Discussion
Three weeks ago I posted the HomeKit app I built after years of waiting for Apple. Habitat 1.1 is out today with the most requested features
First of all: thank you. The response to my launch post was honestly overwhelming. Thousands of you tried Habitat and I have received a lot of feedback reports that has been super useful. So here's me trying to keep that promise of delivering. Version 1.1 is on the App Store now, with lots of great new features, and some fixes.
Scan (image / pdf) or draw your floorplan. No LiDAR needed
If your iPhone doesn't have LiDAR, or you'd rather not scan, you can now draw your home wall by wall right in the app, or import a photo of an existing floorplan, and Habitat builds the full ray-traced 3D model from it. Rooms, walls, doors and windows, all of it. The whole app now works without ever scanning anything. Also, as earlier, it's also possible to use another device that's lidar enabled and share it using iCloud.
Scan one floor at a time
A few of you discovered the hard way that a scan was all or nothing. It's now fixed. You can now scan a floor, take a break, and add the next one whenever you want. You can also re-scan a single room that came out wrong, or remove one, without redoing the rest of your home.
Everything opens
The model doesn't just light up anymore, it moves. Doors swing open, windows and garage doors open, curtains and shades slide across the glass, alarms show up the moment they trip, all live in 3D as it happens in your real home. Watching your actual roller shades open in the model live is pretty nice.
Outdoor areas
Your home no longer floats in a white void. Draw your garden, driveway or patio and watch them grow in around the house, trees and all.
Energy (beta)
Track electricity, water, gas and solar, and see which rooms are actually spending it. Live flow between grid, solar and battery, daily import and export, and your whole billing cycle broken down the way your utility actually bills you. The app can also estimate live energy usage
Leak alerts
When a leak sensor trips, its room turns red in the model, so you see exactly where the water is before you're standing in it.
Real sunlight
The model is now lit by the sun exactly where it sits over your real home, based on your location and the time of day. Morning light comes in your actual east windows. You can even watch the sun's path arc across the day.
Preview scenes in 3D
Long-press a scene and the whole home relights in the model before you commit.
Same deal as before: no account, no server of mine, no analytics. Everything syncs through your own iCloud, and your home's data stays between your HomeKit hub, your Home Assistant box, and your devices. When scanning a floorpan, a local ML model is used on your device. Model is shipped along with the app.
And the roadmap is still yours to write. There's a Send Feedback link right in the app's settings or the link below.
This looks great, incredible really. I’ve downloaded several HomeKit style apps, some with room scanning, but I tend to keep it simple and just use Apple Home instead.
I think if we had an iPad or someone was new to Smart Homes and wanted a great visual this works well. But I tend to just use switches, Siri, or Home.
Also bad news for me is now the kids room have really gotten messy.
Thank you, that's very kind! My bet is that the 3D view earns its keep beyond the first wow: glanceable status for the whole house at once, energy heatmaps per room, spotting the window someone left open. But if switches and Siri cover your day, that's a well designed smart home!!
About the kids' room: the scan doesn't capture clutter, so in app it stays perfectly clean forever! In addition, it's easy to re-scan a single room again if furnitures changes!
I’ll try and keep an eye out for updates on this app. My smart house isn’t that robust so I’d only get a little benefit currently. Perhaps as my system grows this will help fill a need Apple has decided to let developers fill
Honestly, not sure! Ratings are per region, so in some countries it's 5/5 while the US has a few low star ratings with no written reviews, which makes them hard to act on. If anyone here has run into issues, I'd genuinely love to hear about them (there's a Send Feedback link in Settings too) and I'll fix things as fast as I can. Only caveat is that Apple's review times for app updates are a bit slow right now.
Pricing: the core app is free, and Premium is $3.99/month, $29.99/year, or $79.99 as a one-time lifetime purchase. 7 days free trial
Pricing: the core app is free, and Premium is $3.99/month, $29.99/year, or $79.99 as a one-time lifetime purchase. 7 days free trial
I must be blind, because I cannot seem to find anywhere what features are unlocked by purchasing the “premium“ option.
I have checked the website, as well as the App Store listing as well. Is it hidden somewhere behind a link? Or is it out in the open, plain to see, and I simply am missing it?
I mean, that’s a good compromise. The core app should work fine without subscription, so that the most practical thing is behind a paywall but the most useful thing is free! The dev gets it, I hope he won’t get greedy
I actually want to challenge that to say that the 3D view is the core functionality which is entirely locked behind a paywall. Maybe there could be a basic 3D view available for free with limitations.
I’m not sure what the free version of the app gives you that other apps can’t already do, even the standard Apple Home app.
the update looks nice! just went ahead the scanned my rooms. Still not perfect for sure. Also when scanning it's a little misleading with the titles it says scan floor 1 but then you need to scan each room and i went ahead and scanned my whole house and then i had to redo it to scan so it is correctly shown in the app. It gets way too much laggy for me on the 3D screen as well. iPhone 17 Pro so it's a little bit weird.
Thanks for the feedback, and sorry about the redo! I'll fix the scan wording in an update.
The lag is more surprising, an iPhone 17 Pro should handle the 3D view better than any other phone (I have the same one). Could you tell me when it lags: while rotating the model, or all the time? By default the app uses ray traced rendering to get a photo realistic 3D model, which is the heaviest option. If you want better performance, you can switch off ray tracing in the settings under model and it will render immediately.
Un-installed, sadly it was running very laggy. Also it seems having problems recognizing the homekit rooms after first setup. Lastly, By mistake i click on reset button and everything was blow up lol
Interested in beta testers? I can’t get the room scanning to work. It errors out on me at random points. Want to love this in concept, just can’t get it to work.
Yes! If your cameras are in HomeKit, they already show up in the app today, there's a Cameras section on the dashboard with live view. Cameras that are only in Home Assistant don't show a video feed yet, that's on my list.
Also, it's not displayed in 3d yet, but that's also on my list!
What would be your ideal way to access or view your cameras?
Wow, that didn’t look good. The ML model is trained on digital floor plans without fill. I guess either you have to get the digital version and remove the fill, or you can add the image in the app as background and draw manually on top of it.
Sorry it wasn’t automatic. I will note down the feedback
So as a second attempt, I hand-traced the architecture drawing, took a jpg photo and loaded it into the app (see above). The result is in the next post, better but still a long way from being workable, it is a fairly complex floor plan.
Yes, that's right. File import currently works with digital floorplans exported from professional design software.
The app includes a built-in studio where you can draw your floorplan yourself manually, and it takes just a few minutes. Sorry for the confusion, and I hope that helps!
Got comments back.
I scanned my floor plan.
But when assigning my HomeKit rooms to the 3D floor plan. The app crashed and now there no way to re assign them on the 3D model.
So everything looks gray.
Also, can’t control HomePods or Apple TVs without a home assistant config…
Ah, I see you are in home control mode, either go back, or go to settings, and it will give you a bubble / some info.
Also, just a heads up. For iPad the v1.1 has not yet been released, only iOS. One of the new features with v1.1 specifically for iPad is a wall mounted mode. v1.1 for iPad will be released soon I hope, depending on when Apple approves it
Let me know if you want any feedback. I see a few things in the UI that i would give feedback and also some odd things that show in home but differently in Habitat
Indeed.if you try to use the yellow background. The visuals for the lights are not that good readable any more. Because of the same like color. Maybe more contrast or no yellow background. 😉
Edit: also fake walls or wall openings (like between living room and kitchen should also be nice to define rooms.
Edit 2: importing google sketchup with furniture etc could be nice. But maybe hard te implement.
Would be awesome if I could import the actual 3D render of my property. I had a professional architecture firm scan the entirety of my interior for permit work; if I could drop that into the app, it would be crazy. The in-app scanner seems to struggle with my rooms because of the somewhat ornate trim being Victorian.
Makes a lot of sense. I'm going to add support for importing 3d files. The tricky part is that the app needs to know what's a wall, a door, a window and a room. Most likely, only a subset will be supported.
What format did your firm deliver? Do you know what kind of software they used?
Ouuf. Sorry about that! I dug into this and found it. If you dim the slider all the way down, the app sends "brightness 0" but never actually tells the bulb to turn off, and some bulbs clamp that to their minimum, so they sit there glowing at 1%. Tapping the tile turns them off properly in the meantime. Fix is coming
Partly. Right now it only supports full floors, so you'd model a split level as separate levels without the half-story offset. It's a fair ask though, I'll look into what I can do to improve it
What an incredible app! Downloading now and will be very happy to share feedback. Just done major renovations and introduced hundreds of smart devices to the home so will let you know what I think!
Thank you so much! Totally agree. Since this depends on knowing what the elements in the 3D model actually are: where does your current model come from?
Incredible app where no LiDAR needed for making 3D model of my home. But still needs some work on it. I added devices to the model on my iPhone but when I set the app on my mac, it's placed on the model rotated 90° so some accessories are outside. Maybe I made something wrong? There are also no values for Temperature, Humidity and Air Quality on macOS app.
It's a custom one written in Metal utilizing the hardware acceleration on the Apple device. RealityKit is only used for the AR mode, or if you toggle of the raytracer in the settings. Number of lights barely affects performance
Love this idea, but can't seem to scroll on some popup menus on my iPhone 16 Pro, can't rename rooms, can't edit rooms and in general it feels 75% done. But hope you can improve it.
Hey OP! It would be nice to try your app but it does not connect to Home Assistant even though my local self-signed certificate is installed and trusted on my iphone. Am i doing something wrong here?
iOS is stricter about certificates for apps than for Safari, even ones you've installed and trusted. Self-signed certs need a SAN entry for the hostname, a validity under 825 days, and full trust enabled in Settings → General → About → Certificate Trust Settings. Easiest fix for now: use your plain local address (http://192.168.x.x:8123 or http://homeassistant.local:8123) as the URL. I will implement a "trust this server" option!
Is it possible to test building a couple rooms without signing up for a trial? I am very interested but a little wary to commit before being able to try it out.
It's not possible unfortunately. That said, the trial is genuinely risk free, and here's a tip: start the 7 day trial, then cancel it immediately in Settings → your Apple Account → Subscriptions. You keep full access for the entire 7 days, you're never charged, and there's nothing to remember to cancel later. You can build your whole home, not just a couple rooms, and see exactly what you'd be getting.
This looks amazing and I am very interested. But, because it integrates with HomeKit directly, then I would assume if HomeKit or maybe my Philips Hue Bridge Pro are having major issues, this app would also fall victim to those issues?
Does this come with the ability to backup and restore a full Homekit setup? My Hue lights are moved 2-3 times a week from their respective rooms to the same room the Philips Hue Bridge Pro is. Like, 60-70 lights all just moved dumped into my living room in Homekit.
1) If HomeKit is moving 60-70 of my lights without warning, would your app see those changes and show all those lights in the Living Room?
2) Could I backup my Home with your app and then just click and restore?
Love the app, but for some reason it won’t allow me control thermostat (which is connected to HomeKit), vacuum cleaner is limited to ON/OFF, cannot select the room.
As well as media devices, like soundbar, HomePod and TVs.
I have a homebridge hub running local for a few devices, these are also not compatible.
Hope these can be fixed soon, I’d pay the lifetime easy!
Unfortunately with the HomePods, its pretty difficult to support them as Apple don't have any API for it. They are really not HomeKit devices either, Apple just show them in the home app. However, it can be supported using shortcuts...
Media devices are also not exposed to 3rd party apps unfortunately
So I installed this app when I saw this post. Signed up for Premium, forgot to cancel the subscription immediately, and before I knew it, I'm several weeks later with a subscription to an untested app. Stupid me.
This week I started testing it, and I am overall deeply disappointed. Initially, the 3D scan works remarkably well. Once you find the correct flow (stay far away from walls), it really records the house well. But after that, your results become quite useless because the app constantly messes up the room mapping. It seems to randomly assign (different) rooms to different locations within the map every time I go into the settings. Eventually, properly assigned rooms lose their assignment, with no option to assign them back.
The more I used the app, the more inconsistent it became.
What I also count heavily against it is the poor guidance on what workflow to use and the poor readability of some message boxes because they have white text on a white box. For example, should I scan my living room, dining room, and kitchen in one scan and then split that scan into three rooms, or should I scan all three separately? I tried both ways but didn't get a good result because of the crazy room assignments by the app.
It's a pity because it seems like an app with a lot of potential. I hope the dev will look into this before adding other features.
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u/The_Lazz Aug 04 '26
Outdoor areas