only thing I use Siri for is driving directions. Talking annoys me. I did try geolocation automation for a bit but it never worked.

I've been buying Hue lights since 2012 when Phillips launched their first set. A decade later, every last light in my home is smart. I've figured out scenes that work intuitively for the large number of lights I have in my home. I mindlessly go around my home and talk to Siri as scenes need to change – not deliberately stopping and asking for her to do something, I often mumble under my breath and she gets it. And that's if she hasn't already guessed based off the other variables what state things should be in. My energy bill is a fraction of what it was when I had standard lights. It just never will be that high, even if I left lights on all day – some of which are typically on to stimulate moods or as subliminal reminders of tasks I have to do through the day.

I've been to friend's homes that have purchased smart home devices and can't believe how much functionality they're leaving on the table. When I show them mine, their minds are blown. It's not like any of this is hard to manage. You just need to give it some thought when setting it up and after that, it just works and becomes second nature.

 

[4jasontv]

I've been buying Hue lights since 2012 when Phillips launched their first set. A decade later, every last light in my home is smart. I've figured out scenes that work intuitively for the large number of lights I have in my home. I mindlessly go around my home and talk to Siri as scenes need to change – not deliberately stopping and asking for her to do something, I often mumble under my breath and she gets it. And that's if she hasn't already guessed based off the other variables what state things should be in. My energy bill is a fraction of what it was when I had standard lights. It just never will be that high, even if I left lights on all day – some of which are typically on to stimulate moods or as subliminal reminders of tasks I have to do through the day.

I've been to friend's homes that have purchased smart home devices and can't believe how much functionality they're leaving on the table. When I show them mine, their minds are blown. It's not like any of this is hard to manage. You just need to give it some thought when setting it up and after that, it just works and becomes second nature.

Again... there is no point in setting lights based on the time of day and geolocations are unreliable. And I still don't understand how speaking is better than hitting a switch when switches can control individual lights and groups of lights.

I tried using motion sensors, but pets turn lights on and the lights never stay on for the right amount of time.

 

[ipedro]

Again... You can't base lights on the time of day and geolocations are unreliable.

Time of the day is just one factor that when associated with other factors like presence, calendar events, and more, can accurately convey to the automation how you'd like your home to respond without your direct intervention. And of course geolocations are reliable. Your exact coordinates make it known exactly where the Sun is on the horizon.

So I still don't understand how speaking is better than hitting a switch?

Because your voice is always with you, while a switch can be across the room while you're in bed or on the couch, or in a different room entirely. Sure, augment voice commands with switches that activate entire scenes, but controlling one light at a time with a switch is exactly one of the major inefficiencies smart lights were meant to resolve.

I can see that I'm not going to illuminate you (haha pun intended), because you're stuck in your ways and unwilling to learn how scenes and voice commands can improve your home but I can tell you from experience going on a decade with these lights and other smart home devices, that my home is living proof that this can all work really well to the point where when I'm at someone else's home or a hotel, I immediately sense the friction of having to manage one light at a time and it feels like I've travelled back to the past.

 

[4jasontv]

Time of the day is just one factor that when associated with other factors like presence, calendar events, and more, can accurately convey to the automation how you'd like your home to respond without your direct intervention. And of course geolocations are reliable. Your exact coordinates make it known exactly where the Sun is on the horizon.

What do you mean by presence? Just because I enter a room doesn't mean I want the light on. I am not going to schedule a snack or a bathroom break, so I don't see how calendars can be used. Again - time can't be reliably used because the time of day has little to do with the task I want to do.

Because your voice is always with you, while a switch can be across the room while you're in bed or on the couch, or in a different room entirely. Sure, augment voice commands with switches that activate entire scenes, but controlling one light at a time with a switch is exactly one of the major inefficiencies smart lights were meant to resolve.

You can control multiple lights with a switch, and you can control all the lights with your phone. Voice doesn't always work but buttons do.

I can see that I'm not going to illuminate you (haha pun intended), because you're stuck in your ways and unwilling to learn how scenes and voice commands can improve your home but I can tell you from experience going on a decade with these lights and other smart home devices, that my home is living proof that this can all work really well to the point where when I'm at someone else's home or a hotel, I immediately sense the friction of having to manage one light at a time and it feels like I've travelled back to the past.

I have yet to hear how they are implanted in a way that is better than tapping a button on my watch or phone. Automation has to deduce or schedule things and they will always be inaccuracy as a result.

 

[twistedpixel8]

I could go on a long rant about Home but I’ll try to keep it short:

1) I’ve had problems finding out if a product is Home compatible. The packaging will tell you it’s compatible with Alexa and Google but it frequently won’t say anything about Apple Home.

2) I have problems finding out if a ‘Home compatible’ product really should have an asterisk displayed because you actually need to use the manufacturers control box and software to really use it, even if only for set up.

3) Few ‘experts’ at an Apple store can help with Home questions, and that shrinks to no one at a lighting or Home Depot type store.

It’s actually been a while since I’ve looked at smart home products. Too much information about how to use Google and Alexa and too little about Apple made me quit bothering to look.

Apple did this to themselves. Not enough investment in making HomeKit as great as it could be.

I sincerely hope the entire HomeKit team was shuffled with better management after iOS 15 basically ruined it.

I would love to be able to open the Home app and not see “no response” on literally everything, only to force quit the app and reopen it a fraction of a second later to see that there was a response, from every single device. I would also love to be able to ask HomePod Siri to do something and not have to stop what I’m doing and wait to see if she’s actually going to complete what I’ve asked without getting confused about whether or not she received a response. Worked fine in 14, ruined in 15, hopefully they went back and improved the core for 16. If not, I think I might go back to Alexa. I’ve run out of patience.

 

[PsykX]

I'm scared because they said HomeKit was to be the foundation of Matter. I have about 30 HomeKit accessories and the experience can be really bad at times. (No response and Response delays)

I an glad that they talked about reliability during the keynote. At this point, this is all I'm going to ask from them, because I invested a lot in this ecosystem.

 

[srbNYC]

So from pictures it looks like I lose two things here. 1 a list of favorites accessories. 2 ability to select a room. How is this better?

Tap on a room name, and it opens a "page" of that room's stuff.

 

[name99]

Check out Google’s Home app if you want to appreciate Apple’s a little more.

That's the most depressing thing about this.
Yes, HomeKit is truly terrible. And yet (if you want to do any sort of genuine automation, not just trivial voice commands) HomeKit is *better* than all the other garbage available.

It's like every person associated with this space is competing to be the most utterly incompetent! It feels like no-one on the Amazon, Google, or Apple teams has a clue how automation actually works, how programming works, or basically any computing concept invented after 1950.

 

[Mac Eagle]

What I really want is the ability to specify which devices users have access to. So someone who is staying for a week can control heating and lighting in their room and a couple of other areas. But not control my room or speakers!

100% this! Even within a family. I have kids and would like to be able to give them access to Home but don't want them to have access to certain devices. Apple really needs to implement this kind of multi user access.

 

[name99]

People complaining about Hue with HomeKit, are you having some kind of network issue? Are you living in an apartment with a lot of interference? I have had Hue since 2016 and used it with 3-4 different routers and its ALWAYS been rock solid with HomeKit. Every now and then I'll press a button on one of the Hue switches and it'll take a second to complete the request, but thats fairly rare.

Its always impossible to truly diagnose, but I feel like so many of these issues are caused by bad network conditions. Hopefully whatever Apple is doing will help with that.

It UNIMPORTANT whether these people are having network issues or no. That is the point!
If there are network issues, why doesn't Home.app report it in some useful fashion? Not a vague "some accessories did not reply" but an actually useful "I cannot connect to the Hue hub. Perhaps you should restart it"!

Apple
- refuses to tell you what went wrong when a scene or automation fails
- refuses to provide any logging or debugging
- refuses to track patterns of failure to suggest something useful ("your hue hub frequently cannot be reached. Perhaps it should be moved closer to the wifi base station" or whatever.

All of these are problems that were obvious the day HomeKit shipped years ago, and have still not been addressed.
THAT is why most people have nothing but contempt for every person associated with HomeKit.

 

[name99]

What do you mean by presence? Just because I enter a room doesn't mean I want the light on. I am not going to schedule a snack or a bathroom break, so I don't see how calendars can be used. Again - time can't be reliably used because the time of day has little to do with the task I want to do.

You can control multiple lights with a switch, and you can control all the lights with your phone. Voice doesn't always work but buttons do.

I have yet to hear how they are implanted in a way that is better than tapping a button on my watch or phone. Automation has to deduce or schedule things and they will always be inaccuracy as a result.

What he means is that there is a vast amount of basic automation functionality that should be provided by Apple in the creation of automations but is not.
This means things like timers (do something then switch off after 10 minutes), booleans and if else clauses (if the temperature outside is above 74 then close the blinds else open the blinds), easy access to weather (eg temperature outside) and so on.

You think Homekit is about Siri and tapping buttons; he is concerned with automation and getting things to just happen. I WANT my house to have blinds that auto open/close depending on a variety of factors (like temperature and cloud cover) -- and while I can mostly hack that together in HomeKit (using a LOT of external Homebridge functionality) it only works about 50% of the time because of HomeKit unreliability.
Same thing for putting together lighting that turns on when I enter the room and dims when I leave it.

Presence, BTW, is not the same thing as motion. Presence is an on-go=ing boolean as to whether you are in the room or not; not whether you are moving. It can be provided in multiple ways, from an IR sensor (not great...) to a smart camera to detector positioned above the door. The fact that you don't know how to (or are not interested in) automating eg the lights in a room based on presence doesn't change the fact that other people that other people ARE interested in doing this.

Basically every group in Apple that touches Automation is utterly clueless.
Shortcuts is the same. You can create an automation that is supposed to switch on the TV, dim the lights and start a fan when you begin a workout, but (as of iOS/watchOS right now) it simply DOES NOT EXECUTE.
Or you can ask Reminders to do something when you get home, and there's a 50% chance it will or will not actually tell you about the issue when you arrive home.

 

[Belifant]

What do you mean by presence? Just because I enter a room doesn't mean I want the light on. I am not going to schedule a snack or a bathroom break, so I don't see how calendars can be used. Again - time can't be reliably used because the time of day has little to do with the task I want to do.

You can control multiple lights with a switch, and you can control all the lights with your phone. Voice doesn't always work but buttons do.

I have yet to hear how they are implanted in a way that is better than tapping a button on my watch or phone. Automation has to deduce or schedule things and they will always be inaccuracy as a result.

To jump in here, in principle I agree with ipedro that using light switches is a very old fashioned way of using smart lights. But, I don't like talking to Siri, so I went with lots of motion sensors all around the house, some controlling only very specific small areas, for example one motion sensor controls only the lights in the kitchen above the stove area (if that's what it's called). Most motion sensors are coupled with automations and conditions, for example, the bath room ventilation only turns on if a person is present AND the door is closed, and will turn off a few minutes after the door has been opened.

In regards to pets, it's all about the right positioning of the sensors. I even 3D printed some "shields" for my sensors to limit the area they can "see".

 

[name99]

I think you grossly overestimate the number of lights I have in each room. As for brightness and color, I adjust that with switches and home kit. I am not even sure how I would go about automating a scene. I can't do it based on time, and if I have manually tell it what scene I want why can't I just adjust the color and brightness?

If I had a studio I could see how that might make more sense but I don't see how I can implement that when every task you described has it's own room.

The only thing I use Siri for is driving directions. Talking annoys me. I did try geolocation automation for a bit but it never worked.

He specifically said automation is NOT ABOUT SIRI!!!
Automation is about the house knowing that you have entered (or exited) the room and doing the right thing AUTOMATICALLY.

That is what serious HomeKit users want. And that is where Apple does such a terrible job, at every stage from the basic Automation programming to the utter unreliability of the Automation execution.
When it works, it is really sweet. But few people are ever going to try to show you how well it works because of the Apple unreliability factor. Right now you mostly look like an idiot trying to demo it. That is what we want FIXED!!!

 

[4jasontv]

What he means is that there is a vast amount of basic automation functionality that should be provided by Apple in the creation of automations but is not.
This means things like timers (do something then switch off after 10 minutes), booleans and if else clauses (if the temperature outside is above 74 then close the blinds else open the blinds), easy access to weather (eg temperature outside) and so on.

You think Homekit is about Siri and tapping buttons; he is concerned with automation and getting things to just happen. I WANT my house to have blinds that auto open/close depending on a variety of factors (like temperature and cloud cover) -- and while I can mostly hack that together in HomeKit (using a LOT of external Homebridge functionality) it only works about 50% of the time because of HomeKit unreliability.
Same thing for putting together lighting that turns on when I enter the room and dims when I leave it.

Presence, BTW, is not the same thing as motion. Presence is an on-go=ing boolean as to whether you are in the room or not; not whether you are moving. It can be provided in multiple ways, from an IR sensor (not great...) to a smart camera to detector positioned above the door. The fact that you don't know how to (or are not interested in) automating eg the lights in a room based on presence doesn't change the fact that other people that other people ARE interested in doing this.

Basically every group in Apple that touches Automation is utterly clueless.
Shortcuts is the same. You can create an automation that is supposed to switch on the TV, dim the lights and start a fan when you begin a workout, but (as of iOS/watchOS right now) it simply DOES NOT EXECUTE.
Or you can ask Reminders to do something when you get home, and there's a 50% chance it will or will not actually tell you about the issue when you arrive home.

To jump in here, in principle I agree with ipedro that using light switches is a very old fashioned way of using smart lights. But, I don't like talking to Siri, so I went with lots of motion sensors all around the house, some controlling only very specific small areas, for example one motion sensor controls only the lights in the kitchen above the stove area (if that's what it's called). Most motion sensors are coupled with automations and conditions, for example, the bath room ventilation only turns on if a person is present AND the door is closed, and will turn off a few minutes after the door has been opened.

In regards to pets, it's all about the right positioning of the sensors. I even 3D printed some "shields" for my sensors to limit the area they can "see".

The issue is that these automations aren’t and I don’t see as ever possible to account for the unpredictable nature of existence.

Consider one room. How about the bedroom. When should the lights be on or the blinds open? The answer is likely when no one is trying to sleep, but also when no one is at risk to see in. Unless you want to nap in the sun or keep an eye on people out the window. How does it know if restless in bed, trying to read, or doing dozens of other tasks? How does it know how many people are in the room and which persons needs trump everyone else’s? Measurable values are no help. What time it is means nothing. Temperature and room brightness is insufficient for determining if the lights should be on or the window or blinds closed. At some point you have to tell it to what it should be doing, and when you do you undermine the automation.

 

[4jasontv]

He specifically said automation is NOT ABOUT SIRI!!!
Automation is about the house knowing that you have entered (or exited) the room and doing the right thing AUTOMATICALLY.

That is what serious HomeKit users want. And that is where Apple does such a terrible job, at every stage from the basic Automation programming to the utter unreliability of the Automation execution.
When it works, it is really sweet. But few people are ever going to try to show you how well it works because of the Apple unreliability factor. Right now you mostly look like an idiot trying to demo it. That is what we want FIXED!!!

But automation can’t function as they want short of every person agreeing free will doesn’t exist and joining this platform.