iOS 27 Home App: 10+ New HomeKit Features

[KENESS]

No idea what you are doing? I have 200+ devices and it's rock solid. Wired Apple TV 4K as main hub. TURN OFF Auto select hubs and it's been rock solid for 2 years.

BUT it still has a lot of other issues.
No search for devices.
Saying a scene has failed but not why ( I've hard switched a light off normally )
No debug status anywhere.

The Ui is still poop since the removed swiping from room to room.

Edit* Actually the "not responded in a while" was always a Wifi issue - even if you are hardwired. I had it with my old netgear Mesh... upgraded to unifi and It's great now.

Why so abrasive at the start? I wasn't attacking you. Or even talking TO you. Maybe you didn't mean it that way, but wow. Anyway...

My setups (3 separate, independent 'homes', as I said) had been stable for about 2 years. One is about the size of yours, one a little smaller and the third is a good bit smaller at about 50 devices.

All three were stable, right up until the 26.4 update. All three started the instant the update finished.

It's easy to say WiFi, but nothing changed there before and after the update. So I'm suspicious of that.

And I guess it is easy to assume someone doesn't know what they're doing, and your right sometimes, but it's not always an productive assumption.

Obviously there is something on my end that caused the update to create a bad situation, since it isn't a universal problem. But that's my whole point. It is too fragile. Everything had been flawless for quite a long time, and then three separate homes all broke upon updating.

And going back to the 'it's the WiFi' mantra, that's often true, but... why? Again, my point. Why is HomeKit SO sensitive to WiFi being "just right" when nothing else is that sensitive. It's fragile.

Hey it's great that your setup is rock solid. Mine had been too! But this isn't the first time things became unstable right after an update (the last one was about 3 years ago, but it was a mess too) and so... they make me nervous. Until Apple has better engineeriers putting more effort into HomeKit so that it is more resilient, I feel like they're just "playing at it". (The New Architecture was a huge start, I had been rock solid since then, but that was years ago now.)

 

[KENESS]

Hmm - never have had one issue with HomeKit. Rock solid for me.

That's great for you.

 

[KENESS]

2 things created a stable HomeKit experience for me:

1. Solid mesh network. For me that’s an eero mesh that has a wired backhauls. Their wireless backhauls are very good as well. I have 4 that cover the house (3 stories). I could use 1 more for my office and garage where it’s weakest but don’t need to. If I were to upgrade I’d go UniFi. Good price, very solid, free features that eero charges for, easy enough to administer. For set it and forget it, eero is king.
2. Forcing the HomeKit hub to the most stable device I have even if it’s wireless. For me that’s a lowly HomePod mini in my kitchen (which is central to the house). When I put it on wired AppleTVs they ALL eventually presented issues on the HomeKit network. I usually got no response errors after a few weeks. My Apple TVs range from the HD up to the 2nd gen 4K (IIRC). Hardware is plenty fast enough.

One mention is that even with that stable network there is 1 device that refuses to stay stable, that’s an old IKEA Tradfri outlet. Sometimes it just … stops working. No other device I have does that. I have had zero issues with Matter devices. I’m too lazy to replace it with a solid device like the Tapo Matter outlet.

Thanks for the tips. Yeah, my WiFi(s) are solid. I won't get all into it, since this isn't really a help forum, but that was one of the first things I did.

Until the 26.4 update, all my HomePod mini's had been completely reliable. Literally, since I upgraded my Wifi and router situations for each home and upgraded to the new HomeKit architecture a few years ago, I don't know if I even had 1 single "no response" issue that wasn't because of a battery wearing out. I definitely had never even one time had the "Home Hub is not responding" message because I had never seen it until the 26.4 update.

Because it is across three homes, and not a universal problem, I'm the common denominator obviously, so there is something I have to track down on my end. But it isn't just me, there are plenty of reports out there of people bumping into the same or similar thing after 26.4 or 26.5. No way of knowing their exact setup/situation, but it is out there.

Recently, I've become suspicious that it might be more related to my Matter/Thread network. Even while the Home Hub is not responding error is on-screen, the Zigbee and WiFi devices on my network work just fine.

Interestingly I've never had a scene or automation not trigger during all of this, and I have automations throughout the day. So even though the error pops up EVERY time I open the Home app on any device, and then goes away about a minute later, the Home Hub is still doing it's job all day long in the background without error.

The thread portion is a much smaller component of my homes, just Level Locks and some Eve Outlets acting as repeaters. So it wouldn't be as daunting to just delete them and start over. And if I do that, I'll probably restore each HomePod mini from scratch by plugging it into my Mac and doing the restore from there.

Anyway, thanks for the positive tips. Hopefully I figure it out soon. I had gotten very used to the reliability.

 

[AbSoluTc]

Not seeing any energy info for my smart plugs (EVE). I can only see that info in the EVE app. I only see grid forcast in the energy tab. Nothing else.

 

[theinstructor]

Question we all have is this finally going to be a useful app?