Comparison

Virtual Menorah vs Controller for HomeKit

Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.

Head to head
About

Virtual Menorah

Light a virtual menorah with customizable candle colors and burn durations. Place and light each candle, enjoying twinkling flames. Offers flexibility in lighting order to suit personal traditions.

Highlights
  • Customizable candle colors
  • Adjustable burn duration
  • Flexible candle placement
  • Interactive flame animation
  • Personalized lighting order
Features
Read full description

The #1 Virtual Menorah for iOS! Pick your candle color, burn duration, place each candle, light each candle, watch the flames twinkle as the candles burn down! Enjoy and Happy Chanukah! While according to the traditional Jewish custom the candles are added from right to left and are then lit from left to right, the Virtual Menorah app allows you to add and light candles in which ever order or tradition you prefer!

About

Controller for HomeKit

Enhance your smart home experience with advanced control and automation. Visualize your home with floor plans, track device performance with charts, and create complex automations tailored to your needs. Organize devices, store setup codes, and monitor your entire smart home ecosystem.

Highlights
  • Floor plan visualization with LiDAR
  • Device performance charts
  • Complex automations and workflows
  • Custom notifications
  • Smart folders and filters
  • Setup code storage
  • Device maintenance and logs
Features
Read full description

Get more out of your smart home. Your HomeKit and Matter devices can do more than on and off: Controller for HomeKit gives you dashboards you build yourself, workflows that run over several steps, months of history, and a floor plan you control directly. YOUR OWN DASHBOARD Your devices sit where you need them, instead of in a list. - Views you compose yourself from tiles: per home, per person, and if you want, per device. One for the iPad on the wall, one for the iPhone in your pocket. - More than 25 tile variants: devices, scenes, workflows, time, weather, calendar, charts, battery warnings. - Five standard sizes, or drag your own size on the grid. - Visibility conditions: a tile or a whole section appears only when you need it. - Plus widgets for your Home Screen and a view of your own on Apple Watch. CONTROLLER AI Describe what you need in plain language: a dashboard, a scene, an automation or a workflow. Controller builds it, and you adjust it however you like afterwards. MORE THAN A SCHEDULE Two devices become a sequence that thinks along. - Workflows: multiple steps, conditions and branches for sequences a single automation cannot express. - Automations with advanced triggers and conditions. - States: virtual switches that capture how your home currently stands and drive your workflows accordingly. - Custom notifications for anything you want to know about. - NFC tags: one tap and the workflow runs. YOUR SENSORS ARE ALREADY MEASURING Controller remembers the values and makes them readable. - Charts: see how temperature, humidity or battery level develop over weeks and months, across every device and brand. - Maintenance: which battery is empty, which device is unreachable, which automation is broken. - Logs: every activity and every change, traceable. - Smart folders: devices and automations grouped by filters you define. - Floor Plan: scan your home with the LiDAR sensor of your iPhone or iPad and control your devices right on the plan. - Controller Hub: a dedicated iPhone, iPad, Apple TV or Mac runs your workflows automatically. Charts and States require Controller Hub. SHARE THE WORK, NOT JUST THE SWITCHES - Home Sharing: pass your entire setup to the people you live with. For each person you choose between the whole app or only the dashboards you share with them. - Setup codes: your HomeKit and Matter codes stay safe in the app and never get lost. - Backups: save your setup and restore it whenever you need to. TRY IT FREE FOR 7 DAYS A week in your own home tells you more than any screenshot. Choose a yearly subscription to Controller Essentials or Controller Plus: the first 7 days are free, so you can see what Controller gets out of your devices. Rather pay once? Controller Lifetime gives you everything in Controller Plus, forever, with no subscription. Controller for HomeKit runs on iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple Watch and Apple TV. You already own the devices. Controller for HomeKit brings out what is in them. More on our website: https://www.controllerforhomekit.com Privacy Policy: https://controllerforhomekit.com/privacy/ Terms of Use: https://www.apple.com/legal/internet-services/itunes/dev/stdeula/

Screenshots

Virtual Menorah4 screens
Controller for HomeKit4 screens

Verdict

The call

The clearest difference is price: Controller for HomeKit at Free against Virtual Menorah's $1.99. Controller for HomeKit also leads on ratings volume (2.8K vs 4) and rating (4.1 vs 3.8). Virtual Menorah's advantage is in-app purchases (none vs 8) and review sentiment (43% vs 28%). On ads there is nothing between them.

Scored on Price · Rating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings · Update frequency · Ads · In-app purchases · Monetization · Best chart rank · Devices · Requires iOS

CostPrice · In-app purchases · Ads · Monetization

Controller for HomeKit is free to download; Virtual Menorah costs $1.99 up front. Controller for HomeKit sells 5 in-app purchases, starting at $4.99 per month. Virtual Menorah asks for nothing beyond the download.

ReceptionRating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings

Controller for HomeKit holds the better App Store score, 4.1 against 3.8. That said, the two scores are not equally well evidenced: Controller for HomeKit has 2.8K ratings behind it against 4, so its average is the more settled of the two. Written reviews complicate that: 43% of Virtual Menorah's written reviews are positive against 28% of Controller for HomeKit's, so the app with the better star average is not the one people write more warmly about.

UpkeepUpdate frequency

Virtual Menorah ships an update monthly, Controller for HomeKit every 2 weeks. The most recent releases landed on October 23, 2026 and November 2, 2026 respectively.

Scorecard9 real differences · 1 level
Virtual Menorah versus Controller for HomeKit: the parameters behind the verdict, then further details
ParameterVirtual MenorahController for HomeKit
Price$1.99Free — better
Rating3.8 (4 ratings)4.1 (2.8K ratings) — better
Positive reviews42.9% of reviews — better28.4% of reviews
Number of ratings42.8K — better
Update frequencyMonthlyEvery 2 weeks — better
AdsNoNo
In-app purchasesNo — betterYes
MonetizationPaidFree with in-app purchases — better
DevicesiPhone, iPad, iPodiPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple TV, Apple Watch — better
Requires iOS12.0 — better17.0
Further details — not scored
Size10 MB219 MB
Age rating4+4+
DeveloperATBOSH Media Ltd.acasa Software GmbH

Customer experience

Virtual Menorah

All ratings2 ratings
Positive50.0%
Neutral0.0%
Negative50.0%
Written reviews7 reviews
Positive42.9%
Neutral0.0%
Negative57.1%

Controller for HomeKit

All ratings2,765 ratings
Positive76.2%
Neutral4.7%
Negative19.1%
Written reviews486 reviews
Positive28.4%
Neutral9.7%
Negative61.9%

Bugs and requests

Virtual Menorah

Not enough reviews yet to summarise bugs or requests.

Controller for HomeKit

Reported bugs

4 issues
  • Backup and restore issues
  • Disappearing automations and accessories
  • Compatibility problems with iOS 16.2
  • Slow performance and unresponsiveness

Requested features

4 requests
  • Improved documentation and tutorials
  • Better integration with Apple Home app
  • Support for more HomeKit device types
  • Ability to customize automation triggers

In-app purchases

None

Virtual Menorah

No in-app purchases

5 purchases

Controller for HomeKit

Subscriptions4
  • Controller Essentials2 variants$4.991 Month
  • Controller Plus$8.991 Month
  • Controller Essentials7 Days trial2 variants$39.991 Year
Show 1 more
  • Controller Plus7 Days trial$79.991 Year
One-time1
  • Controller Plus Lifetime2 variants$179.99

Questions

Is Virtual Menorah free?
Virtual Menorah costs $1.99, with no in-app purchases.
Is Controller for HomeKit free?
Controller for HomeKit is free to download, with in-app purchases available.
Which has better reviews, Virtual Menorah or Controller for HomeKit?
Controller for HomeKit is rated higher. Virtual Menorah averages 3.8 out of 5 from 4 ratings, while Controller for HomeKit averages 4.1 from 2.8K ratings.
Do Virtual Menorah or Controller for HomeKit have ads?
Neither Virtual Menorah nor Controller for HomeKit shows ads.
Which is updated more often, Virtual Menorah or Controller for HomeKit?
Virtual Menorah ships an update monthly, and Controller for HomeKit every 2 weeks. Most recently, Virtual Menorah was updated on October 23, 2026 and Controller for HomeKit on November 2, 2026.

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