Status of HomeKit accessories
The Home app provides an overview of all your accessories that you have added to HomeKit at a glance. The Home tab also provides a status overview of the most important accessories, divided into categories. For example, you can see the temperature in the house at a glance. In this tip you can read how to view the status at a glance and how to determine which accessories are visible here.
- View status in categories
- Show status or not
- Request status with Siri
View HomeKit accessories in categories
In addition to your favorite accessories and scenes, you can also find the status of all your accessories in the Home tab of the app of the same name. At the top, for example, it is indicated which lamps are on or what the temperature is in the house. This way you can immediately see which accessories are on. Since iOS 16, these status views also act as a category-based filter. If you tap the Lamps button (where you also see how many lamps are on), you will only see all lamps and accessories with lamps in the app. Other accessories are hidden by this filter. Apple uses several categories for this:
- Climate (thermostats, fans, window coverings and sensors for temperature, humidity, air quality
- Lamps (all types of lighting, including plugs that are set as lamps)
- Security (cameras, security systems)
- Speakers and TVs (Speakers, Apple TV, HomePod)
- Water (water sensors, garden sprinklers)
It is not possible to create categories and classify accessories yourself, because this is done automatically. On the Home tab, you will see a short summary of all accessories within that category under the category. For example, you can see an average temperature of all sensors, how many lights are on or which speaker is playing something. You can determine per accessory whether it should be included in the corresponding category and whether the status of the HomeKit accessory should be shown on the Home tab.
Show status or not
This is how you set per accessory whether the status may be shown in the Home tab and in the accessory categories:
- Go to the Home app Home tab.
- Tap the tile of the accessory you want to take with you in the status and categories overview.
- Scroll down.
- Tap Status.
- Turn on (green) the switch Turn on in home overviews to view the status. If you don’t want this, turn it off (grey).
Get status of HomeKit accessories with Siri
Accessory status only appears in the Home app on your iPhone, iPad, Mac, and Apple Watch. The status is not visible in Control Center on iPhone. You can of course also request the status of any HomeKit accessory via Siri, regardless of whether it is included in the status overview. Learn more about setting up accessories and scenes in the Home app in our separate guide.
Do more with the Home app with these tips:
- Adding HomeKit devices to the Home app: here’s how
- This is how you add a speaker to the Home app
- Adding notes in the Home app for HomeKit: Here’s how it works
