HomeKit Siri constantly terrible at homekit

[stevemiller]

Ask Siri to turn off the lights: “hmm thinking... waiting for home kit to respond”

I try again. Same result.

Eventually I open the home app manually, the lights immediately respond.

This happens SO frequently for me, to the point where I regret having gotten any home automation devices in the first place. Why is Siri\homekit integration this poorly made?

 

[smithrh]

Yeah, running into something similar, but not exactly the same.

I ask Siri to do something HomeKit related, and it says something like "checking on things" or "checking around the house" and then maybe 5 seconds later the action occurs.

Before the last iOS/HomePod update, everything would be fairly instant, so it would appear that Apple changed something somewhere and some lag/delay has been introduced.

It's a shame, because it was fun to demo it for people, now it's embarrassing and tedious.

Hopefully Apple irons this out fairly quickly. I can't see it being desired behavior.

 

[Treebark]

That sounds disappointing. I’m wondering if it is at times of your internet connection lag? I know my home ISP isn’t the best.

Using Siri I think the command has to go to Apple’s servers and back again to interpret what was said. Using the button on the app likely keeps everything on your internal network, so less of a delay?

 

[smithrh]

My internet is in good shape - I keep a close eye on it.

I suspect this is an impact of software changes, either internal to Apple (iCloud) or in iOS (HomePod, ATV) or a mix of both.

 

[stevemiller]

That sounds disappointing. I’m wondering if it is at times of your internet connection lag? I know my home ISP isn’t the best.

Using Siri I think the command has to go to Apple’s servers and back again to interpret what was said. Using the button on the app likely keeps everything on your internal network, so less of a delay?

It’s happened so many times I’ve had the opportunity to be methodical about ruling things out. After trying the HomeKit command several times, I’ll try another command like weather or local movie show times and they work instantly. Then I’ll try the HomeKit command again and it’ll again hang waiting for a response until I open HomeKit manually.

As a final note, as soon as I manually perform an action through the HomeKit app, all subsequent Siri HomeKit requests immediately start working again. It’s like they forgot to include the initial “establish HomeKit connection” code in Siri.

And for me this has been going on for years.

 

[Treebark]

Yikes, sounds like an issue then.

 

[lsutigerfan1976]

I get issues using Siri to control my thermostat, lights etc. But if I use Siri on my phone. Everything works fine.

 

[LiveM]

I do believe this is just another reason Apple should not quit the router business. Get/try an AirPort and see if that resolves it.

 

[stevemiller]

I do believe this is just another reason Apple should not quit the router business. Get/try an AirPort and see if that resolves it.

I don’t think I’m going to invest in a new router when there isn’t even a clear indication that is the cause.

To be clear when this happens I can still get an immediate connection to my lights from my phone/tablet/etc, just not via Siri. It’s not an inter-device connectivity issue, it’s using Siri as an interface rather than the HomeKit app. Which suggests to me it’s a programming issue.

Likewise automation tasks like geofencing also work extremely inconsistently, and again manually going in and triggering a light works fine.

It’s almost as if all the “smart” features of this system are broken and the only thing they’ve successfully done is put a “dumb” light switch in an app on my phone.

 

[Uofmtiger]

I use Siri to control my Hue lights throughout the house (phone, watch and HomePod). I don't have these delays, so maybe it is product related?

I have Orbi's mesh system, so that may be why everything is instantaneous.

 

[Polaroid]

Works flawlessly for me and responds so quickly, with google home it struggles to understand the commands and when it does understand its has a delay and takes a while.

 

[Bgosh]

I’ve dealt with these issues and it drove me bonkers. I also think that your problem may be product related. Thought it was my Homebridge setup but I found that my ecobee was the culprit. The sluggish Siri, messed up geofencing etc would occur right after a firmware update on ecobee’s side. It crippled my entire smart home of 20+ devices. Removing my thermostat and re-adding it fixed it. Also using Alexa to control the thermostat would also cause problems with HomeKit for whatever reason. Luckily the process of removing and adding is relatively painless compared to others.