HOMEKIT: THE COMPLETE GUIDE

HomeKit is better than ever - now's the time to get your smart home in order with help from your Mac or iPhone

- Cliff Joseph

There have been numerous occasions in Apple’s history where it has developed products or technologies that were technically superior to those of its rivals, but which failed to achieve real mainstream success.

And, for the last few years, Apple’s HomeKit – the software that it developed to control smart devices, such as lights and security cameras – has sat on the sidelines as Amazon’s Alexa and Google Home have made all the running in the smart home market. However, all three companies have been frustrated at the slow adoption of smart home technologies, so in 2019 they got together to develop a new technology called Matter. HomeKit is actually part of Matter, so any device that supports Matter will also work with HomeKit, and you will still be able to control that device using Siri and the Home app on your Apple devices just like any other HomeKit gear.

That’s good news for Apple of course, but Matter casts its net wider and also provides compatibility with Amazon Alexa and Google Home. This means that a smart light or other device that supports Matter will still work with your Apple devices, but will also function with Amazon Alexa and Google Home too.

In this feature, we’re going to show you how to set up your smart home using HomeKit, and we’ll look at the cool things you can do with it once it’s up and running. HomeKit is steadily improving, so now’s a good time to get your smart home started.

How HomeKit works

One app to rule them all (with some help from Siri)