**My Favorite Tips and Tricks for Apple HomeKit**

Apple HomeKit is a great app that allows you to easily backup all of your home kit pairing codes and protect them with face support and touch ID. You can add an accessory based on the ones that are already in your home or accessories that you've yet to add, and give each one a name if it's a new accessory.

You can choose which room or home it may be in and the home kit pairing code, which you can scan right off the device itself just like you would when you were adding it for the first time. Instead of using optical character recognition, you can type it in manually and then sign in to a category. You can also add some notes below.

**Using Multiple Users with HomeKit**

Multiple users are key to a whole family smart home. Don't just have yourself on there and expect everyone else to use a HomePod and not be able to use their devices. Go into your Home settings and add anyone else that you want to be able to control your home. There are two different things here - you can not only add them, but also allow or disallow remote access.

For example, if you add your friends to your home, but you don't want them to toggle your lights while they're away, you can also allow or disallow editing whether or not they can add or change accessories that are already on your HomeKit system. This is a great way to add not only your family, but also your friends as well if you so choose.

**Advanced HomeKit Workflows with Controller**

One of the most advanced tips on the list is using an app called Controller. Controller allows you to create workflows that are time-based and fix one of the biggest problems with HomeKit - which is that it can be hard to control multiple devices at once.

Here's a few examples of workflows that I set up that you may want to copy:

* A "bedroom delay" when I use this, my nighttime lights come on, which are a little bit dimmer and they automatically turn off 45 minutes later. This helps slowly drift me off to sleep.

* An outdoor light scene that turns on at a specific time in the future, essentially all it does is turn on a scene or light.

* A TV sleep timer that always goes to bed with the TV on, but never remembers to shut it off. Now, I can create this "movie time" scene that turns on the TV input, and then one hour later, the TV will automatically shut off.

**Siri Shortcuts and Backup**

These workflows have to run through the Controller app, but with Siri shortcuts, you can add them to Siri and invoke them using your voice. This is a great way to simplify your HomeKit experience.

If you want to try out new settings or accessories without messing up your existing system, create an backup of your HomeKit system. The basic version and the Pro version of this app are available - make sure you grab the Pro version to get all of these extra features.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enlet's take a look at our eight top tips and tricks for apple homekit and let's see how many of them you already know welcome everyone it is Andrew here from Apple Insider and today we are going to be talking about one of my favorite topics which is home kit we have picked some of our favorite tips and tricks that you may not be aware of and compiled them into this video so check them out let us know which ones are your favorite and if you have any tips and tricks of your own down below in the comments with that said let's go ahead and dive in to tip number one our first tip is utilizing zones a lot of people out there already know what zones are in homekit but they may not be taking advantage of them as best they could inside of your home it's made up of rooms and then those rooms can be grouped together into zones for instance my living room it's part of my downstairs zone and part of my inside zone so I can control both of those groups together at the same time such as turn off the downstairs lights and all those rooms in that zone will do so but we can also create extra zones and use them as pretty much second names for rooms my living room some people don't call it a living room if they may call it the family room or the TV room I can create those zones with only the living room inside of it and essentially just give my living room multiple names that way everyone can use their natural verbage to turn off a room using Siri and not be confused about what name it may happen to be under you can do the same thing by creating scenes but we find it way easier just use these simple zones instead of having to add all accessories to specific scenes numero dos on our list would be home hubs there may be things about them that you don't know so a home hub gives you access to your home kit accessories while you're away turn off your lights checking your camera feeds all while you're not in your home a home hub could be a home pod or an Apple TV those are the common ones and inside of the home app it'll tell you if they're connected which ones your primary one and which are in standby mode picking up one of those home hub is an absolute necessity if you want to have great home Kay at home with that remote access but you don't have to use an Apple TV or home huh you can also use your iPad if you've a more recent iPad just go into settings go to home and enable this toggle that says use this iPad as a Home Hub as long as it's in your home and powered on this can act like a home hub and you don't have to pick up a home pod or an Apple TV filling in the third spot is a quick tip to fix unresponsive accessories if you often have an accessory that just is not showing up as responsive there is one quick fix that you can try before freaking out and that is just resetting your home hub a lot of times just get confused along the way so unplug your home pod reset your Apple TV turn on and off your iPad is give it a few moments connect it back again to power and see if your devices come back online it is always good practice to back up your home kick codes these come in the box or attach the accessory but if you do something like mounta lifx light bulb into your ceiling and you need to re-add it it can be a pain to do so just by having to scan it off the light bulb itself so we recommend keeping the little papers around or you can use the home pass this is a great app that allows you to easily backup all of your home kit pairing codes sing come over iCloud and protect them with face support touch ID you can add an accessory based on the ones that are already in your home or accessories that you've yet to add maybe just kind of have as backups give each one a name if it's a new accessory choose which groom or home it may be in and the home kit pairing code which you can scan right off the device itself just like you would when you were adding it for the first time or instead of using the optical character recognition you can type it in manually and then the sign in a category even add some notes below we've definitely had accessories go bad or get replaced and we just need to riad them into our home kit home and it's way easier to have all these backed up and safe and not storing a million pieces of paper multiple users are key to a whole family smart home don't just have yourself on there and everyone else has to use a home pod and not be able to use their devices be sure to go into your home settings and at anyone else that you want to be able to control your home and there are two different things here when you someone not only can you add them but they can have remote access or not so maybe if you add your friends to your home but you don't want them to toggle your lights while they're away you can also allow or disallow editing whether or not they can add or change accessories that are already on your home great way to add not only your family but your friends as well if you so choose this is probably the most advanced tip on the list but it is one of my favorites we use an app called controller controller allows you to create workflows that are time-based and these fix kind of one of the biggest problems with homekit here a few of the workflows that I set up that you may want to copy first up is this bedroom delay when I use this my nighttime lights come on which are a little bit dimmer and they automatically turn off 45 minutes later kind of helps slowly drift you off to sleep I have this one that I used for outside lights but essentially all it does is turn on a scene or light at a specific time in the future lastly is my TV sleep timer I always go to bed with the TV on but I never remember to shut it off now that TVs are part of home kit I can actually create this scene that's called a movie time that turns on the TV inside Satomi Apple TV input and then one hour later after I enable this the TV will automatically shut off tie-in lights and other accessories as well to make this even more personalized so far these workflows have to run through the controller app but with Siri shortcuts you can add them to Siri and invoke them using your voice controller also has a way to backup your home key at home these are all the accessories and settings that you've already got going on say you have a great home but you want to tinker with some things create an backup of your system and then go ahead and mess with whatever you want if it doesn't work out just revert back to your last backup there's the basic version and the pro version of this app so make sure you grab that pro version help the developer out and get all of these extra features our last favorite feature on the list is flashing lights using this little simple app called home flash you can flash any of your home kit lights in your home it's really easy dead simple to do if you want to get someone's attention who's upstairs just make their light flash in the bedroom all you do is open up the app choose the light you want and give it a tap the lights will then go ahead and flash on for just a few seconds it even works from her Apple watch if I do to these track lights that are above me just a quick tap and you'll see they flash on and off getting my attention it's super simple and it only a buck it is an easy way to add more functionality to your smart home so that is it guys those are my favorite tips and tricks for apple homekit but of course there are so many more let us know down below in the comments again which one's your favorite r and share your own tips and maybe they will make it in to our next video if you have any questions reach out to me at Twitter at Andrew underscore OSU and I'll see you next time hey everyone did you guys like that video be sure to click on that like button so we can create content that we know that you guys want to see and follow Apple Insider tour in all social media channels if you want the best prices on any Apple gear check out the Apple Insider price guide that is updated daily and until next time we'll see you laterlet's take a look at our eight top tips and tricks for apple homekit and let's see how many of them you already know welcome everyone it is Andrew here from Apple Insider and today we are going to be talking about one of my favorite topics which is home kit we have picked some of our favorite tips and tricks that you may not be aware of and compiled them into this video so check them out let us know which ones are your favorite and if you have any tips and tricks of your own down below in the comments with that said let's go ahead and dive in to tip number one our first tip is utilizing zones a lot of people out there already know what zones are in homekit but they may not be taking advantage of them as best they could inside of your home it's made up of rooms and then those rooms can be grouped together into zones for instance my living room it's part of my downstairs zone and part of my inside zone so I can control both of those groups together at the same time such as turn off the downstairs lights and all those rooms in that zone will do so but we can also create extra zones and use them as pretty much second names for rooms my living room some people don't call it a living room if they may call it the family room or the TV room I can create those zones with only the living room inside of it and essentially just give my living room multiple names that way everyone can use their natural verbage to turn off a room using Siri and not be confused about what name it may happen to be under you can do the same thing by creating scenes but we find it way easier just use these simple zones instead of having to add all accessories to specific scenes numero dos on our list would be home hubs there may be things about them that you don't know so a home hub gives you access to your home kit accessories while you're away turn off your lights checking your camera feeds all while you're not in your home a home hub could be a home pod or an Apple TV those are the common ones and inside of the home app it'll tell you if they're connected which ones your primary one and which are in standby mode picking up one of those home hub is an absolute necessity if you want to have great home Kay at home with that remote access but you don't have to use an Apple TV or home huh you can also use your iPad if you've a more recent iPad just go into settings go to home and enable this toggle that says use this iPad as a Home Hub as long as it's in your home and powered on this can act like a home hub and you don't have to pick up a home pod or an Apple TV filling in the third spot is a quick tip to fix unresponsive accessories if you often have an accessory that just is not showing up as responsive there is one quick fix that you can try before freaking out and that is just resetting your home hub a lot of times just get confused along the way so unplug your home pod reset your Apple TV turn on and off your iPad is give it a few moments connect it back again to power and see if your devices come back online it is always good practice to back up your home kick codes these come in the box or attach the accessory but if you do something like mounta lifx light bulb into your ceiling and you need to re-add it it can be a pain to do so just by having to scan it off the light bulb itself so we recommend keeping the little papers around or you can use the home pass this is a great app that allows you to easily backup all of your home kit pairing codes sing come over iCloud and protect them with face support touch ID you can add an accessory based on the ones that are already in your home or accessories that you've yet to add maybe just kind of have as backups give each one a name if it's a new accessory choose which groom or home it may be in and the home kit pairing code which you can scan right off the device itself just like you would when you were adding it for the first time or instead of using the optical character recognition you can type it in manually and then the sign in a category even add some notes below we've definitely had accessories go bad or get replaced and we just need to riad them into our home kit home and it's way easier to have all these backed up and safe and not storing a million pieces of paper multiple users are key to a whole family smart home don't just have yourself on there and everyone else has to use a home pod and not be able to use their devices be sure to go into your home settings and at anyone else that you want to be able to control your home and there are two different things here when you someone not only can you add them but they can have remote access or not so maybe if you add your friends to your home but you don't want them to toggle your lights while they're away you can also allow or disallow editing whether or not they can add or change accessories that are already on your home great way to add not only your family but your friends as well if you so choose this is probably the most advanced tip on the list but it is one of my favorites we use an app called controller controller allows you to create workflows that are time-based and these fix kind of one of the biggest problems with homekit here a few of the workflows that I set up that you may want to copy first up is this bedroom delay when I use this my nighttime lights come on which are a little bit dimmer and they automatically turn off 45 minutes later kind of helps slowly drift you off to sleep I have this one that I used for outside lights but essentially all it does is turn on a scene or light at a specific time in the future lastly is my TV sleep timer I always go to bed with the TV on but I never remember to shut it off now that TVs are part of home kit I can actually create this scene that's called a movie time that turns on the TV inside Satomi Apple TV input and then one hour later after I enable this the TV will automatically shut off tie-in lights and other accessories as well to make this even more personalized so far these workflows have to run through the controller app but with Siri shortcuts you can add them to Siri and invoke them using your voice controller also has a way to backup your home key at home these are all the accessories and settings that you've already got going on say you have a great home but you want to tinker with some things create an backup of your system and then go ahead and mess with whatever you want if it doesn't work out just revert back to your last backup there's the basic version and the pro version of this app so make sure you grab that pro version help the developer out and get all of these extra features our last favorite feature on the list is flashing lights using this little simple app called home flash you can flash any of your home kit lights in your home it's really easy dead simple to do if you want to get someone's attention who's upstairs just make their light flash in the bedroom all you do is open up the app choose the light you want and give it a tap the lights will then go ahead and flash on for just a few seconds it even works from her Apple watch if I do to these track lights that are above me just a quick tap and you'll see they flash on and off getting my attention it's super simple and it only a buck it is an easy way to add more functionality to your smart home so that is it guys those are my favorite tips and tricks for apple homekit but of course there are so many more let us know down below in the comments again which one's your favorite r and share your own tips and maybe they will make it in to our next video if you have any questions reach out to me at Twitter at Andrew underscore OSU and I'll see you next time hey everyone did you guys like that video be sure to click on that like button so we can create content that we know that you guys want to see and follow Apple Insider tour in all social media channels if you want the best prices on any Apple gear check out the Apple Insider price guide that is updated daily and until next time we'll see you later\n"