Your ideal starting guide
We’ll cover the basics of automations in HomeKit in this guide. You can arrange all this in Apple’s Home app. Because the possibilities are extremely extensive, we cannot discuss every scenario. So be creative with your own smart accessories. 😉
- Explanation
- Possibilities
- Examples
- Third-party apps
Explanation: These are HomeKit-enabled automations
You can add all kinds of devices to the Home app on your iPhone. Think of smart lamps, thermostats, fans, televisions and so on. These devices use HomeKit. That’s Apple’s platform for smart devices, just like Google Home is for Google. You can operate it yourself, but the real convenience lies in automation.
You can automate all kinds of tasks in Apple’s Home app. For example, the lamps can switch on automatically when it gets dark and the thermostat can be set a bit higher just before your alarm clock. If everyone leaves home, you want to turn off all the music and turn off the heating. The possibilities are not endless, but they are very extensive. It works based on times, days, locations and other triggers.
What can you automate in the Home app?
As mentioned, we cannot name all possible automations, but we can name the triggers that can precede an automation. View the possibilities for each trigger.
- People arrive
- People leave
- It’s a specific time
- An accessory is operated
- A sensor registers something
Trigger: ‘People arrive’
The first trigger is the arrival of people. This concerns people you have added to your home in the Home app. When you or someone else comes home, you can, for example, set the lights to turn on and the thermostat to be turned up a degree. You can determine for yourself which residents this automation applies to. Read our tip on how to add people to the Home app.
The location where someone arrives does not necessarily have to be your home. For example, you can also set the airport as a location if you often travel. When you arrive at the airport, HomeKit, for example, turns off the heating completely instead of a degree lower. You can also specify at what times this automation is active. Some things you only want at night or only during the day.
Trigger: ‘People leave’
This trigger is actually the inverse of the People Arrive trigger. Here too you can choose from which location someone should leave. If you work in an office, you can set your heating to switch on at home when you leave work. The disadvantage of this may be that you may not always go straight home to work. For example, if you go straight to some friends, you’ll be burning for nothing at home.
If you set this trigger with your home as the location, you can have everything turned off, for example. Perhaps you want to leave a light on so that outsiders are not sure whether you are there. Then you can make it happen this way too.
Trigger: ‘It’s a certain time’
You can also set an old-fashioned timer switch in HomeKit. This is especially useful for those who don’t want to fuss with when people leave and arrive, but just want the lights to come on, for example. With a time-based automation, you can set whether it happens every day or only on selected days. It is possible to choose whether the automation goes off when someone is home or when no one is home.
An interesting fact is that you can also base the time on sunrise and sunset. For example, you may want to turn off the lights when the sun is up to save energy. This time varies throughout the year and the Housing app takes this into account. In our experience it works quite well, but sometimes it is cloudy just above your house and therefore dark. Then you can turn on your lighting yourself. You can set whether an automation is activated, for example, 30 minutes before or after sunrise.
Trigger: “An accessory is being operated”
If you already have several accessories in HomeKit, this trigger can come in handy. If you set this trigger, you can, for example, set the lights in the kitchen to switch off when you switch on your television in the living room. Of course you have to coordinate this well with your housemates. If you always go to bed after watching television, you can set it so that when you switch off the television between 20:00 and 21:00, the lights in your bedroom will switch on.
You can be very creative with this trigger. If you have a lot of smart home devices at home, you can go all out. It can even go so far that if you turn on the lighting in the toilet, the television will turn off for a while. Or you can have the heating switched on when you raise your shutters in the morning.
Trigger: ‘A sensor registers something’
The last trigger is also suitable for people who already have more HomeKit equipment at home. If you have a HomeKit motion sensor, HomeKit smoke detector or HomeKit thermostat, you can ensure that devices respond to movement, smoke or when a certain temperature is reached. That way you can, for example, make an alarm from your HomePod.
There are all kinds of sensors in HomeKit, even if you didn’t buy them specifically for that purpose. You buy a thermostat to operate your heating, of course, but it also functions as a separate thermometer with HomeKit. For example, you can have your fan turn on when the temperature rises above 25ºC, for example.
Examples of automations with HomeKit
We have already mentioned a few examples with the triggers, but we will take the time to go through the most useful HomeKit automations separately. They may not be the most exciting, but we find them useful in everyday life. After all, that is what you mainly buy these accessories for. These examples require you to have certain accessories at home. Not every television works with HomeKit and not all lamps are smart.
To create an automation, open the Home app. Tap the Automations tab at the bottom, then tap the plus symbol at the top right. Choose Add Automation. The step-by-step plans that we discuss below do not include these first steps. After all, they are the same for every example.
- Lights off and heating low when everyone leaves
- Automatically play music
- Bathroom lights turn on and off automatically
- A HomeKit smoke alarm
Example 1: Lights off, heating low: ready to go
Requirements: Smart devices that you can turn off, no limit
The most useful automation we can give you is the automatic switching off of your appliances and the lowering of the heating. This is a very good way for many people to save energy. Moreover, it is also very easy to set up. That’s how you do that:
- Tap the People leave trigger and choose The last person leaves.
- Optionally, choose a time for the automation to run and tap Next.
- Select all your devices. You can easily do this by tapping Add all per room. Then tap Next.
- Make sure each device is in the off or paused state. You can change this by tapping it. Turn your thermostat off or to a lower temperature via this screen.
- Verify that everything is correct and tap Done in the top right.
In the same way, you can also have all kinds of devices and your thermostat turn on when you get home. Then choose ‘People arrive’ as the trigger and switch all selected devices to the on position.
Example 2: Automatically play music (nice on the weekend!)
Requirements: Speaker with AirPlay 2, possibly an Apple Music subscription
For those who like to spend the weekend with music, handy automations in HomeKit are available. For example, you can have your own playlist played automatically, but also a radio station. Classic FM, SkyRadio, Radio 10: it’s up to you. That works together with radio stations in Apple Music. You don’t have to be a subscriber for radio stations, but you do for playlists. That is how it works:
- Tap It’s a specific time and tap the days you don’t want music to play.
- Select Time and enter a time, for example 09:00. Then tap Next.
- Choose one or more AirPlay 2 speakers such as a HomePod or Sonos One. Then tap Next.
- Tap Audio and then Choose audio. Select the music or radio station you want to hear.
- Choose a volume level, go back to the previous screen and tap Done if everything is correct.
Do you find the volume level not quite right, or do you want a different channel? Then you can simply adjust the existing automation without having to create a new one.
Example 3: Have your bathroom lights turn on and off automatically
Requirements: Motion sensor with HomeKit, smart lamp(s) in the bathroom
Do you never spend that much time in the bathroom and are you gone after a short shower? Then you can set the bathroom lighting to be controlled automatically. Of course, it depends on your home layout whether this is practical, but it also works in the kitchen, for example. Your presence is detected with a motion sensor and after 15 or 20 minutes the lights can be switched off again. This is how you set it up:
- Tap A sensor registers something and select the motion sensor in your bathroom (or other room where you want to apply this). Tap Next.
- Adjust the settings on the next screen if necessary, but in principle they are already correct by default. Tap Next.
- Select the lights in the room where you want to apply this automation and tap Next.
- Tap Turn off at the bottom and indicate after how many minutes after the detected movement the lights can switch off. Tap Done.
When you step out of the shower, there is a chance that your motion sensor will scan you again. That shouldn’t matter though, because a timer was still running from the first time you were scanned.
Example 4: Turn your lamps and speakers into a smoke alarm
Requirements: Smart lamps with color and/or a speaker with AirPlay 2 and a smoke detector with HomeKit
We conclude with a more original example for your HomeKit automations. We mentioned it briefly in this guide and we are happy to explain how it works here. You can view detected smoke as a trigger for your automation. After that you need to activate your AirPlay 2 speaker and/or smart lights. The speaker plays an alarm and your lights can turn red.
Because the explanation requires a bit more steps compared to our other examples, we would like to refer you to our tip about setting up a HomeKit alarm with siren.
Use third-party apps for HomeKit automations
If you want to go a step further, there are also third-party apps to make automations with HomeKit. This allows you to work even more advanced, if the possibilities of Apple are not enough for you.
We have a special guide to the best HomeKit apps. If you are just looking for the best app of the moment, you can download Eve. You may know it from Eve’s smart home accessories, but you can also use the app without buying anything. With the Eve app you can set your HomeKit buttons smarter and you can set all kinds of more complicated rules.
See a more comprehensive list of apps in our article on the best apps for HomeKit.
