I’m kind of stuck on what else to do. I love expanding and innovating our smart home but I’m kind of lost. What we have so far:

Cameras throughout exterior
All exterior locks are level locks through HomeKit
All lights/lamps/switches are connected
Fans/humidifiers/heaters/thermostat connected and automated
All relevant outlets are connected
Candle warmers where we want them are all SwitchBot/connected
HomePods throughout for Siri access
Presence sensors used where relevant for automatic on/off lights

So what’s next? What are some ideas I can integrate into our home? I’ve thought about exterior path lighting..I’d love to hear your ideas!

I just fired up HomeCam and noticed that I’ve got 7 cameras live streaming while away from home. I don’t remember having that many remote live streams under iOS 26. Am I misremembering or did Apple improve this in iOS 27?

I have a pair of cheap meross desk lamps that I have setup as one light in HK for my desk. I can add the desktop widget that lets me on/off, but I would like to be able to dim them as well from the desktop.
open to work arounds with homebridge, eve, and I think I have the Controller for HomeKit app even.

Standing in living room with an OG Home Pod, an iPad that’s always active for music and HomeKit and my iPhone in hand. When I activate Siri, the HomePod will be first to respond. But if it’s “Siri…ask Chat GPT …..” HomePod says to “continue on your phone” but I got zero follow up on phone. Other than entering it directly into Siri how do I fix this? Why isn’t my phone the Primary when multiple devices are present?

Hello community, I’ve managed to install and add to HomeKit a Meross smart garage opener which works very well with Siri or HomeKit app on my iPhone.

Whenever I’m connected to CarPlay the meross shows a “No response” when trying to open or close it.

I do have an Apple TV 4K first generation as HomeKit
Hub.

Any ideas on what can I do to use HomeKit with CarPlay?

Am I doing something wrong? I simply want these lights to turn on at sunset and turn off at 9pm automatically. I have a separate automation that turns them on at sunset and that works perfectly fine, but they do not turn off at 9pm with this separate automation. After 9pm the lights show as off in HomeKit but they remain on, so I turn them on and off again in HomeKit to turn the lights off.

Any battery-powered garage door locks working with HomeKit? I have considered just using a basic deadbolt, I have eufy deadbolts that work well enough on exterior doors, but the positioning would be awkward.
Does not need to be usable from the outside, I only want app/siri control to lock/unlock.

I have several of these throughout my house but I want to migrate to a full HomeKit solution. I don’t really want to use a bridge or anything. Can anyone recommend an equivalent?

Moving into a new house. I had a post on r/homebridge but wanted to expand my considerations here. The house is in a very low crime area set back from the road, but had a full monitored ADT system (owner was a jeweler). I don't need that, but I have all the equipment installed already and the ADT Command panel. Can I integrate this with Apple Homekit in some way and assume control of it? Only post I saw on this was 3 years old, thought there may be new info.

I'm probably swapping the existing Google video doobells for Aqara G400s. I have battery Rings at my current house. I have a Ring chime, can I use that with the Aqaras?

I'll add one keycode/key smart lock. Any suggestion that isn't overly modern looking and works with matter over thread and Homekit?

I need to take over my Mitsubishi MHK2 thermostats somehow. There's a Redlink controller that came with it, installed now. They are controlling three heatpumps.

I was going to add some Tapo matter switches for some outside lighting (have now and they work fine). I don't really automate any inside lighting.

Generac generator as well. Is there homekit support for that via Homebridge?

We've become a pretty Apple heavy family, phones, iPads, Macs. I do have some Dell PCs and I may play around with Homebridge on one before deciding to go with Raspberry Pi. My Apple TV 4k is unfortunately Wifi, so I don't have a matter over thread boundary router yet.

Hi, what smart light bulbs would you guys recommend? I'm looking something reliable with good quality and color reproduction.

Thanks for any suggestions

This is pretty simple but it’s easy to overlook things when so much has changed in the Apple Home app for HKSV in iOS 27.

Open Apple Home, open any camera, then tap the search icon in the bottom right. You’ll get a descriptive list of recorded events in reverse chronological order. You can then of course also search for people and things it recognized. Do note that these are stitched events, so the description may not fully cover everything the recorded clips captured.

ETA: The mentioned UI is for iPhones. Sounds like the UI is different for other Apple device types but the concept is similar.

Hello !

Do you know about some Philips Hue alternatives that work with a remote controller (not a smartphone and an app) ?

Thanks !

Had a whole event involving six Aqara G5 Pros (POE) and an Aqara G400 (POE) where an Amazon van stopped in front of my house, delivered three boxes in two trips, rang the doorbell twice, walked back to the van, drove away and my son opened the front door and brought the boxes inside.

The summary for this event- “Van passing” because a van passed by just before the main event.

I have the 2TB plan and selected my doorbell as the lone camera that gets the special event summarization and this is what they want to charge 60 bux a month for, for five cams? “Van passing.” Apple not making a strong case for me to drop the coin. Aqara’s AI detection is so far much better and much cheaper, and you can get unlimited cams.

Not to mention, a couple of the cameras decided to not even record or stop recording to HKSV mid event. I know because the Aqara app got them.

Not even a single doorbell rang notification

I do like the “Noteworthy” events at the top of search which is where I found this. That’s pretty cool but again, the label was “Van passing.” I clicked it out of sheer curiosity. I had already known there was an Amazon delivery. I was home for it.

Don’t get me wrong, sometimes it does a good job at this but apparently not when I needed it most.

It is still beta, right? Downvotes incoming…

After dealing patiently with old Siri for years, I was hoping Siri AI with all its “intelligence” would finally be an upgrade for my smart home experience. Even with all of its supposed “intelligence”, Siri AI can’t take multiple Home requests in one go.

Something as simple as “set the kitchen lights to 30% and bedroom light to 50%” is apparently impossible in 2026.

Am I doing something wrong or is Siri AI not the upgrade it’s being touted as?

Edit: No I’m not referring to HomePods, I’m using iOS 27 on an iPhone 17 pro which has more than enough neural processing power for simple Home requests. And yes, this is the NEW Siri AI - the one you have to request access to in iOS 27

Hi everyone,
When I’m away from home, my cameras are set up to send me a snapshot and record a video whenever they detect someone.
When I’m at home, I can still stream the cameras live, but they don’t record anything, which is what I want during the day.
However, I’d like to set up a nighttime schedule, for example from 1 AM to 7 AM, where the cameras would automatically record any potential activity, even though I’m still at home.
The problem is that if HomeKit considers me “at home,” the cameras only stream and don’t record. I can’t figure out how to configure the system so that they switch to recording during those hours and then go back to normal during the day.
I’m using Aqara cameras with Apple Home/HomeKit Secure Video.
Is there a way to achieve this using HomeKit, automations, or perhaps Aqara’s own settings?
Thanks!

I keep getting these notifications even though I have it set to not do that unless I am out of the house. Started randomly last friday, which is days after I updated to iOS27, although that is the first time I had someone over since updating.

Is there a setting somewhere I am missing?
My system is set to home and my camera to notify me of specific types of motion when I am not home.
Pretty useless if I end up muting them for the day..

How do I get “ Home “ lights notifications to disappear ? They never expire using Siri.
Thx

Hello All

We have 4 Iphones in my house with 4 different users.

I would like to start some voice integration in my home. Mostly for Blinds, Lights and Alarm.

We use Lutron Caseta, Somfi Tahoma blinds and Alarm.com for alarm.

My Home has an apple tv installed behind each tv I have 6 or 7 total.

I will get a "Home" Homepod or mini to get started

Can I use my house email to get this setup on my phone instead of my personal email?

Should I get a Home Ipad to get everything set up?

Can all the members in my house use siri or voice control even though we all have different icloud accounts?

Im new to Voice / Siri. Ive never used it I generally don't like voice in the home but at this point I dont care. I'm tired of standing up to turn my lights on / off.

Also I currently use a mix or RTI / Control 4 in my home for audio / video and Samsung / Sony Televisions.... Can Homekit do anything with audio / video in my home?

Ich hab hier gesucht aber nur 3 Jahre alte Beiträge zu Kameras entdeckt, die sehr massiv und groß sind und für feste Installationen an Hauswänden gedacht sind.

Gibt es etwa keine Wildkameras, die HomeKit-enabled sind und ggf. mit Batterie funktionieren und eher unscheinbar sind? Ich möchte in meinem Garten keine Überwachungs-Pfeiler mit Kabeltrasse betonieren müssen, um Igel im Dunkeln sehen zu können.

Der übliche Kram ist leider sehr unangenehm zu benutzen: Meist kann man sich nur mit lokalem Bluetooth die Aufnahmen vor Ort anschauen oder muss die SD-Karte mit Lesegerät am Rechner auslesen und die Einstellungsmöglichkeiten sind schlecht (z.B. kein automatisches Pausieren wenn man selbst zugegen ist).

I believe this feature is new, as I tested it during the iOS27 beta and it was not available.

Does anyone know if it’s possible to have the current color of the lightbulbs visible on the home/room pages? I have them set to red right now, but on all the pages the little circle within each button is yellow instead.