Our "arrive home" automations no longer work with iOS 16. Before, I had an automation that would unlock a door and we would get prompted by Home to run automation? Now none of the location based automations work. I tried to create a new one by first creating a scene that turns on some lights and unlocks some doors. It works fine pressing the button or asking Siri to run the scene. I created an arrival automation run that scene and it consistently fails. Three household members with iPhone 14 Pro or iPhone SE all running iOS 16. Apple Support is no help. Any ideas how to get the automations working again? Is it because security items are involved?
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HomeKit Location based automations fail to run
- Thread starter dmfresco
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Thanks. I failed to mention that my phone is running the public beta of iOS 16.1 Build 205B5072b. The others are up to date with latest public release of iOS 16.
Hopefully when your HomePods or Apple TV are on 16.1, and acting as Home Hubs, you will notice some improvement.
Nope, nothing to do with security as mine don’t work either and I have no security type devices.
16.1 must be close to release now so this is really worrying.
Someone suggested Apple don’t care about fixing it because of the new architecture in 16.1 but that’s disgusting if true as there will be plenty of people with older devices that don’t quality for the upgrade.
16.1 must be close to release now so this is really worrying.
Someone suggested Apple don’t care about fixing it because of the new architecture in 16.1 but that’s disgusting if true as there will be plenty of people with older devices that don’t quality for the upgrade.
I build this list of settings when troubleshooting something similar a while back. Of course if iOS 16 is just broken then these won't make any difference but might be worth running through them just in case one got reset with the update to iOS 16 or setup of a new device. Hope this helps.
On the iPhone(s):
On the iPhone(s):
- Settings > Privacy > Location Services > On
- Settings > Privacy > Location Services > System Services > Homekit > On
- Settings > Privacy > Location Services > System Services > Find My iPhone > On
- Settings > Privacy > Location Services > System Services > Significant Locations > On
- Settings > {name/photo} > Find My > My Location > This Device
- Settings > {name/photo} > Find My > My Location > Share My Location > On
- Settings > {name/photo} > Password & Security > Two-Factor Authentication > On
- Home App > Home Settings > Location Services > On (If you have HomePods)
- Settings > Location Services > On
Some new build of iOS 16.1 and HomePod 16.1 was just pushed out. Might be final candidate. Fingers crossed. Shame on Apple for having tech support gaslight us into making us jump through lots of hoops to troubleshoot something you seemingly have no intention of fixing until the release of Matter.
This afternoon, I was prompted to update my iPhone to iOS 16.1 (20B79). My guess it's the final candidate build of 16.1. I updated the various HomePod and HomePod Minis in our home. Went out and had two automations to test. One that opens the garage and one that turns on some lights and unlocks some doors. Neither automation worked. Once I was in the house, I got requests from the Home app to run the two automations. I just tried to edit these automations to see if I can widen the diameter around our house. No dice. BTW, I just checked again and the HomePods are running 16.0 and the HomePod Minis are running 16.1. I really wish these automations would just run and trust that its me (or my family) coming home. Also, one of the HomePod Minis is serving as the connected Hub.
Hi dmfresco, I am sorry to hear about your troubles. If it is any consolation to you, well, my time based automations are a hit and miss as well. Mostly miss now. I have a scene programmed, that when my alarm rings at a certain time, my homepod is supposed to play a Playlist. It could not be any simpler. But recently it just doesn't work. I can't believe how bad Homekit is.
I feel like Apple staff don’t even use HomeKit at home. If they did, they wouldn’t let it get as bad as this.
Apple Home/HomeKit became a mess for me with 16.1, it actually worked using 16.0 for me. All of my automation stopped working. Didn't matter if they are location-based or simply time-based. All stopped working.
Normally it was always our bedroom Apple TV (4K Gen.2) that was listed as the "Connected" Home Hub in Apple Home. After updating to iOS 16.1, tvOS 16.1 and audioOS 16.1 I noticed it was our OG HomePod in the Kitchen that was listed as the "Connected" Home Hub.
There is no way to enforce anything within the Home-app, there is no way to remove devices as possible Home Hubs either. We have 2x Apple TVs (both 4K Gen.2) and six OG HomePods (now down to five as one got bricked when trying to install audioOS 16.1...) so the only way I was able to force one of our Apple TVs back to being the connected home hub was to reboot all our OG HomePods in quick session so it was only our two Apple TVs that was available, only then would our Apple TV located in the living-room take over as the Home Hub and all our automation has worked since.
For good measure, I forced it back to being one of our OG HomePods and that resulted in automation not working again. Seems like these OG HomePods are terrible as Home Hubs.. Makes it extremely annoying to not have any control over what device is the preferred home hub.
16.1, and looking at reports from the first 16.2 BETAs seems to point at Apple Home pushing further into using Matter and the OG HomePod does not support Thread which is a huge part of Matter. Hopefully, this means 16.2 will abandon the OG HomePod as a Home Hub otherwise this will get even more frustrating if key features for fully supporting Matter is going to be the luck of the dice depending on whether one of our five OG HomePods or one of our two Apple TVs that fully supports Matter + Thread is acting the connected home hub.
EDIT:
Just to confirm. It was the same for me as dmfresco is describing in terms of pushing the "Test Automation" button in the Home-app. Testing and triggering using Siri was working just fine. But neither location-based or time-based triggers was working.
Normally it was always our bedroom Apple TV (4K Gen.2) that was listed as the "Connected" Home Hub in Apple Home. After updating to iOS 16.1, tvOS 16.1 and audioOS 16.1 I noticed it was our OG HomePod in the Kitchen that was listed as the "Connected" Home Hub.
There is no way to enforce anything within the Home-app, there is no way to remove devices as possible Home Hubs either. We have 2x Apple TVs (both 4K Gen.2) and six OG HomePods (now down to five as one got bricked when trying to install audioOS 16.1...) so the only way I was able to force one of our Apple TVs back to being the connected home hub was to reboot all our OG HomePods in quick session so it was only our two Apple TVs that was available, only then would our Apple TV located in the living-room take over as the Home Hub and all our automation has worked since.
For good measure, I forced it back to being one of our OG HomePods and that resulted in automation not working again. Seems like these OG HomePods are terrible as Home Hubs.. Makes it extremely annoying to not have any control over what device is the preferred home hub.
16.1, and looking at reports from the first 16.2 BETAs seems to point at Apple Home pushing further into using Matter and the OG HomePod does not support Thread which is a huge part of Matter. Hopefully, this means 16.2 will abandon the OG HomePod as a Home Hub otherwise this will get even more frustrating if key features for fully supporting Matter is going to be the luck of the dice depending on whether one of our five OG HomePods or one of our two Apple TVs that fully supports Matter + Thread is acting the connected home hub.
EDIT:
Just to confirm. It was the same for me as dmfresco is describing in terms of pushing the "Test Automation" button in the Home-app. Testing and triggering using Siri was working just fine. But neither location-based or time-based triggers was working.
My AppleID owns the Apple Home. All of the iOS and MacOS devices where my AppleID signed in are now running iOS 16.1 or MacOS Ventura. We have 4 HomePods and 3 HomePod Minis, all running 16.1. We have a Starling Hub and a HOOBS hub too. The other family members are running iOS 16.ox on their iPhones. Tonight, the location based automations worked perfectly for me. In the past days, I was prompted to them only after I was already in the house. It's getting better. I am curious what will happen to the Ring & MyQ devices discoverable because of HOOBS and the Nest devices discoverable because of StarlingHub. For this brief moment, nothing is broken.
In the lead up to having everything running iOS 16.1/MacOS Ventura, I was having a really annoying additional issue on two of my Macs. They were not syncing with the HomeKit keychain or whatever is the backend of HomeKit. On every reboot, a new, empty version of "My Home" was created and none of the items in the proper Home were found or discoverable. The only way to get our proper home to show up was to logout of iCloud, log back in, and then manually delete all the instances of My Home until our proper home was all that was left. The empty My Homes do not seem to be recurring now.
In the lead up to having everything running iOS 16.1/MacOS Ventura, I was having a really annoying additional issue on two of my Macs. They were not syncing with the HomeKit keychain or whatever is the backend of HomeKit. On every reboot, a new, empty version of "My Home" was created and none of the items in the proper Home were found or discoverable. The only way to get our proper home to show up was to logout of iCloud, log back in, and then manually delete all the instances of My Home until our proper home was all that was left. The empty My Homes do not seem to be recurring now.
Our location based automations are mostly working now. Although just now, as I was driving in the car with my iPhone connected to CarPlay, I tried to ask Siri to run one and she said you must unlock your iPhone first. I kinda get it since there are locks involved, but I assumed CarPlay was just an extension of my iPhone. I believe I can run automations away from my home by activating Siri even with locks.
FYI, I recreated my location based automations from scratch. I actually created a "scene" which I added to an automation.
We took a walk this morning. HomeKit did not prompt us to run automations until after we were in the house. The Geolocation features are really hit or miss. We have August branded locks which have native HomeKit support. The August app unlocks our door when I approach irrespective of an automation. The Geofencing of the Ring app works better than HomeKit.
Sorry if you have mentioned this already, but have you reported all of these issues to Apple. If you haven't please do so because these issues are becoming more and more frequent and widespread and seemingly Apple are doing sweet FA about it.
I spent two hours on the phone with Apple fixing the problem of why our home disappeared on two MacOS devices running Ventura PB and Monterey. Once both were on Ventura the problem persisted and required logging out of iCloud and logging back in. Logging out of iCloud had collateral damage as syncing with Contacts was broken. Any contact with a head shot lacked the head shot. Still not totally fixed. But the problem is probably related to other non-iCloud accounts contributing contacts. On one computer, turning off those contacts fixed the issue. But not on the other computer. I will circle back to Apple when life allows me to commit another 2 hours of my life.
It shouldn't be this difficult should it? It's hard work dealing with crApple these days. Their software is garbage!
It shouldn't be up to users to report issues before Apple fixes them. At least not issues as basic as the ones reported in this thread. And if you think Apple actually pays attention to issues reported by users then you're kidding yourself. Go listen to the multiple episodes of Accidental Tech Podcast where they discuss the maddening responses Apple has given them on issues that they have reported as developers. Hell, I gave a feedback on WatchOS 6. The issue was actaully addressed yet Apple never actually read my feedback and it's still marked as open 3 YEARS later.
Of course it shouldn't, I've been here long enough to know that. But that's the way it is. And we have to deal with it. I am well aware that Apple's coding quality is absolute garbage these days but we can't bitch on here about things (not saying the OP was bitching) without at least getting off our collective arses and raising it directly with the only people that can actually do something about it. I've got issues raised with Apple, case in point hand washing reminders which they broke with the release of iOS 15 which is still completely broken worldwide and they haven't addressed it… I don't ever expect them to… I don't think they have the skills to fix their crap software.
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Our automations and scenes are still hit or miss. The one that is most annoying is the scene (converted into an automation) that unlocks the door we mostly use when returning home. The lock is an August branded lock with native HomeKit support before Matter. The scene I created unlocks thee of the August locks and turns on some lights. HomeKit is failing in threee ways
Scene (saying Hey Siri to iPhone): The all important lock fails to unlock and Siri says, your lock is taking a long time. This August lock does open for me, but not my wife separate from HomeKit when I arrive home. Is the August app interfering/intercepting HomeKit?
Scene (saying Hey Siri from CarPlay): Siri responds you need to unlock your iPhone first.
Location based automation: We are not getting prompted when we are proximity of the home even though the Ring geofence detects us (Is Ring intercepting or interfering?). Sometimes I get prompted to run the automation AFTER I am back in the house or in the garage. This August lock does open for me, but not my wife separate from HomeKit when I arrive home. Is the August app interfering/intercepting HomeKit?
I really cannot fathom why the one of three August locks are failing to behave now other than to think because the August app opens this door for me automatically it's fouling up HomeKit.
Scene (saying Hey Siri to iPhone): The all important lock fails to unlock and Siri says, your lock is taking a long time. This August lock does open for me, but not my wife separate from HomeKit when I arrive home. Is the August app interfering/intercepting HomeKit?
Scene (saying Hey Siri from CarPlay): Siri responds you need to unlock your iPhone first.
Location based automation: We are not getting prompted when we are proximity of the home even though the Ring geofence detects us (Is Ring intercepting or interfering?). Sometimes I get prompted to run the automation AFTER I am back in the house or in the garage. This August lock does open for me, but not my wife separate from HomeKit when I arrive home. Is the August app interfering/intercepting HomeKit?
I really cannot fathom why the one of three August locks are failing to behave now other than to think because the August app opens this door for me automatically it's fouling up HomeKit.
Honestly, geofencing isn't reliable enough in my opinion to rely on it for things like locking and unlocking doors. While I don't have issues with it turning on lights and setting the thermostat when I get home, those are things I could easily do via other means if it were to fail.
I also run into a situation where my iPhone will just randomly think that I'm a mile away for a few seconds. When I had automations that ran when the last person left the house those would seemingly get triggered at random times. The only way I could solve it was with a virtual switch that would get turned on when the last person left the house and turn off 5 minutes later. I then trigger my automations to run when that switch turns off, but only if nobody is home still.
For your CarPlay scenario, that's "a feature not a bug." Apple is always going to verify that it's really you before unlocking a lock.
One thing I think might work for you is putting NFC tags near your doors. You can then setup automations in Shortcuts that fire when you scan those tags. Those will be more reliable than depending on geofencing.
I have found that geofencing is completely unreliable and useless for me. At best, it asks me to confirm running a scene quite a while after I have arrived home. At worst, it never runs. And normally when I arrive home I am not holding my phone and staring at the screen waiting for a confirmation message that says "OK, YES, UNLOCK the house NOW!"... I am parking my car, fumbling with groceries, trying to get dogs contained, etc.
And anything to do with my Schlage deadbolt requires a confirmation before unlocking due to security concerns.
I recently installed a Meross HomeKit garage door controller and then setup HomeKit automations that do other things when triggered. This is the best way for me...
• I arrive home and open the garage door. (there are door status sensors so it does not matter how I open it - just use my old garage remote control.)
• The action of the garage door opening triggers an automation.
• The automation unlocks my house, turns on lights, and if it's night, turns on the outdoor lights.
I cannot do the opposite when I leave the house because the simple action of closing the garage door is not a true indication that I am leaving.
So instead, when leaving...
• I use Siri, HomeKit, or Schlage app to lock the house while I am in my car on the way out.
• The action of the back door locking triggers an automation.
• The automation closes any garage doors and shuts off any garage lights.
OR
• Set a scene that locks the house, closes any garage doors, and shuts off any garage lights.
This same automation is useful when I'm home and turning in for the night. Flipping the deadbolt on the door makes sure the garage doors are closed and the garage lights and floodlights are off. Does not matter if I manually lock the door or use HomeKit, because the automation is triggered by the Schlage sensing that it's in the lock position.
And anything to do with my Schlage deadbolt requires a confirmation before unlocking due to security concerns.
I recently installed a Meross HomeKit garage door controller and then setup HomeKit automations that do other things when triggered. This is the best way for me...
• I arrive home and open the garage door. (there are door status sensors so it does not matter how I open it - just use my old garage remote control.)
• The action of the garage door opening triggers an automation.
• The automation unlocks my house, turns on lights, and if it's night, turns on the outdoor lights.
I cannot do the opposite when I leave the house because the simple action of closing the garage door is not a true indication that I am leaving.
So instead, when leaving...
• I use Siri, HomeKit, or Schlage app to lock the house while I am in my car on the way out.
• The action of the back door locking triggers an automation.
• The automation closes any garage doors and shuts off any garage lights.
OR
• Set a scene that locks the house, closes any garage doors, and shuts off any garage lights.
This same automation is useful when I'm home and turning in for the night. Flipping the deadbolt on the door makes sure the garage doors are closed and the garage lights and floodlights are off. Does not matter if I manually lock the door or use HomeKit, because the automation is triggered by the Schlage sensing that it's in the lock position.