The general interface is “ok”, fairly attractive and easy enough to use BUT:
Not a day goes by without some kind of malfunction, one of 5 HomePods randomly complaining about not being in the network, some device going unresponsive, having to hard reboot one of the Apple TVs to get the HomeKit stuff to work again, or that daft bot Siri deciding to misinterpret a command it clearly understands (text shows correctly) but does the opposite (lights go off instead of on, turns all house lights on instead of the single kitchen light off). In short, highly flakey bug infested system. In many cases, like scenes, you have to insult Siri to get her to work… “Hey Siri, lock the house” doesn’t set the “Lock the House” scene but with the latest system update reports the status of the locks. “Hey Siri, you daft bot, lock the house” does set the “lock the house” scene. Insert just about any insult similarly and Siri works much better.
But what is the absolute worst is the security camera operations. The Artificial Stupidity misses events constantly. The recordings are short circuited. The video GUI for scrubbing through is incredibly frustrating the way it jumps around when you let go, with a painfully small micro-tiny interface that’s nearly unusable for frame navigation. It’s horrible.
We have been religiously using nothing but Apple products for years, peddling them to our friends and family - but today it was really set in stone what an absolute hot garbage dump Apple is becoming. We spent hundreds of dollars upgrading our front door security system with a pro doorbell and electronic smart lock, because - hooray - it can all be used with Home! We got everything all set up, so excited to finally be able to just unlock the door with our iPhones and Apple Watches. I set everything up, so excitedly putting my wrist up to the door to unlock while juggling my 10-month-old and various other items. Great for me! Tried to set up the same ease of use for my husband, but then we realized… HomeKit is now just “Home” and like every other money-grubbing dumpster of a company, Apple has stooped low enough to require JUST ONE MORE expensive device to be able to add the other owner of this house on the app. My husband can’t use his phone or anything else to get into the house without first purchasing the stupid HomePod that no one even knew existed. There is a reason it went away once - it’s worthless. Retire it again and let us use our devices the way they’re meant to be used. Thanks to our friends at Apple, we now have a non-refundable VERY expensive upgrade to our front door that we can’t even use the way it was intended. Appreciate it.
This app is known for all smarthome builders and users for its straightforward attractive interface which for HomeKit products is amazing but has one MAJOR and when I say MAJOR flaw I mean it. The app has limited smart products that work with this interface leaving the average consumer to not be able to use the app for just about anything and to get any sense of remote connectivity you need to either understand computer programming and server building or just buying constant hub adapters I really do love my apple but due to having not millions in income I have to compromise on products bought and due to the incompatibility of it all I’m left with virtually nothing I would honestly love if companies that are creating a smart ecosystem would allow the user to choose which interface they want to use instead of being forced to have multiple hubs and smart assistants to do every day mundane tasks I understand the reasoning behind it and apple wanting top notch security for its users but it’s hard and costly to get apple approved products and falls in very limited with product lineups the work around is incredibly complicated I wish the companies would just coexist with eachother and work on developing better options and products for the every day consumer
Years of frustration and countless times of saying “well, this next update is should fix things…”. This time I went forward with the iOS 16.4 and the “new HomeKit architecture update”. Seemed promising at first. But, I’ve been down this path before. The point of this new architecture is that it’s supposed to “always remain connected” with devices to help stability. And yeah, the response times seemed faster.. until.. one of my devices was “not responding” in HomeKit - here we go again. So, I go to the OEM app for that device (LIFX light strip) and it works perfectly fine. Every time.
And just today I went to use a series of light switches (Leviton Decora Gen 2) in my kitchen using HomeKit. Both switches in this room started phantom turning on / off and dimming up and down on their own! I went ahead and deleted Home Kit, did a reset on those switches, and back to normal again.
So, good riddance HomeKit. I feel liberated from this garbage app. I’ll gladly use OEM apps from different devices à la carte - at least they will work. Having 1 app to control everything sure is a convenience - but it has to work first!
I purchased the newest version of the Apple Home Pod about a month ago. Overall, I’m pleased. The sound is full — much more satisfying than my Alexa devices. But I am deducting a star because Siri is not as good as Alexa in determining what I want to hear. For instance, I just now asked Siri to play a local radio station I enjoy. My diction was clear enough. But it still gave me an out-of-town station with similar call letters. When I repeated the call-letters, pronouncing each letter slowly and clearly, it gave me a totally unrelated song from my Apple Music app. I had to open the station app on my iPad and then cast it to the Home Pod. In fact, I’m use the air cast function almost exclusively now since Siri usually fails to give me what I’m asking for. Hey Siri, maybe you should reach out to Alexa on how to better do your job!
I got a new phone and changed from AT&T to Verizon. I had to transfer via I cloud instead of directly iPhone to iPhone. But after the transfer home app didn’t open properly and there was a pop in the app to reset configuration. After I clicked the app froze and would not open. I restarted the app but no longer had accessories. My Accessories were all shared with me from my wife’s home app. I went back to her phone and invited myself but never received the pop up in the app to accept. I called apple and spoke with two reps neither had a solution to my problem. I have a lot of devices in my home. It would be nice to be able to control them soon. The last rep said apple was aware of an issue like this and told me to wait for an apple update. Please update soon
This is most terrible apple made app that i have used. Besides limitations in functionality its not working properly. I have Philips hue bridge, that controls lights in my home. I moved and renamed some of the lights. This change was not updated in home kit, only option was to remove hue bridge and re added. Which i went through. But it wont added the bridge back on! I tried all the steps, rebooting, factory resetting bridge, restarting router, deleting both apps, reinstalling, turning key on/off, checking wifi, updates. All that. I finally talked to both customer support’s. Twice. Which basically just ask me to do same steps. The only solution that apple managed to offer was to factory reset my phone…. Duh. Btw. The hue bridge connected just fine on my wife phone. Just not on mine.
I cannot recommend to anyone this app as a control center for smart homes. Its just an awful software. Kinda shame. So no voice control for me unless i factory reset my phone. Its really ridiculous solution to fix simple connection to other smart device.
I have my entire home connected through the home app. Closer to 75 individual lights, locks, sensors, etc., including three HomePods and 1 Tv4K. It used to be a nightmare to keep it all connected and running well consistently, but the last 2-3 iOS and HomePod software updates have drastically improved it! A new issue with 16.3.1 is that my HomePods no longer recognize “set lights to adaptive” (which adjusts the brightness throughout the day). It says “Hmm, there are no accessories that support that”; so I must open my phone and go into the app to do it.
Update: Uncovering more and more issues as a result of 16.3.1! Things are working slowly or not at all, at times. Automations aren’t doing the correct things (lights turn on at the wrong brightness/color/or not at all, for example). I get a message that pops up in the app that says my phone “isn’t on the same network as my HomePods” whenever I’m on cellular service instead of my home Wi-Fi. My HomePods give me “error” responses sometimes for simple commands such as “set the basement lights to adaptive”. Ughhhhh! 16.3 years as flawless! Come on!!! 3 stars because if the many, many flaws uncovered in this iOS.
I have been using this app for a few months. I found a glaring issue.
I have a simple outlet switch which turns the water water circulator on and off. I turns it on do that the water will get hot and I would like to know when it will be turn off by the preset automation. It would be wonderful if the app not only turns on the the circulator but also tells me the next one or two automation activities.
So I go to automation to find out when the next event will be. However the event are arranged alphabetically such that 9:15 am will followed by 9:15 pm than 9:16 am. That makes it very hard to read!
I have my entire home connected through the home app. Closer to 75 individual lights, locks, sensors, etc., including three HomePods and 1 Tv4K. It used to be a nightmare to keep it all connected and running well consistently, but the last 2-3 iOS and HomePod software updates have drastically improved it! A new issue with 16.3.1 is that my HomePods no longer recognize “set lights to adaptive” (which adjusts them minimally throughout the day). It says “Hmm, there are no accessories that support that”; so I must open my phone and go into the app to do it.
Nuké
Terrible, not working.
Zan2004
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