Improvements to HomeKit in iOS and tvOS

If the topic of home automation interests you at all, you’re going to love what iOS 10 and tvOS have to offer. Until now, Apple’s HomeKit platform has been a bit underwhelming, and not exactly user friendly. Finally, Apple has better integrated HomeKit, and made it easier for users to manage all of their HomeKit devices.

Some changes include:

The arrival of the much needed, and anticipated Home app in iOS 10. Now you can easily manage all HomeKit-enabled products in your home, set up groups of products into Rooms, create and manage Scenes, and set-up HomeKit Triggers for a fully automated experience. This is a much improved experience over iOS 8 and iOS 9, where one would need to manage each product with its own app, and integrate them all with another third-party app.

You can now also control HomeKit devices and set scenes right from the third page of Control Center. This is much more user-friendly than launching the app, and is a great alternative for when you’re unable to use Siri.

Speaking of Siri, Siri’s HomeKit support is much improved in iOS 10. In previous versions of iOS, the connection between Siri and HomeKit devices didn’t work about as often as it did work. Now this is no longer the case. Rarely does Siri tell me my devices are not responding, and you even get a bit of humor at times.

In addition, HomeKit is supported on the Apple TV. This means, you can set the movie scene to dim the lights before you watch a movie, all with the 4the Generation Apple TV’s Siri remote. The Apple TV can also function as a HomeKit hub for better performance when you’re away from home.

Note: If you have an iPad which remains at home, on wifi, and plugged in all the time, it too can function as a HomeKit hub.

After testing HomeKit throughout the beta cycle of iOS 10 and tvOS, I am happy to report that all features are 100% accessible. I hope you all enjoy using HomeKit as much as I do!

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