HomeKit

As families prepare for the Christmas season, outdoor lighting is certainly top of mind for my family, as I am sure it is for many of you. Outdoor lighting is a great way to light up the neighborhood and provide ambiance lightning. For outdoor lighting, it’s a prime way to eliminate the hassle of plugging things up at night and turning them off during the day. Govee recently released the Govee Permanent Outdoor Lights Pro, and it’s ideal for Christmas lighting as well as permanent porch installations.

Aqara has become a smart home and HomeKit leader over the last decade, and the company’s latest devices offer an impressive blend of function and form. Now, for Black Friday, Aqara is offering the best prices on its devices, including smart cameras, doorbells, locks, motion and door/window sensors, and more. And exclusive for 9to5Mac readers, take an extra 20% off the Aqara Camera E1 with promo code “USCE1MAC “.

HomeKit Secure Video is either a great solution or a terrible solution, depending on who you ask and depending on the day. No, it’s not perfect, but I do trust it. It’s the only camera recording solution I’d ever allow inside my home. I’ve recently been testing Aqara’s new E1 camera, which includes HomeKit Secure Video support.

It’s been reported that Apple is working on making iOS 18 the biggest update in years, and I’ve argued that it needs to do so, with artificial intelligence at its heart.

In particular, I’d like to see Apple bring AI smarts to HomeKit. That is, make Apple’s smart home ecosystem truly smart …

The Tado Smart Thermostat system is one of a few options available for United Kingdom home owners looking to upgrade their heating to smart home control. I’ve been using it for almost a year, and I’m generally very happy with it.

The Tado system is composed of a central controller, an internet bridge to connect to HomeKit, and optional radiator valves to control heating on a per-room basis.

Back in September, my wife and I spent a few weeks traveling through Scotland and London. It was an amazing time, and I highly recommend both places. Since our home was empty for long periods outside of family visiting to check on the house (I am always paranoid about a random leak, etc.), no one was in the home. With HomeKit, I was able to create automations to simulate the appearance that we were home through lights, shades, and more.

Upgrading your HomeKit lifestyle with a smart garage door is one of the best changes you can make. For a long time, MyQ was an easy recommendation for people looking to easily turn their existing garage door into a HomeKit garage door. Chamberlin, the company behind the MyQ platform, discontinued its HomeKit accessory last year and recently even further cracked down on access to the MyQ platform.

Thankfully, there are other ways to bring HomeKit capability to your garage door without too much work. Here are some of my favorites…

The Chamberlain myQ smart garage door opener is now blocking access by Homebridge, Home Assistant, and other third-party apps. It follows the company last year discontinuing the myQ Home Bridge Hub, which made the door opener HomeKit compatible.

The motivation for the move appears to be to force people to use Chamberlain’s own app, so that they will be exposed to the ads run in it …

Last year, we moved into a house we’d built from the ground up. One of the things that was different from my previous house was the type of heat. Instead of a heat pump, we moved over to natural gas. It’s my second time having gas heat, and there’s one thing I had forgotten – how dry it was. Now, gas heat is certainly much warmer; especially when it gets really cold, I just prefer gas heat. Well, I do, but my nose doesn’t. The more it runs, the dryer my nose gets. The Humelle humidifier from Airversa is now my go-to solution for a HomeKit-enabled humidifier for bedrooms.

After embracing HomeKit in a big way starting in 2022, and testing several motion sensors in the intervening months, my recommendation for best HomeKit motion sensor is the Eve Motion.

The Eve Motion sensor connects directly to the Home app on your iPhone, triggers HomeKit automations quickly in response to motion events, and has a very reliable connection in my experience of many months of real world use.

Smart lighting is one of the foundational aspects of a smart home. In fact, I would argue it’s likely the most common aspect of almost every smart home. There’s something magical about having lighting turn on and off via your voice, on a schedule, or based on motion. Outside of smart shades, it’s what you’ll see in movies in the richest of mansions as well. Thanks to low-cost items, anyone can have the luxury of smart lightning. The question I often get is which is best for lamps and other types of lightning outside of overheard lights – smart bulbs vs smart outlet adaptors?

Matter support for home appliances is on the way, through the latest version of the smart home connectivity standard backed by Apple and more than 600 other companies.

Previous versions of Matter have been limited to smaller smart home devices, like lights, door locks, blinds, and security sensors – while Matter 1.2 will add support for household appliances, robot cleaners, and more …

Back in the summer, my family went out of town for a few days. We had a dog sitter come by a few times a day to take our dogs on walks as well as take them to the bathroom. One challenge I had was showing her how to use our smart home. For our Level Lock+, I found it easier just to give her a key because there is no easy way to share a Home Key with someone outside of your iCloud family account. While I can share access to our lights, I find it much easier to use a product like the Onvis Smart Button instead.

After releasing its first indoor HomeKit camera in 2021, smart thermostat leader Ecobee is out today with its first outdoor product – the Smart Doorbell Camera. With a sharp design, HomeKit support, wide-angle view, and unique integrations with its Smart Thermostat Premium, follow along for our full review.

There are two things I want to see in every new smart home product: Matter and Thread. Matter lets me know that I’ll have access to the product regardless of which platform I use in the future. Thread lets me know that it’s going to work extremely well in my home in terms of responsiveness. The new Onvis Smart Plug checks all those boxes, and it’s quickly become one of my favorite smart plugs.

The vast majority of my smart home control comprises asking Siri to activate a scene – or having one automatically triggered by a time or event. For example, when going to bed, a single command switches on low lighting in the bedroom while switching off all other lights in the home.

Most of these scenes are created from scratch, thinking about exactly what I want to happen in particular circumstances – but there’s another approach I’d like to be able to take …

2023 has seen some exciting announcements and releases around HomeKit door locks. With Home Key, Level Lock+, and the Aqara doorbell, it’s been an exciting year. These door locks have been focused around exterior doors, though. The HOLOMARQ Smart Door Knob is a new interior door option for HomeKit that provides some unique use cases.

Seven native Apple Watch apps have been overhauled with watchOS 10, one of which is the Home app. The big update brings the Apple Watch HomeKit experience in-line with iPhone. Follow along for how the new Apple Watch Home app looks and works.

I know some of you aren’t bullish on Matter. Is it perfect? No. Does it need more features to truly become the vendor-neutral smart home specification? Yes. I believe in it, though. I believe in it because every manufacturer wins with Matter. When customers know that your products can work across every platform, like Apple Home, Amazon Alexa, and Google Assistant, they’re more likely to buy your products. I recently picked up the OREiN light bulbs from AiDot to put its Matter certification through the paces to see how easy it is.

Security veteran Yale has launched two new smart locks today, the Assure Lock 2 Touch and Assure Lock 2 Plus. These latest smart locks with sharp designs bring features like fingerprint scanning, Apple home key support, and more alongside HomeKit compatibility.

Inflation is certainly affecting everyone. It’s laughable what some things have increased in price in the past few years. I’ve been testing a HomeKit plug that, thankfully, is somehow the lowest-cost plug I’ve seen on the market. The Sylvania Smart Bluetooth Outlet adaptor is the only plug I’ve seen at this price in all my years of covering smart home technology.