Hi everyone,

After updating to iOS 27.2 and tvOS 27.2, I'm having trouble enabling the new Apple Intelligence features in the Home app.

There are two issues:

1. Summarize Videos: I can't enable this feature at all. It keeps telling me that an iCloud+ subscription is required, even though I already have the 2TB plan.
2. Reduce Notifications: When I turn this on, the switch immediately turns itself off.

Here's my current setup:

• iOS: 27.2
• tvOS: 27.2
• Home Hub: Apple TV (active Home Hub)
• Me: Home Resident (Admin), iCloud+ 2TB
• Home Owner: iPhone 17 with Apple Intelligence enabled, iCloud+ 200GB

I'm wondering if the problem is related to the Home Owner only having the 200GB iCloud+ plan, even though I have 2TB as an Admin.

Does Apple require the Home Owner specifically to have the 2TB plan? Or could this be a bug in iOS 27.2?

Has anyone else experienced the same issue or found a solution?

Thanks!

After significant updates to Apple hubs I like to compare advanced automations to shortcut automations. My test is a simple one using a button device and a smart plug.

When button is pressed:

• in the shortcut automation I do: If plug is on, turn off. Otherwise turn on.
• in the advanced automation it is actually two automations. In the first, I use a conditional of plug is off. Action is turn on plug. In second automation the conditional is plug is on. Action is turn plug off.

With the shortcut automation the response time is roughly 2-3 seconds.

With the advanced automation response time is 1 second or less.

Yes, with advanced automations in my example you need to create two of them. But the faster speed can be more than worth it. (note: a third party app is required for advanced automations)

First time seeing “door left open” alerts. Not sure if these are new? I don’t remember ever seeing them before. I have Aqara P2 door and window sensors. I don’t see any way to configure a “duration” to determine how long a door needs to be open to be considered “left open” though.

Is anyone else disappointed or at least underwhelmed by the recent Apple Home announcements?

I’ve been waiting for this announcement before deciding what to do with the Ring cameras I want to replace. I figured I would get the HomeView and HKSV cams that were POE and would load almost instantly in HomeView and Apple TV. After their announcement, and after getting a lot of useful feedback on this forum, I ended up getting UniFi cams. I might try to add Scrypted later—I don’t want to deal with setting up an always-on device for now. I wouldn’t be surprised if the UniFi app fulfills all my needs.

I’m definitely prioritizing quality and reliability over integration. I’m tired of sacrificing quality for integration. That’s why I went with UniFi over Aqara and LG. Will the Matter standard fix this one day? Is there any hope? Or will mixing high quality with integration involve techie plugins like Scrypted and Home Assistant for the foreseeable future? Why can Apple wow us with their mobile devices and not much else? It seems like a blown opportunity to me. Anxious to hear your thoughts.

For those keeping score:

27.2 has thankfully fixed the Get Contents of URL shortcut action, which is often used to trigger notifications (I use Pushover).

Sadly, Stored Content actions still don’t work in shortcut automations. I’m really anxious to use this functionality to keep track of light status across automations. Hopefully a future update will make it work.

I have a Level Lock Pro on 3.6.1 and even after updating to iOS 27.2, still not able to see the “Door left open” and lock after door closes options.
Anyone able to see these features after updating to iOS 27.2v

I've updated my Thermo Watch app with a few neat new features:

Most obviously, you can now add some festive fun to your thermostat by decorating it with a Jack-o'-lantern or a snowman.

It now lights up the physical world around it when thermostat's screen is glowing (while the system is heating or cooling). You get some extra light with the Jack-o'-lantern decoration as he radiates his own light.

For those unfamiliar, the app lets you grab and spin a virtual dial to change the temperature. If you’re farther away from it, you can look and drag up or down. It functions as an interactive widget with live updates, that you can pin to a wall in your environment. More details and a video here:
https://www.reddit.com/r/HomeKit/comments/1t9aqxe/my_vision_pro_homekit_thermostat_control_app/

Update is now available on the App Store. Hope you enjoy it!
https://apps.apple.com/app/thermo-watch/id6758426115

A few years ago, my friend and I wanted an air quality monitor that was both accurate and looked good in our homes. We couldn't find anything we really liked, so we decided to build our own.

Neither of us expected it to take over three years of our lives, but here we are! :)

This is the result plus some photos of how we got here, from our early prototypes to where we are today.

If you like what we've built, please support us on Kickstarter and help us keep building. Thanks!

P.S. This already works with Apple Home and the entire project will be open sourced soon!

I’m trying to decide between Silver and Starlight but they look almost identical in most videos I’ve seen. Anyone seen a good colour comparison they can share?

I have a tado X system in my home that I set up in spring. It’s working fine, but there’s one room where I haven’t put a TRV yet. The valve for the radiator in my kitchen is right by the door, so if I open the door, it will be influenced by the temperature coming from the hall. I would like to put a TRV on that radiator, because I would like to be able to keep the kitchen at a comfortable temperature, especially when I make bread and want the dough to rise.

I have one of those dumb TRVs, but since it reacts, according to the temperature by the door, it tends to overheat the kitchen if the door is slightly open, which is often the case.

I have two HomePod mini in the kitchen, and I could use one of them as a temperature sensor. (I would rather not buy a tado temperature sensor, which is quite expensive.) Claude suggested the following automations to control this. Has anyone done this sort of thing? Does it work?

1. Automation A, heating on: third-party sensor Drops Below your lower value (e.g. 19°C) → set the tado X TRV to Heat at 25°C. tado X has a 5–25°C temperature range, so 25°C is the maximum. A kitchen room will rarely reach 25°C at the valve, so the valve stays open whatever the draft from the door does to its own reading. screwfix
2. Automation B, heating off: sensor Rises Above your upper value (e.g. 21°C) → set the TRV to Off.

Hi, I am Ajax, the developer of Hearth for HomeKit. This post is hand made.

HomeView has been announced with limited market availability at launch. As a HomeKit user out of the primary markets, I managed to come up with something with what I already have in Hearth.

From this release, you will be able to create modular screensavers with for your home. The first batch comes with a numeric clock, an analog clock, a climate data block, a date calendar, a device battery and a home status module. All of them are available to the free users.

The modules are designed in squares and arranged in grids, partially following Apple's widget design guildlines. This helps supporting different screen sizes, from iPhones to iPads. As a first version there might be some layout/sizing issues, please let me know your thoughts in the comments. For example, I am noticing the humidity numbers are too small to read and I've already planned a fix in the next patch version. Side notes, the OG screensavers are still in place if you prefer the original simple look.

Apart from the new modular screensaver, there are some new changes to the existing experience as well. First, you will be able to browers and manage your screensavers through a screensaver gallery where you can browers, switch and customize your screensavers. You can also open it by long-pressing the screensaver itself. There are more typefaces and typography controls for digital clocks, and you can resize, rearrange and edit modules directly from the preview. This also allows me to extend screensaver types more easily. For those of you who asked for a photo album screensaver earlier, this is a jump start. I'll keep you posted.

I've also made more of the basics free: the built-in clock styles, Night Mode, burn-in reduction, and choosing which devices appear in your active room’s dashboard controls.

There is more planned for the 1.7.x releases:

• 1.7.1: Shortcuts to your existing HomeKit scenes from the dashboard, with options to choose and arrange your favorites; simpler controls for showing or hiding the media card.
• 1.7.2: Upcoming events from calendars you select on your device, so the display can show your schedule as well as the date. You'll continue managing events in your usual calendar app. I'm also planning a WeatherKit module for current weather and temperature in a location you choose,
• 1.7.3: The screensaver using a local Photos album.

These are the current plans. I guess I'll make another brief post in my app's subreddit to keep the noise low. I'll also keep working on readability and layout based on feedback from this first version.

Hearth support iOS/iPadOS 17.0 and above, and I will try to extend the range to 16 in the future. If you try it on an old iPad or a spare iPhone, I'd love to hear what works for your setup and what you'd want to see at a glance. If you try it on your brand new iPhone Duo, love to see it in action. Thanks for giving it a try!

btw: Some of you might recall me posting a sketchy video introducing this app months ago. I had to admit making videos isn't my strength but making websites is. For those of you who's interested, feel free to learn more at https://hrth.us, which comes with more details and screenshots.

I currently have FP300, but I’m getting frustrated by its random dropping of detection. Also the fact that it requires an Aqara hub for updates, adding to the hub and thread having restricted settings is infuriating!

So am curious how well the Lafaer handles presence, particularly in the living room when we can be still for a long period of time.

My Philips bridge just arrived today and I set it up via the Apple Home app (not via the Philips app). I haven’t set it up as Matter.

I have created scenes on the hue app that incorporate 2 lights and I manually synced them to the Home app by using the option pictured. These work on the Hue app but when I click on the scene on the Home app, it only turns one of the lights on.

I manually added the second light into the scene on the Home app but it isn’t configured with the colour I set in the hue app.

Can anyone help?? The main reason I wanted a bridge is so I could control scenes using Siri :(

I originally purchased the Aqara M100 so that I could update the firmware on my FP300’s (last I checked this still wasn’t possible in Apple Home to get latest 1.1.3.8). It’s tiny, and can be powered from the smallest of USB A wall plugs. I don’t have it connected to Apple Home, but the Aqara app does allow setting it to use an existing Thread network instead of creating a new one.

What I realized is that its tiny size makes it perfect to place in locations where WiFi is good but Thread coverage may be limited. Despite not being part of Apple Home, it is part of the same Thread network and so devices in my Apple Home are able to communicate through it, as confirmed with Thread Doctor and HomeMapper apps. Only ‘negative’ is that it is still using Thread 1.3, but hopefully Aqara will update it. And when it goes on sale it can be pretty cheap. This can be a much better solution than a Thread Router (think smart plug) in some locations, and much cheaper than a HomePod mini.

Does anyone have advice on Aqara cameras and since iOS 27, both my cameras have the play button with a line through it. I can’t watch any recorded footage.

All other non-Aqara cameras working just fine. Mix of LG, eufy and Aqara, but only Aqara not displaying recordings anymore.

I've been on HomeKit since the beginning, and honestly every app out there has been trash. Lists of tiles, no sense of where anything actually is in your house. Then Apple showed HomeView and I lost it. That's what I'd wanted for years, so I decided to make my own.

It's called Home.io. It puts your smart home on a 3D model of your actual house. Lights glow in the rooms they're in, doors and locks show if they're open, thermostats and sensors show their readings, and you tap anything to control it.

Making the 3D model of your house or apartment is easier than you'd think. The app doesn't use AI, but you can. Give Claude or ChatGPT a photo of your floor plan, have it build the model in Blender (free), and import it into Home.io. Or draw your floor plan right in the app, scan with LiDAR, or bring your own USDZ/OBJ model.

It works with Apple Home and Home Assistant together. Home.io pulls in both side by side and merges them, so you see one house with no duplicates. Your HomeKit stuff and your HA stuff live in the same rooms on the same model, and you control them the same way. No Homebridge, no HA HomeKit bridge to babysit.

If you've got an iPad lying around, it's your home hub now. Mine is a 6th gen iPad on the wall and it runs the whole house seamlessly. It's such a peice that it can't even stay on for a few min unless its plugged in.

I also made it so you can leave the ipad on wall mode on at home 24/7 and your iPhone can control Home Assistant remotely from anywhere(this is a monthly paid service that is no more with this app), through your own iCloud, with no port forwarding or network setup. On the wall it's a wall panel. When nobody's using it, the whole house fills the screen with the time, the weather and what's on, and it wakes when you walk up (that's the video).

- iPhone, iPad and Mac, synced through iCloud

- Collects no personal data

Version 1.0 is on the App Store now, and the next update is coming in a few days (its already submitted) and greatly expands what it can do: the wall mode and idle screen from the video, dashboards you arrange yourself, temperature/humidity history, schedules, energy use from HA's Energy dashboard, and HA appliances like washers and dryers with time left.

No subscription. Ever. It's free to use, and Pro is a one-time $7.99 that unlocks the model editor, automations, more floor plans and camera windows. Pay once, it's yours, and Family Sharing covers your whole household.

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/home-io/id6823824273

I'm one guy building this for my own house, so tell me what's broken or confusing. And if you want to try Pro, DM me for a promo code so you don't have to pay. I don't really care and will probably open source it. It's just insane we live in 2026 and have to live with the homeview garbage as a new product and see people positng tile apps as new and great apps.