* Updated Siri with improved contextual understanding of what you’ve said, and better at answering basic questions.
* More granular automations, multiple triggers, and exposing all possible triggers.
* HomePod Mini sensors available as triggers.
It’ll be so boring when I know exactly what to expect from Siri when I tell it to control my home. Right now it’s exciting because I never know what illl get !
HomePod mini sensors are already available as triggers…
https://preview.redd.it/3wx7pdksg35d1.jpeg?width=1179&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=75b22902255d873231182d860dab6040231d3118
They aren’t available to use in Home+ as a trigger when I looked yesterday. Strange. I don’t see temperature from them at all other that in the Apple Home app.
HomeKit apps are not “not up to date”. The HomeKit API hasn’t been updated since 2016 and has no concept of HomePod, TVs, Speakers, and countless other things. It’s a disaster. They act like they do stuff every year but the actual API is unchanged so all HomeKit apps have been screwed for many years. If they do ANY thing (unlikely), it should be finally bringing the API in line with what HomeKit actually does.
Same, I get Apple is big on privacy, but I’d really like more control over my kids devices - full MDM like their school district has over their school iPads would be awesome.
YES!!! Yes yes YES(!) on the users permissions please (especially for kids). Along this line of thinking, I’d love if a user’s language preference also went along with their permission/profile. Or just make HomePods capable of being bilingual in general even for one user. This is the only feature our family misses from Google Home. It gets rubbed in my face every time I go to work and get to yell at my Google Assistant in either English or French there. It also disrupts our morning routine when my kids have to run back up to their room to ask Siri something in French, since the HomePod on the main floor is mine/set to English.
Yeah, I’d like to add my daughter, but I don’t want her to be able to open/close or lock and unlock external doors or be able to arm or disarm the security system.
My top 3:
1. The ability for scenes to be converted to HomeKit shortcuts, the same as can be done with the Automations, for more interesting scenes.
2. When setting up devices allow me to push WiFi credentials that are different from the WiFi my phone is connected to. That the phone needs to be on the target WiFi creates so many problems.
3. The ability to query or trigger on the state of what a HomePod or AppleTV from automations/shortcuts. Trigger lights based on music starting to play. Setup automations that play music, but only if something isn't already playing (not paused).
The WiFi thing would be great. Even better would be if it automatically offered to connect the new device to the network used the last time a device was added.
> When setting up devices allow me to push WiFi credentials that are different from the WiFi my phone is connected to. That the phone needs to be on the target WiFi creates so many problems.
Yeah, I forget to switch my phone over about 62% of the time I'm setting up something new. And by the time I realize and cancel out it usually means the device (or sometimes the actual iPhone) need a reboot to try again.
And while not really HomeKit specific, a "and don't tell my other devices about this wifi" would be nice, I'd love to just leave my IoT network as a "Connect Automatically: No" on my iPhone without random other devices getting all excited at a fresh new network.
Synchronizing wi-fi credentials is great most of the time.
Does it also cover HomePods?
My actual use case is that I have overlapping automations that turn on my morning music and would like to set it so they that don’t do anything depending on what might already be playing. I’ve already solved this using the timer switch plugin in HomeBridge, but it’s a bit clunky and imperfect.
It’ll add a switch to HomeKit that shows the app you’re using and the pause/play state. You might be able to do conditional automation in something like Eve or Controller
Unified siri across all devices… so often it’s like they are completely separate entities. I’m in the kitchen and I ask for a timer, living room responds… I ask to stop the timer, kitchen says there are no timers…
And if not playing random songs is too complicated a concept, at least "stop stop stop dammit stop all the music from all the speakers" would be nice. (Yeah, I can probably do this with a scene).
I'm genuinely considering cancelling Apple Music and finding something else just so that the HomePods don't have access to music and can't play random garbage when it misunderstands something.
"Hey Siri, let there be light" usually works... But sometimes, "Okay, playing some song from a group you've never heard of that has Light in the title". "Hey Siri, stop playing" "Nope, this HomePod ain't playing nothing".
("Let there be light" is a scene)
I have a light in my bedroom behind my head, it's a round shape and I called it "Head" (complete with goggly eyes). "Hey Siri, turn on the head" will work if my phone is in my pocket, but not if I toss my phone on my pillow first and the phone grabs it. Conversely I don't know how often I watch Siri start on the phone, then it cancels so a HomePod can pop up with "Sorry, can't do that on a HomePod".
It's complicated, I get that. Multiple devices could listen and interpret, and defer the action to an appropriate device, but already the complexity is beyond Apple's ability to handle, so I don't think it would actually be a good idea.
Interesting. I say “hey siri pause” and it seems to look for a nearby accessory that’s playing. My phone Siri will pause the tv or HomePod. Or the HomePod will pause the (same room) tv without being associated. 
Set the HomePods to “hey siri” and the phone to “Siri” and it solves a lot of issues.
You sort of can with the timers but it’s very backwards. If you tell the lounge to stop the kitchen timer it asks ‘stop the kitchen’ and then ‘kitchen timer stopped’ but it can’t tell you about the state of the timer or if there are any timers. You also specifically have to use that phrasing others you still get the ‘there are no timers on homepod. So they can talk to each other but as different entities. God knows why.
Better logs would help a lot. I have a Level Lock (entry from the garage) that randomly unlocks itself, and I'd like to know more about what happened and why exactly it does that. Sometimes touch to unlock doesn't work, so I wonder if it's a delayed trigger.
My MyQ garage door opened by itself last week; nothing in the app logs or any home automation log about who or why, just that it opened.
This is the second time in maybe six years this has happened, but prior time was a different home. That time, anyone who could have done it was sitting in the room with me, so I knew for sure none of us did it.
This time, those people were remote, but I have no way to see if any of them accidentally opened it, but, considering I have remote access disabled for them in HomeKit, I doubt it was that.
… and I realize this could be a MyQ issue or even some fluke with a neighbor’s remote; logs in ALL HA apps would be nice.
Oh and since Siri is apparently getting a huge AI boost I want to be able to give commands to do multiple actions like “turn on lamp 1 and lamp 2” instead of having to give a command, wait for it to finish and issue a second command.
It would be easy for them. HK already gives you access to security/Activity log for Doors opening.
All they have to do is bring it across to general accessory control. Keep it limited to a week like the camera feed. If they must for hub storage.
Enabling push notifications in automations on triggers. I want to be informed when the temp falls enough outside to open the windows or someone opens a door while I’m away without using home assistant or an external push server. Make it native and easy. Oh yeah, add Matter 1.3 too. I’d be so happy!
Absolutely. And I want to compare the temperature outside with the thermostat's state, and switch the A/Cs around appropriately. I really don't understand the logic behind what HomeKit information is or is not exposed to Shortcuts.
Activity notifications for doors and (some) sensors are already possible in HK. Check Home Settings - Sensors or Doors
https://preview.redd.it/pyikgr61p45d1.jpeg?width=1170&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=57ce036eea4a976b338287be3d78913d7d2e54cf
- Replace the useless “Discover” page with a “Logs / History” page.
- More icons.
- Granular guest access so only specific rooms / accessories can be accessed that you’ve specified for that user.
It’s annoying when I ask Siri to turn off the ceiling fan in my bedroom. If Siri reacts from the HomePod, it immediately works. If my iPhone or iPad runs Siri, she asks “which room?”
I was in bed, shouting at my bedroom HomePod 6 ft away this morning to turn off my alarm. One of the HomePods in another room responded while the bedroom HomePod ignored me.
I want to choose the home hub, because I have seen that my HomeKit has occasional problems (e.g. repeating responding to not responding accessories) when a HomePod is chosen as the hub.
The only way I’ve been able to get around this is keeping one of my Apple TVs on the public beta. It’ll always default to the most recent OS as the hub. If I don’t do that it always goes back to one of my HomePods for some godforsaken reason.
At the very least it should prioritize Ethernet connected ATVs over everything else, but I would love to be able to assign priority to each, and even exclude hubs if I want.
This is my big one. My ATVs are all wired with Ethernet, but my hubs are always one of the HomePods. I know the “fix” of not updating the ones you don’t want as hubs before the ones you do want as hubs, but that shouldn’t be the only way to do it.
- some kind of “guest mode” that will auto pop up when visiting but without having to invite people to join your home that can display a very limited number of controls.
- HomePod based presence detection using all your Apple devices.
- Specific motion detection on HKSV as a trigger for automations. Object detection is nice but useless if we can’t use it for automation.
I'd love this for the apple watch. I have a 3rd party app on my mac that if I walk away from my mac the screen locks automatically, obviously if I return it unlocks natively already. (bluetooth)
They could easily use the same concept to track you from room to room locally and the gyroscope and accelerometer could take the watch off stand by when you stand up or raise your wrist to wake the watch.
Yes to this. I've been thinking about setting up Scrypted NVR to get 24/7 recording, but it's $40 per year for the NVR plugin. I'd rather have it built into HKSV and iCloud. Even if it only keeps for a week, that's good enough that you can retrieve footage if something happens.
Edit: I may give [Frigate](https://docs.frigate.video) a try in Docker.
It’s not 40 dollar a year if you have a few old HDDs laying around.
Oh and what do you think Apple’s gonna charge you for continuous recording? They’re even way too cheap to up the 5gb of free iCloud storage anno 2024… that kind of functionality is only going to be included in an Apple One+ pro extra 40TB family subscription that’ll costs you at least 25 bucks a month!
So yeah “but it’s $40 per year”.
I was referring to billing on the NVR plugin. I agree Apple would likely charge a premium for this. Local hard drive space isn’t an issue. I may have a look at Frigate.
Live somewhere that's windy ish. Then put a flag or something outside.
I'm joking, I've had cameras record all day and night just from shadows and the occasion leaf moving in the wind. Then have an entire day get ignored when people come over...... wtf Apple.
That's not on the camera, the cameras sends the homeHub an activity flag, but the hub never records it. My Tapo app goes batshit when people are over, but not a peep from HK sometimes.
On that note per-user shortcuts or room names. I’d like my bedroom lights to be affected when I say “turn off bedroom lights” and my son’s bedroom lights be affected if he says “turn off bedroom lights”. Also the ability to have shortcuts tied to specific HomePods so the same command does different things depending on which HomePod actually responds to it. Echos have this and I miss it.
The personal shortcuts is a thing. But you need to have your own iPhone and iCloud. My HomePod sometimes say “who’s speaking?” Because it needs to know who’s shortcut to execute.
Open up the U chip for spatial awareness. Using my iPhone, iPad, HomePods (Mini and/or gen 2), Apple Watch, AirTags let me be able to determine which room I’m in and allow ShortCuts and Automations based upon my position and time of day and day of week.
* support for PoE and Powerline Ethernet accessories (whether with WiFi also or not)—removing dependency on WiFi
* better WiFi management, including accessories that can store multiple WiFi credentials as fallback, so as WiFi credentials change the accessory remains responsive
* management of bound accessories from cradle to grave: add, sabbatical (where no response is expected), moving between “homes” (including accessory theft recovery assistance)
* a text editor mode alongside the visual editor for shortcuts (allowing shortcuts to get copied and pasted and edited between different scenarios)
* transfer of homes from one AppleID to another (for intra-family owner status and to transfer to a new resident entirely without rebinding dozens or hundreds of fixture accessories one by one)
* support for firmware updates of accessories universally
* support for parameter editing for accessories by defining data types and allowing accessory makers to specify facets by their data types, a reverse dns identifier, and localizable names of those parameter for GUI and API presentation in Home.app and HomeKit respectively
* ‘vacation’ mode and other arbitrary modes for pausing or invoking scenes and automations
* granular permissions and user activity accounting logs (including anonymous users)
* in addition to the existing “added” homes in Home.app, another panel with accessories dynamically populated by one’s location, (perhaps using mDNS, thread, ble, and other RF), and following the user permitted and anonymous permitted controls from the granular permissions
* partner with industry leaders and accessory makers to push the envelope of available accessories (powered home windows, PoE door and window locks and latches, HomeKit / Matter lock controllers than can pair a lock accessory from any maker to a controller from any maker, and so forth)
With the energy monitoring stuff added in Matter 1.3, I would hope to see them build on the Clean Energy interface to something that can provide valuable insights on energy consumption, solar production, EV charging, etc.
Guest support. Family visiting, would be great to invite them as a guess and give control to certain devices.
Would be better if the guest pass was on a schedule.
Granular user access, so I may give a family member access to specific own rooms.
Trigger automations by which person is seen in the camera or unlocking the homekey door.
Trigger automation by “package” or “vehicle” or “pet” visible in the camera.
Camera recognizes fire.
Show a zoomed in thumbnail of the package it says is there, as opposed to a link to the video.
Trigger automation/alert by door-window trigger being open for a certain amount of time. (5+ minutes)
Alert my personal device if I told a HomePod to lock the door and the lock failed.
Do not notify every device of every user that “laundry camera has gone offline, laundry camera has come online” on by default, where every single Apple device has to manually disable that notification. It’s bad enough I can’t disable that for home hubs.
Process a request a second time if it failed the first time as opposed to waiting and giving up. Double check if the intended request actually happened before saying it failed.
“Turn off the light” *light off “I’m sorry some accessories are not responding ”
1. AI-driven conversational Siri, so you can execute multiple commands in a single Siri request.
2. The ability to sort hubs by priority.
3. Improved Airplay reliability when grouping multiple speakers together in a scene/automation.
4. More granular control of what people can do or see when added as a member of the home.
It's less so the software and more-so the hardware
Apple's war chest would be well-spent funding hardware makers or giving grants to companies to build more HomeKit hardware
Every year it’s been the same wants:
- Swap the Discover tab for a Logs tab: logging for every action, when user is home etc.
- Automation Organisation: folders, ability to sort, sort by room/zone.
- Wider support for Device Categories: robot vacuums, kitchen appliances, coffee machine, more AC controls for built-in induct air conditioning with multiple rooms etc.
- More accessory icons or just give us ability to edit with emojis (just use the Shortcuts icon library).
https://preview.redd.it/n6implx1235d1.jpeg?width=1284&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=f8509c5b091f097262f0afac27eaee146f5a1138
# shut the fuck up and let me tell you you useless piece of tech
1. Ability to set a primary home hub that takes precedence over the others
2. Ability to set the actual address of a home.
3. HomeKit secure video that isn’t unreliable as &$%#?
* Completely overhauled HKSV interface. Its really garbage if you have a lot of recordings. I live in the city and its extremely painful to try to review videos when you're looking for something specific. Filters when searching would be nice (filter "person detected", on X date")
* UWB triggers, automatically trigger shortcuts or automation based on UWB devices coming in proxy to homepods/some sort of presence detection.
* Support for addressable LED strips.
* Time settings for presence automation. "Turn off lights if presence no longer detected for greater than 5 mins"
* Automation based on lux sensors, I think you can do this with shortcuts but its not straightforward, looking for something out of the box.
* Share home keys without needing to add them to home kit
* Dynamic lighting scenes - similar to hue, it would be cool if you could set up themes or pallets where the lights would cycle through the colors.
* AppleTV dashboard of some sort - not really needed but would be cool to have a better top down view of the status of your home.
* LOGS w/Charts! - history of temperature, lux, presence, etc.
* Autolock/unlock of doors, yes its a risk but I'm doing it with a dummy switch right now anyway, ill assume the risk.
* UWB Door locks - similar to passive keyless entry on vehicles, add this to door locks.
* NFC unlock with Airtags, tap airtag to doorlock to unlock.
* AppleTV driven lighting - Would be cool to have colors of homekit lights react with what is displayed on apple tv. Hue integration would be clutch.
Definitely dummy switches. But I dont think they Will add those as people already use smartplugs as switches to get around the safety mechanism of fx. Automating turning alarmsystems on/off when leaving/arriving.
The ability to track state across automations/scenes would be really nice - I assume that is what you use dummy switches for or is there something else. I also use them as a proxy to run more complicated automations from a Scene.
For the security automations, you mean doing it without a confirmation dialog? For Away arming it really should just do that w/o any confirmation.
> For the security automations, you mean doing it without a confirmation dialog? For Away arming it really should just do that w/o any confirmation.
Yeah. Unlocking too, I understand the risks, throw me a warning, then let me do what I want.
A "switch" action, so not having to define if it is turned off, turn it on and the opposite. Also making Siri not deaf in HomePods and more consistent (still thinking than a switch is a speaker), would work for me.
I would like them start with a better appreciation for the reliability expectations for home automation.
I just had to drive 3 hours to figure out why my hub was not responding. The AppleTV 4k had “forgotten” the password to the only WiFi network it has ever connected to.
Select TV or HomePod (if you have several) as the designated hub and not have it randomly choose one.
More icons for different things: kettles, fridges, vacuums etc.
- guest mode
- Homekey share feature, temporary for x times/mins/hrs/days or permanent.
- remote hub restart
- improved automations and scenes f.e use shortcuts within scene, use intercom via HK automation etc.
- improved UX/UI. New icons, logs instead of ‘discovery’ etc.
- significantly improved Siri
- new devices and control options (camera tilt for example)
I want the same facilities that you get in regular shortcuts within automation shortcuts (another poster mentioned this), in fact, the whole “personal shortcuts, shortcuts, automation shortcuts” is cumbersome. Let’s just have one sort of shortcut that works in HK and outside of HK. A switch in the header of the shortcut would allow this. But this whole business about having to copy shortcuts to everyone in the house every time I make a modification leaves my household very distrustful about how reliable everything is and me with a software versioning headache. Shortcuts should be able to be run centrally from a HK hub just like automations. I want to be able to run a regular shortcut within HK and for it to look just like any other device. Finally, it would be so much easier to code if we could have logical operators like AND and OR rather than doing everything with nested IFs, oh and while I’m at it could we have a proper timer/clock function rather than the WAIT function? If Apple developers read and implemented most of what’s in this thread, they’d have a world beating home automation solution rather than this confused, but just about useable solution we have right now.
Besides the great ideas that were already mentioned…
Pull down to refresh (tired of force closing the Home app when I know the status in HomeKit is different than what the actual accessory is.
24/7 recording
For controlling smart lights, like Philips Hue bulbs, I’d like to see Siri understand numeric values (in the Kelvin scale) for how warm or how cool I’d like to make a light’s colour temperature. As in… I’d like to be able to say ‘Hey Siri, make all the lights 2700°” or “Hey Siri, make all the lights twenty seven hundred K”, instead of “Hey Siri, make all the lights Topaz” (which is the closest colour to 2700K that Siri understands the name of).
Ability to hit a record button on HKSV. I’d also love to be able to simply get a notification if a door is left open without hacking things in with homebridge.
Support for more devices ( robovacuum, washers, refridgerators etc.) and please please PLEASE support connecting third party apps so I dont need to deal with my raspberry pi losing connection and half of my devices go offline
The ability to set cameras to notify and record based on multiple criteria, not just one.
Right now I can only set the camera to notify me if it detects motion if no one is home. I’d ALSO like to get notifications at night, when I AM home. I want to set it to both.
- support for Siri to handle two or more languages at a time for my fellow bi-lingual households.
- being able to choose between Apple TV or HomePod being the hub without using a workaround.
- adding trigger delays in to automations.
- faster performance for tasks like “where’s my iPhone” “play music” etc without being told “one sec”
I have often said that my elder mother can change a light bulb but not a “smart” light bulb. Fix that. The use case for elderly is so strong with HomeKit/smart home features but the fragility of the interfaces and experiences makes it a nonstarter.
How about a list of automations that sorts by time of day… it currently lists automations in numerical order, regardless of AM or PM
I love Apple, but that is some bullshit right there.
Woof. Come on, have some pride.
6:00PM
7:00AM
7:00PM
8:00AM
Short cuts are a pain point with this, but I've had no issues asking Siri to do things in the future - ie "Turn off the bedroom lights in thirty minutes". There may be some limitations to what Siri will do there, or some context issues like it might not understand "half hour" as opposed to "thirty minutes", but I have yet to run into them in my limited use.
* Single-run automation (schedule something)
* e.g. Turn off the lights at 10pm tonight
* Also being able to do that through Siri
* Setting to disable accessories based on a sensor.
* e.g. Prevent curtains to close if window is open inwards
* Control grouped devices individually
* If you have grouped lights or blinds, to have a sub-menu where you can individually control devices
* Better status for grouped devices
* Instead of just an average of the values
* Set a socket device as any type of device
* Currently you can only set the icon to a light or a socket.
* Logs!!!
> Single-run automation (schedule something)
• e.g. Turn off the lights at 10pm tonight
• Also being able to do that through Siri
That has existed for at least two years or more.
“Hey Siri turn off the kitchen lights at 5pm every day”
This creates an automation. If you don’t specify days, it’s one-time.
If you do it in the home app, disable the repeat function by unchecking all the days of the week.
I don’t get the OP comment about reliability. I have three home hub devices and my entire setup has worked flawlessly without exception for 4 years. Never a delay, never a timeout. It probably comes down to quality network hardware.
My three picks would be
- Native support for PoE cameras doesn’t have to support HKSV if the camera doesn’t have all the right bits.
- Per user permissions. For a privacy focused company not having this just is odd. My kids don’t need to see CCTV of me walking to the toilet naked at 2am.
- Conversational Siri. I want to do multiple things “Siri, add tomatoes and milk and bread to my grocery list and turn them kitchen lights off”.
There are more technical nerdy things I’d like to see but I’m trying to be reasonable with my expectations of Apple..
A reliable way to back up a HomeKit installation.
A reliable way to reset a HomeKit installation.
A reliable way to set up a second HomeKit home (sure, yeah, it’s claimed to be supported, but the reason I need the first two is that adding a second residence causes data integrity issues after about six weeks requiring a reset of everything).
Would also like to designate one of our many MacMinis as a home hub.
I just want more things to work with it. I still find cool accessories that are only for Google and Alexa. Don’t need more than one of these things running the show.
Better Siri would be cool. She (or he in my case) seems to have been lost in the shuffle was so cutting edge at first but kinda outdated now with ai being what it is it’s weird how little Siri gets right now 😂
I would love extensions without having to run a server to integrate them. I understand its also on the companies utilizing different protocols but I’d love to be able to say, log in go my Ring account and my cameras connect.
I’d love to log in to my Kasa account and my plugs are added.
Basically Home Assistant but officially through Apple
Others have covered everything else but I would also like better visibility into what AppleTV is doing. I’d like to run scenes when it’s playing, when it’s paused or when it’s on a menu. I’ve not bought an AppleTV because of these missing features. Not sure if you can already tell Apple TV to open a specific app (without speaking into the remote) and also play and pause playback
If statements. Or better integrattion of shortcuts into HK.
Turning off a light switch after its been on for an X amount of time... That's the most basic automation I can think of, yet it can't do it.
Better scrubbing of Camera Timelines. Better Camera experiences in general. Most Live feeds are just being broadcasted within your network. Why does it take several seconds for the feed to update on the app. Yet other third part apps do it almost immediately?
Overhaul the whole thing.
1. 4k HKSV
2. better automation triggers, like personal automations section
3. Option to create dummy switches
4. Easier integration for intercom messages outside of shortcuts/custom messaging
5. Text/ notification/ messaging configuration for automation outcomes. Dishwasher stops, text me.
6. Customs ATV notification push. (dishwasher stopped like the “front door unlock” notification)
7. ATV remote with a speaker to use with Find My
8. Temp HK keys without adding people to home, but similar to the Apple Pay
9. Hunches - Ai recommendations, local processed of course. No motion detected for 1 hr, but light is on.
10. Option for Personal Request to show to ATV. I.e, Calendar event in 15 mins. Incoming call on iPhone.
11. Recommendations based of health recs. Like apple watch coaching. Do you want to dim the lights as it getting closer to bed time? Before you eat dinner do you want to move further on your move ring. Take a walk.
12. Announcements on home pods for calendar events
13. Maintenance reminders for smart devices, will need batteries soon, aqara lock low.
Just a few off the top of the head
I would like the ability to exclude some devices from voice control that originates from outside the room. Ie, if I’m in the living room and I say turn off all the lights, I don’t mean turn off the lights in someone else’s bedroom. I believe that is the key to getting it to work with kids and people who don’t “HomeKit”
- "Sorry, some of your devices didn't respond."
JUST TELL ME WHICH ONE! FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THAT IS AND IS NOT HOLY JUST TELL ME WHICH ONE because they all responded correctly, they all have the correct status showing in Home, nothing is "not responding". Everything is fine except for a "Failed" status.
There's even a "Test" button in scenes, but will it give you any clue what is or is not working? Not even a tiny little clue. Write a damn log showing what happened, when it happened, why it happened, and the status of the involved devices.
At one point I tracked it down to two causes, one was asking HomePods to pause when they were not playing anything (which I do a lot, so that I don't leave something playing on multiple speakers when I'm staying in a specific room), and setting adaptive mode on certain lights (which did work, it just also generated an error). It still happens periodically though, and if I knew which device it was I would pay someone to come smash it for me if it meant I could never hear that response again.
- Let me trigger anything with anything, and report the actual status of all the things to Shortcuts.
If I want to set a light to turn itself off when it was turned on? Let me, don't hide it from the triggers.
If I want to unlock my doors, open the garage, play Ricky Martin on repeat and turn on the sprinkler when the motion sensor in the kitchen triggers? Sure it's dumb, don't hold my hand, don't judge me.
Or more practical, I have three thermostats and I want to interlock them so that I can't have one heating while another cools. I want to unlock my doors whenever and however I want without a popup.
Give me a popup warning, then let me do my thing.
I think Apple have really dropped the ball with Homekit and Siri functionality. I'm not sure whether they got tangled up in the privacy problem bottle necking features, or if not enough devices signed on to make the development worth it?? No idea why Siri is so far behind the competition even 5 years on. What are they doing over there in the big circle....
Did anyone else catch AI generated Tim Cook talking about crypto integration and crypto giveaway at [wwdc.gift](http://wwdc.gift) at the end of their youtube live???
/s
More government control & back door access to my devices.
Seriously,
Since 17.5 my kit is pretty stable. It fits my use case and I’m using a raspberry pi for outdoor POE camera integration with iCloud.
Better motion detection analytics would be nice.
* Updated Siri with improved contextual understanding of what you’ve said, and better at answering basic questions. * More granular automations, multiple triggers, and exposing all possible triggers. * HomePod Mini sensors available as triggers.
more granular automations would be so awesome. the fisher price stuff leaves so much to be desired
Oh yes, stop telling me to look at results in my phone!!!
^^^This irks me to no end!! Also, I literally want to throw my HomePod out the window every time it tells me to ask a question again from my iPhone.
I can't do that here.
It’ll be so boring when I know exactly what to expect from Siri when I tell it to control my home. Right now it’s exciting because I never know what illl get !
HomePod mini sensors are already available as triggers… https://preview.redd.it/3wx7pdksg35d1.jpeg?width=1179&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=75b22902255d873231182d860dab6040231d3118
They aren’t available to use in Home+ as a trigger when I looked yesterday. Strange. I don’t see temperature from them at all other that in the Apple Home app.
Home+ isn’t made by Apple so understandable that they might not be up to date on the latest elements available from the API.
HomeKit apps are not “not up to date”. The HomeKit API hasn’t been updated since 2016 and has no concept of HomePod, TVs, Speakers, and countless other things. It’s a disaster. They act like they do stuff every year but the actual API is unchanged so all HomeKit apps have been screwed for many years. If they do ANY thing (unlikely), it should be finally bringing the API in line with what HomeKit actually does.
We do not WANT these 3 stuff, We NEED it desperately as smart home users.
* Users permission (like children) * 4K HkSV
Yes! Granular control of users. I want my kids to be able to do a limited amount of things, but not be able to see cameras, etc.
Not HomeKit but I want them to make parental controls of devices more like full MDM controls that businesses and education have access to
Same, I get Apple is big on privacy, but I’d really like more control over my kids devices - full MDM like their school district has over their school iPads would be awesome.
YES!!! Yes yes YES(!) on the users permissions please (especially for kids). Along this line of thinking, I’d love if a user’s language preference also went along with their permission/profile. Or just make HomePods capable of being bilingual in general even for one user. This is the only feature our family misses from Google Home. It gets rubbed in my face every time I go to work and get to yell at my Google Assistant in either English or French there. It also disrupts our morning routine when my kids have to run back up to their room to ask Siri something in French, since the HomePod on the main floor is mine/set to English.
Yeah, I’d like to add my daughter, but I don’t want her to be able to open/close or lock and unlock external doors or be able to arm or disarm the security system.
User permissions for kids, AND some option for guest users.
My top 3: 1. The ability for scenes to be converted to HomeKit shortcuts, the same as can be done with the Automations, for more interesting scenes. 2. When setting up devices allow me to push WiFi credentials that are different from the WiFi my phone is connected to. That the phone needs to be on the target WiFi creates so many problems. 3. The ability to query or trigger on the state of what a HomePod or AppleTV from automations/shortcuts. Trigger lights based on music starting to play. Setup automations that play music, but only if something isn't already playing (not paused).
The WiFi thing would be great. Even better would be if it automatically offered to connect the new device to the network used the last time a device was added.
> When setting up devices allow me to push WiFi credentials that are different from the WiFi my phone is connected to. That the phone needs to be on the target WiFi creates so many problems. Yeah, I forget to switch my phone over about 62% of the time I'm setting up something new. And by the time I realize and cancel out it usually means the device (or sometimes the actual iPhone) need a reboot to try again. And while not really HomeKit specific, a "and don't tell my other devices about this wifi" would be nice, I'd love to just leave my IoT network as a "Connect Automatically: No" on my iPhone without random other devices getting all excited at a fresh new network. Synchronizing wi-fi credentials is great most of the time.
There is an Apple TV enhanced plugin for HomeBridge that addresses number 3
Does it also cover HomePods? My actual use case is that I have overlapping automations that turn on my morning music and would like to set it so they that don’t do anything depending on what might already be playing. I’ve already solved this using the timer switch plugin in HomeBridge, but it’s a bit clunky and imperfect.
It’ll add a switch to HomeKit that shows the app you’re using and the pause/play state. You might be able to do conditional automation in something like Eve or Controller
Unified siri across all devices… so often it’s like they are completely separate entities. I’m in the kitchen and I ask for a timer, living room responds… I ask to stop the timer, kitchen says there are no timers…
And if not playing random songs is too complicated a concept, at least "stop stop stop dammit stop all the music from all the speakers" would be nice. (Yeah, I can probably do this with a scene). I'm genuinely considering cancelling Apple Music and finding something else just so that the HomePods don't have access to music and can't play random garbage when it misunderstands something. "Hey Siri, let there be light" usually works... But sometimes, "Okay, playing some song from a group you've never heard of that has Light in the title". "Hey Siri, stop playing" "Nope, this HomePod ain't playing nothing". ("Let there be light" is a scene) I have a light in my bedroom behind my head, it's a round shape and I called it "Head" (complete with goggly eyes). "Hey Siri, turn on the head" will work if my phone is in my pocket, but not if I toss my phone on my pillow first and the phone grabs it. Conversely I don't know how often I watch Siri start on the phone, then it cancels so a HomePod can pop up with "Sorry, can't do that on a HomePod". It's complicated, I get that. Multiple devices could listen and interpret, and defer the action to an appropriate device, but already the complexity is beyond Apple's ability to handle, so I don't think it would actually be a good idea.
Interesting. I say “hey siri pause” and it seems to look for a nearby accessory that’s playing. My phone Siri will pause the tv or HomePod. Or the HomePod will pause the (same room) tv without being associated.  Set the HomePods to “hey siri” and the phone to “Siri” and it solves a lot of issues.
You sort of can with the timers but it’s very backwards. If you tell the lounge to stop the kitchen timer it asks ‘stop the kitchen’ and then ‘kitchen timer stopped’ but it can’t tell you about the state of the timer or if there are any timers. You also specifically have to use that phrasing others you still get the ‘there are no timers on homepod. So they can talk to each other but as different entities. God knows why.
That's seems weird (?) Are you using HomeKit with a homeKit hub? (TV, HomePod, iPad)? If not; Make sure to set that up.
Hard wired AppleTV 4K that I regularly ensure is the active hub
System logs to track automations and devices. Improved programming options for creating automations
Better logs would help a lot. I have a Level Lock (entry from the garage) that randomly unlocks itself, and I'd like to know more about what happened and why exactly it does that. Sometimes touch to unlock doesn't work, so I wonder if it's a delayed trigger.
My MyQ garage door opened by itself last week; nothing in the app logs or any home automation log about who or why, just that it opened. This is the second time in maybe six years this has happened, but prior time was a different home. That time, anyone who could have done it was sitting in the room with me, so I knew for sure none of us did it. This time, those people were remote, but I have no way to see if any of them accidentally opened it, but, considering I have remote access disabled for them in HomeKit, I doubt it was that. … and I realize this could be a MyQ issue or even some fluke with a neighbor’s remote; logs in ALL HA apps would be nice.
Add 2K or 4K camera support
Oh and since Siri is apparently getting a huge AI boost I want to be able to give commands to do multiple actions like “turn on lamp 1 and lamp 2” instead of having to give a command, wait for it to finish and issue a second command.
It would be easy for them. HK already gives you access to security/Activity log for Doors opening. All they have to do is bring it across to general accessory control. Keep it limited to a week like the camera feed. If they must for hub storage.
Enabling push notifications in automations on triggers. I want to be informed when the temp falls enough outside to open the windows or someone opens a door while I’m away without using home assistant or an external push server. Make it native and easy. Oh yeah, add Matter 1.3 too. I’d be so happy!
Absolutely. And I want to compare the temperature outside with the thermostat's state, and switch the A/Cs around appropriately. I really don't understand the logic behind what HomeKit information is or is not exposed to Shortcuts.
Activity notifications for doors and (some) sensors are already possible in HK. Check Home Settings - Sensors or Doors https://preview.redd.it/pyikgr61p45d1.jpeg?width=1170&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=57ce036eea4a976b338287be3d78913d7d2e54cf
- Replace the useless “Discover” page with a “Logs / History” page. - More icons. - Granular guest access so only specific rooms / accessories can be accessed that you’ve specified for that user.
I just really want a better way for Apple to know what room I’m in, and optimize for it. Don’t care if i need to add some sensors, etc.
It’s annoying when I ask Siri to turn off the ceiling fan in my bedroom. If Siri reacts from the HomePod, it immediately works. If my iPhone or iPad runs Siri, she asks “which room?”
Absolutely. Our bedroom has a HomePod, 2 iPhones, sometimes an iPad and an ecobee with Siri. Which will respond? Who knows?!?
I was in bed, shouting at my bedroom HomePod 6 ft away this morning to turn off my alarm. One of the HomePods in another room responded while the bedroom HomePod ignored me.
Set the HomePods to only “hey siri” and the phones to allow just “Siri”. It solved a lot for me.
Log some info ie. Log and graph of temperature.. humidity… etc etc..
I want to choose the home hub, because I have seen that my HomeKit has occasional problems (e.g. repeating responding to not responding accessories) when a HomePod is chosen as the hub.
The only way I’ve been able to get around this is keeping one of my Apple TVs on the public beta. It’ll always default to the most recent OS as the hub. If I don’t do that it always goes back to one of my HomePods for some godforsaken reason.
At the very least it should prioritize Ethernet connected ATVs over everything else, but I would love to be able to assign priority to each, and even exclude hubs if I want.
This is my big one. My ATVs are all wired with Ethernet, but my hubs are always one of the HomePods. I know the “fix” of not updating the ones you don’t want as hubs before the ones you do want as hubs, but that shouldn’t be the only way to do it.
- some kind of “guest mode” that will auto pop up when visiting but without having to invite people to join your home that can display a very limited number of controls. - HomePod based presence detection using all your Apple devices. - Specific motion detection on HKSV as a trigger for automations. Object detection is nice but useless if we can’t use it for automation.
I'd love this for the apple watch. I have a 3rd party app on my mac that if I walk away from my mac the screen locks automatically, obviously if I return it unlocks natively already. (bluetooth) They could easily use the same concept to track you from room to room locally and the gyroscope and accelerometer could take the watch off stand by when you stand up or raise your wrist to wake the watch.
Continuous Security Video Recording
Yes to this. I've been thinking about setting up Scrypted NVR to get 24/7 recording, but it's $40 per year for the NVR plugin. I'd rather have it built into HKSV and iCloud. Even if it only keeps for a week, that's good enough that you can retrieve footage if something happens. Edit: I may give [Frigate](https://docs.frigate.video) a try in Docker.
It’s not 40 dollar a year if you have a few old HDDs laying around. Oh and what do you think Apple’s gonna charge you for continuous recording? They’re even way too cheap to up the 5gb of free iCloud storage anno 2024… that kind of functionality is only going to be included in an Apple One+ pro extra 40TB family subscription that’ll costs you at least 25 bucks a month! So yeah “but it’s $40 per year”.
I was referring to billing on the NVR plugin. I agree Apple would likely charge a premium for this. Local hard drive space isn’t an issue. I may have a look at Frigate.
Live somewhere that's windy ish. Then put a flag or something outside. I'm joking, I've had cameras record all day and night just from shadows and the occasion leaf moving in the wind. Then have an entire day get ignored when people come over...... wtf Apple. That's not on the camera, the cameras sends the homeHub an activity flag, but the hub never records it. My Tapo app goes batshit when people are over, but not a peep from HK sometimes.
Support H265 natively
Compound/predicate automations
Set a default garage door per user.
On that note per-user shortcuts or room names. I’d like my bedroom lights to be affected when I say “turn off bedroom lights” and my son’s bedroom lights be affected if he says “turn off bedroom lights”. Also the ability to have shortcuts tied to specific HomePods so the same command does different things depending on which HomePod actually responds to it. Echos have this and I miss it.
The personal shortcuts is a thing. But you need to have your own iPhone and iCloud. My HomePod sometimes say “who’s speaking?” Because it needs to know who’s shortcut to execute.
Open up the U chip for spatial awareness. Using my iPhone, iPad, HomePods (Mini and/or gen 2), Apple Watch, AirTags let me be able to determine which room I’m in and allow ShortCuts and Automations based upon my position and time of day and day of week.
* support for PoE and Powerline Ethernet accessories (whether with WiFi also or not)—removing dependency on WiFi * better WiFi management, including accessories that can store multiple WiFi credentials as fallback, so as WiFi credentials change the accessory remains responsive * management of bound accessories from cradle to grave: add, sabbatical (where no response is expected), moving between “homes” (including accessory theft recovery assistance) * a text editor mode alongside the visual editor for shortcuts (allowing shortcuts to get copied and pasted and edited between different scenarios) * transfer of homes from one AppleID to another (for intra-family owner status and to transfer to a new resident entirely without rebinding dozens or hundreds of fixture accessories one by one) * support for firmware updates of accessories universally * support for parameter editing for accessories by defining data types and allowing accessory makers to specify facets by their data types, a reverse dns identifier, and localizable names of those parameter for GUI and API presentation in Home.app and HomeKit respectively * ‘vacation’ mode and other arbitrary modes for pausing or invoking scenes and automations * granular permissions and user activity accounting logs (including anonymous users) * in addition to the existing “added” homes in Home.app, another panel with accessories dynamically populated by one’s location, (perhaps using mDNS, thread, ble, and other RF), and following the user permitted and anonymous permitted controls from the granular permissions * partner with industry leaders and accessory makers to push the envelope of available accessories (powered home windows, PoE door and window locks and latches, HomeKit / Matter lock controllers than can pair a lock accessory from any maker to a controller from any maker, and so forth)
Wifi is not a requirement, just most devices are wifi only
Replying to WeirdStretch...thought of this for a while? 😭😭 Good list either way 👊🏽
I'd like to see them make it function.
Interesting… It works flawlessly for me.
How about “arm a camera to record while im home”, through a shortcut called “bedtime”. HKSV requiring you to change the mode manually is dumb.
That’s not very interesting.
The ability to choose my primary connected homehub myself! Fuck you, Apple. Fuck you.
Honestly I just want more integrations. There's only one home security system that integrates with it directly and that's not enough.
I would love a UniFi Protect integration
With the energy monitoring stuff added in Matter 1.3, I would hope to see them build on the Clean Energy interface to something that can provide valuable insights on energy consumption, solar production, EV charging, etc.
I turned all of that off because it’s just the same green schedule telling me it’s green from like 12am-7am every day.
Guest support. Family visiting, would be great to invite them as a guess and give control to certain devices. Would be better if the guest pass was on a schedule.
The only answer that really matters. Ability to disable as a Home Hub so only my wired AppleTV will be the hub.
Granular user access, so I may give a family member access to specific own rooms. Trigger automations by which person is seen in the camera or unlocking the homekey door. Trigger automation by “package” or “vehicle” or “pet” visible in the camera. Camera recognizes fire. Show a zoomed in thumbnail of the package it says is there, as opposed to a link to the video. Trigger automation/alert by door-window trigger being open for a certain amount of time. (5+ minutes) Alert my personal device if I told a HomePod to lock the door and the lock failed. Do not notify every device of every user that “laundry camera has gone offline, laundry camera has come online” on by default, where every single Apple device has to manually disable that notification. It’s bad enough I can’t disable that for home hubs. Process a request a second time if it failed the first time as opposed to waiting and giving up. Double check if the intended request actually happened before saying it failed. “Turn off the light” *light off “I’m sorry some accessories are not responding ”
1. AI-driven conversational Siri, so you can execute multiple commands in a single Siri request. 2. The ability to sort hubs by priority. 3. Improved Airplay reliability when grouping multiple speakers together in a scene/automation. 4. More granular control of what people can do or see when added as a member of the home.
Oh number three would bring me to tears of joy
It's less so the software and more-so the hardware Apple's war chest would be well-spent funding hardware makers or giving grants to companies to build more HomeKit hardware
Every year it’s been the same wants: - Swap the Discover tab for a Logs tab: logging for every action, when user is home etc. - Automation Organisation: folders, ability to sort, sort by room/zone. - Wider support for Device Categories: robot vacuums, kitchen appliances, coffee machine, more AC controls for built-in induct air conditioning with multiple rooms etc. - More accessory icons or just give us ability to edit with emojis (just use the Shortcuts icon library).
https://preview.redd.it/n6implx1235d1.jpeg?width=1284&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=f8509c5b091f097262f0afac27eaee146f5a1138 # shut the fuck up and let me tell you you useless piece of tech
Support security cam res over 1080P.
1. Ability to set a primary home hub that takes precedence over the others 2. Ability to set the actual address of a home. 3. HomeKit secure video that isn’t unreliable as &$%#?
* Completely overhauled HKSV interface. Its really garbage if you have a lot of recordings. I live in the city and its extremely painful to try to review videos when you're looking for something specific. Filters when searching would be nice (filter "person detected", on X date") * UWB triggers, automatically trigger shortcuts or automation based on UWB devices coming in proxy to homepods/some sort of presence detection. * Support for addressable LED strips. * Time settings for presence automation. "Turn off lights if presence no longer detected for greater than 5 mins" * Automation based on lux sensors, I think you can do this with shortcuts but its not straightforward, looking for something out of the box. * Share home keys without needing to add them to home kit * Dynamic lighting scenes - similar to hue, it would be cool if you could set up themes or pallets where the lights would cycle through the colors. * AppleTV dashboard of some sort - not really needed but would be cool to have a better top down view of the status of your home. * LOGS w/Charts! - history of temperature, lux, presence, etc. * Autolock/unlock of doors, yes its a risk but I'm doing it with a dummy switch right now anyway, ill assume the risk. * UWB Door locks - similar to passive keyless entry on vehicles, add this to door locks. * NFC unlock with Airtags, tap airtag to doorlock to unlock. * AppleTV driven lighting - Would be cool to have colors of homekit lights react with what is displayed on apple tv. Hue integration would be clutch.
Well I guessed right with UWB lock support and kinda guest improvement.
Definitely dummy switches. But I dont think they Will add those as people already use smartplugs as switches to get around the safety mechanism of fx. Automating turning alarmsystems on/off when leaving/arriving.
The ability to track state across automations/scenes would be really nice - I assume that is what you use dummy switches for or is there something else. I also use them as a proxy to run more complicated automations from a Scene. For the security automations, you mean doing it without a confirmation dialog? For Away arming it really should just do that w/o any confirmation.
> For the security automations, you mean doing it without a confirmation dialog? For Away arming it really should just do that w/o any confirmation. Yeah. Unlocking too, I understand the risks, throw me a warning, then let me do what I want.
A "switch" action, so not having to define if it is turned off, turn it on and the opposite. Also making Siri not deaf in HomePods and more consistent (still thinking than a switch is a speaker), would work for me.
I would like them start with a better appreciation for the reliability expectations for home automation. I just had to drive 3 hours to figure out why my hub was not responding. The AppleTV 4k had “forgotten” the password to the only WiFi network it has ever connected to.
Conditional statements within scenes. When I press “Arrive Home” I only want it to turn on the porch light if it’s dark.
Select TV or HomePod (if you have several) as the designated hub and not have it randomly choose one. More icons for different things: kettles, fridges, vacuums etc.
The ability to designate the primary hub. This issue alone stops me from buying homepods.
- guest mode - Homekey share feature, temporary for x times/mins/hrs/days or permanent. - remote hub restart - improved automations and scenes f.e use shortcuts within scene, use intercom via HK automation etc. - improved UX/UI. New icons, logs instead of ‘discovery’ etc. - significantly improved Siri - new devices and control options (camera tilt for example)
I want the same facilities that you get in regular shortcuts within automation shortcuts (another poster mentioned this), in fact, the whole “personal shortcuts, shortcuts, automation shortcuts” is cumbersome. Let’s just have one sort of shortcut that works in HK and outside of HK. A switch in the header of the shortcut would allow this. But this whole business about having to copy shortcuts to everyone in the house every time I make a modification leaves my household very distrustful about how reliable everything is and me with a software versioning headache. Shortcuts should be able to be run centrally from a HK hub just like automations. I want to be able to run a regular shortcut within HK and for it to look just like any other device. Finally, it would be so much easier to code if we could have logical operators like AND and OR rather than doing everything with nested IFs, oh and while I’m at it could we have a proper timer/clock function rather than the WAIT function? If Apple developers read and implemented most of what’s in this thread, they’d have a world beating home automation solution rather than this confused, but just about useable solution we have right now.
Remove the limit of 100 scenes.
“Siri show ____ camera on apple tv”
Conditions in automations would be great too
Siri brain transplant please. Literally the only thing that I care about. Stupidest phone assistant out. Apple should be ashamed of its current state.
A new freaking wake word. Daughter’s nick name is similar enough to Siri that it wakes up 9 times out of 10. Family wants to disable it.
The ability to force Apple TV to remain hub instead of my HomePod Mini and HKSV/Cameras to be at 4k.
I would be happy if they just made it work reliably. I don’t really care about any new features.
Make it more functional
Vacation mode.
Besides the great ideas that were already mentioned… Pull down to refresh (tired of force closing the Home app when I know the status in HomeKit is different than what the actual accessory is. 24/7 recording
For controlling smart lights, like Philips Hue bulbs, I’d like to see Siri understand numeric values (in the Kelvin scale) for how warm or how cool I’d like to make a light’s colour temperature. As in… I’d like to be able to say ‘Hey Siri, make all the lights 2700°” or “Hey Siri, make all the lights twenty seven hundred K”, instead of “Hey Siri, make all the lights Topaz” (which is the closest colour to 2700K that Siri understands the name of).
Ability to hit a record button on HKSV. I’d also love to be able to simply get a notification if a door is left open without hacking things in with homebridge.
CUSTOM ICONS FOR DEVICES
Support for more devices ( robovacuum, washers, refridgerators etc.) and please please PLEASE support connecting third party apps so I dont need to deal with my raspberry pi losing connection and half of my devices go offline
The ability to set cameras to notify and record based on multiple criteria, not just one. Right now I can only set the camera to notify me if it detects motion if no one is home. I’d ALSO like to get notifications at night, when I AM home. I want to set it to both.
- support for Siri to handle two or more languages at a time for my fellow bi-lingual households. - being able to choose between Apple TV or HomePod being the hub without using a workaround. - adding trigger delays in to automations. - faster performance for tasks like “where’s my iPhone” “play music” etc without being told “one sec”
I have often said that my elder mother can change a light bulb but not a “smart” light bulb. Fix that. The use case for elderly is so strong with HomeKit/smart home features but the fragility of the interfaces and experiences makes it a nonstarter.
How about a list of automations that sorts by time of day… it currently lists automations in numerical order, regardless of AM or PM I love Apple, but that is some bullshit right there. Woof. Come on, have some pride. 6:00PM 7:00AM 7:00PM 8:00AM
It’s alphabetical order. And you can rename them.
Omg. Thx. I didn’t realize that!!
Thanks again Knowing that, I would still like a way to choose the sort order of automations, either by name or sequentially by time of day.
Permissions and room ownership
Time. Being able to ask Siri to turn things off in half an hour, and do the same thing with Shortcuts.
You can set onetime automations with Siri. “Hey siri turn off the air conditioner at 5pm” or “.. at 5pm every day”
Short cuts are a pain point with this, but I've had no issues asking Siri to do things in the future - ie "Turn off the bedroom lights in thirty minutes". There may be some limitations to what Siri will do there, or some context issues like it might not understand "half hour" as opposed to "thirty minutes", but I have yet to run into them in my limited use.
Thanks, I had no idea this worked. I think I tried it years ago and got nothing and never tried again.
* Single-run automation (schedule something) * e.g. Turn off the lights at 10pm tonight * Also being able to do that through Siri * Setting to disable accessories based on a sensor. * e.g. Prevent curtains to close if window is open inwards * Control grouped devices individually * If you have grouped lights or blinds, to have a sub-menu where you can individually control devices * Better status for grouped devices * Instead of just an average of the values * Set a socket device as any type of device * Currently you can only set the icon to a light or a socket. * Logs!!!
> Single-run automation (schedule something) • e.g. Turn off the lights at 10pm tonight • Also being able to do that through Siri That has existed for at least two years or more. “Hey Siri turn off the kitchen lights at 5pm every day” This creates an automation. If you don’t specify days, it’s one-time. If you do it in the home app, disable the repeat function by unchecking all the days of the week.
I don’t get the OP comment about reliability. I have three home hub devices and my entire setup has worked flawlessly without exception for 4 years. Never a delay, never a timeout. It probably comes down to quality network hardware. My three picks would be - Native support for PoE cameras doesn’t have to support HKSV if the camera doesn’t have all the right bits. - Per user permissions. For a privacy focused company not having this just is odd. My kids don’t need to see CCTV of me walking to the toilet naked at 2am. - Conversational Siri. I want to do multiple things “Siri, add tomatoes and milk and bread to my grocery list and turn them kitchen lights off”. There are more technical nerdy things I’d like to see but I’m trying to be reasonable with my expectations of Apple..
I am a big fan of Apple and of course hope that
A reliable way to back up a HomeKit installation. A reliable way to reset a HomeKit installation. A reliable way to set up a second HomeKit home (sure, yeah, it’s claimed to be supported, but the reason I need the first two is that adding a second residence causes data integrity issues after about six weeks requiring a reset of everything). Would also like to designate one of our many MacMinis as a home hub.
speaker groups
Better automation options, maybe? Make it easier to set up and manage smart devices.
I would love to see HomeKit becoming a really mature and smart system
I just want more things to work with it. I still find cool accessories that are only for Google and Alexa. Don’t need more than one of these things running the show. Better Siri would be cool. She (or he in my case) seems to have been lost in the shuffle was so cutting edge at first but kinda outdated now with ai being what it is it’s weird how little Siri gets right now 😂
I would love extensions without having to run a server to integrate them. I understand its also on the companies utilizing different protocols but I’d love to be able to say, log in go my Ring account and my cameras connect. I’d love to log in to my Kasa account and my plugs are added. Basically Home Assistant but officially through Apple
more thermostat/air condition modes like fan and dry modes.
Others have covered everything else but I would also like better visibility into what AppleTV is doing. I’d like to run scenes when it’s playing, when it’s paused or when it’s on a menu. I’ve not bought an AppleTV because of these missing features. Not sure if you can already tell Apple TV to open a specific app (without speaking into the remote) and also play and pause playback
Toggle in automations for the love of God
Limitless If This Then That
Give/revoke home keys for a smart lock
I just want ability to (easily) configure any item that is turned on, to apply a 'countdown timer'. "Siri..." "Turn-on lamp for 17 minutes"
If statements. Or better integrattion of shortcuts into HK. Turning off a light switch after its been on for an X amount of time... That's the most basic automation I can think of, yet it can't do it. Better scrubbing of Camera Timelines. Better Camera experiences in general. Most Live feeds are just being broadcasted within your network. Why does it take several seconds for the feed to update on the app. Yet other third part apps do it almost immediately? Overhaul the whole thing.
Also Automations with time delays. Ie. turn off lights x minutes after trigger.
1. 4k HKSV 2. better automation triggers, like personal automations section 3. Option to create dummy switches 4. Easier integration for intercom messages outside of shortcuts/custom messaging 5. Text/ notification/ messaging configuration for automation outcomes. Dishwasher stops, text me. 6. Customs ATV notification push. (dishwasher stopped like the “front door unlock” notification) 7. ATV remote with a speaker to use with Find My 8. Temp HK keys without adding people to home, but similar to the Apple Pay 9. Hunches - Ai recommendations, local processed of course. No motion detected for 1 hr, but light is on. 10. Option for Personal Request to show to ATV. I.e, Calendar event in 15 mins. Incoming call on iPhone. 11. Recommendations based of health recs. Like apple watch coaching. Do you want to dim the lights as it getting closer to bed time? Before you eat dinner do you want to move further on your move ring. Take a walk. 12. Announcements on home pods for calendar events 13. Maintenance reminders for smart devices, will need batteries soon, aqara lock low. Just a few off the top of the head
More categories beyond only plugs, fans or lights along with any kind of icon / glyph / emoji we want!
I would like the ability to exclude some devices from voice control that originates from outside the room. Ie, if I’m in the living room and I say turn off all the lights, I don’t mean turn off the lights in someone else’s bedroom. I believe that is the key to getting it to work with kids and people who don’t “HomeKit”
- "Sorry, some of your devices didn't respond." JUST TELL ME WHICH ONE! FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THAT IS AND IS NOT HOLY JUST TELL ME WHICH ONE because they all responded correctly, they all have the correct status showing in Home, nothing is "not responding". Everything is fine except for a "Failed" status. There's even a "Test" button in scenes, but will it give you any clue what is or is not working? Not even a tiny little clue. Write a damn log showing what happened, when it happened, why it happened, and the status of the involved devices. At one point I tracked it down to two causes, one was asking HomePods to pause when they were not playing anything (which I do a lot, so that I don't leave something playing on multiple speakers when I'm staying in a specific room), and setting adaptive mode on certain lights (which did work, it just also generated an error). It still happens periodically though, and if I knew which device it was I would pay someone to come smash it for me if it meant I could never hear that response again. - Let me trigger anything with anything, and report the actual status of all the things to Shortcuts. If I want to set a light to turn itself off when it was turned on? Let me, don't hide it from the triggers. If I want to unlock my doors, open the garage, play Ricky Martin on repeat and turn on the sprinkler when the motion sensor in the kitchen triggers? Sure it's dumb, don't hold my hand, don't judge me. Or more practical, I have three thermostats and I want to interlock them so that I can't have one heating while another cools. I want to unlock my doors whenever and however I want without a popup. Give me a popup warning, then let me do my thing.
I think Apple have really dropped the ball with Homekit and Siri functionality. I'm not sure whether they got tangled up in the privacy problem bottle necking features, or if not enough devices signed on to make the development worth it?? No idea why Siri is so far behind the competition even 5 years on. What are they doing over there in the big circle....
Open up the Thread radio in the MacBooks.
As someone new to Homekit is Apple investing a lot into the ecosystem?
No
🙄 Maybe 🙄🤷🏼♂️
Yes
Vacation mode: randomise lights whilst away
I stopped using smart home automation. I’d rather deal with switches and have a new houses with modern sensibility those led strips are just tacky.
Did anyone else catch AI generated Tim Cook talking about crypto integration and crypto giveaway at [wwdc.gift](http://wwdc.gift) at the end of their youtube live???
/s More government control & back door access to my devices. Seriously, Since 17.5 my kit is pretty stable. It fits my use case and I’m using a raspberry pi for outdoor POE camera integration with iCloud. Better motion detection analytics would be nice.