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

[tkaravou]

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?

It's not really that hard to look for more screen shots. Both of the things you're complaining about are not only still there, but they're also still in the same spot more or less

 

[jlc1978]

Does it work if you do “Hey Siri, open KQED” ?

No I get Kiki Dee or Siri can't find KQED. Alexa, OTOH, plays KQED just fine.

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.

There's value to both.

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 see no need to leave lights on when a room is not in use. It's a preference, just as what level to set lights at between 0-100%

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.

There is a lot that you can do. I have actions that turn on garage and kitchen lights when the garage door opens at night, or then garage doors when I open the door to the garage with teh garage door closed. The lights go off after a set time as well.

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.

You seem to imply it's an either or; I see it as adding capability to augment existing ways to do things.

 

[mistafro]

I know there's always an adjustment time needed for major UI updates to anything, but already I'm getting annoyed at having to scroll down the home screen just to get to a particular room rather than just be able to select it from a list. Maybe I'm missing something though?

Yes I feel the same but you can get the room list by tapping the 3 dots icon top right. Hopefully they make some adjustments or bring back the rooms tab at the bottom.

 

[tobybrut]

Here's a surprise. I opened my Home app today to see this window pop up with the prompt: "Your iCloud subscription was recently upgraded to allow recording on unlimited cameras." Wow, so that 5 camera limit with a 2TB iCloud storage plan for HomeKit Secure Video seems to be gone now. I wonder if the limits still exist for lesser plans.

One thing I noticed is that my cameras are kaput on my iPad running the beta for iPadOS 16 but the cameras show up just fine on iOS and macOS betas.

Edit: I just checked with Apple's support page and it says:

50GB plan: Add a single camera
200GB plan: Add up to five cameras.
2TB plan: Add an unlimited number of cameras.

I think the 50GB didn't change. I don't remember what the 200GB used to be.

 

[TonyC28]

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.

I never have any significant issues with Apple’s app. I’m forced to use Google’s because of some Nest cameras we have and it’s astonishing how bad their app is. It’s like an eight grade project or something.

 

[jlc1978]

One thing I noticed is that my cameras are kaput on my iPad running the beta for iPadOS 16 but the cameras show up just fine on iOS and macOS betas.

What iPad do you have and if non-M1chip are any features of iPadOS missing?

 

[tobybrut]

What iPad do you have and if non-M1chip are any features of iPadOS missing?

I'm running the latest iPad Pro 12.9" 2021. It's not missing any features. All of my cameras show up as "Not responding", yet they're all working just fine on all of my other machines running beta software. It seems to communicate with them since the Home app can see the battery levels. It just won't show the video from them.

 

[svish]

The app now looks much better that before! Good changes.

 

[gk4]

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?

I stopped using that and defaulted back to the old way in control center. I figured if the tiles it presents me are going to be useless 99% if the time and I was going to have to hit the Home icon any to drill down - may as well save the wasted space in control center.

 

[aleksander]

And as far as I’m aware, there STILL isn’t a category for smart vacuums.

Unbelievable! Can someone confirm this?

There must be at least one person on the HomeKit team that uses such a device and not a maid to clean their home!

 

[H3LL5P4WN]

Unbelievable! Can someone confirm this?

There must be at least one person on the HomeKit team that uses such a device and not a maid to clean their home!

I could be wrong since developers (like iRobot) won’t be able to submit updates til 16 is released, but still.

 

[bbednarz]

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.

I’ve used it with multiple routers (Comcast‘s provided router, ATT’s provided router, Eero mesh, and now Unifi). There has never been an issue. You say when you reboot your router it starts working again…. That would hint there is a network issue.

Of course if something interrupts your connection with your Hue bridge it will cause your automations to not fire off correctly. The home hub controls the automations, if it cannot connect to the Hue hub it cannot tell the devices what to do. Unless Apple was to add zigbee support to the Apple TV/HomePods, theres no way for the bulbs to talk directly to HomeKit. Look into HomeAssistant if you’re looking to ditch the Hue hub. It will allow you to setup a Zigbee dongle to connect to everything and expose that to HomeKit.

 

[Sir_Macs_A_Lot]

No one should fault them for wanting to get things right.

 

[sjsharksfan12]

I still think Apple TV can benefit by putting the home app on TVOS. I'm still confused how to use it, and if I'm updating my Homepod the right way.

 

[srbNYC]

Looks nice, but so much wasted space UI wise, I don’t want to have to scroll around to find what I need.

Agree 100%.