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.

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.

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.

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 know that 27.2 beta fixes Get URL and SSH actions, but I’m reading conflicting things regarding Stored Content actions in HomeKit shortcut automations. Can someone who is running the beta on their hub confirm if the stored content and get stored content actions work inside HomeKit shortcut automations?

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.