We'll get you familiar with the tools for your Apple smart home
If you’re not already using scenes and routines, are you really living in a smart home? All of the major platforms, including Alexa and Google Assistant, support them, as does Apple HomeKit.
Specifically, Apple has “automations” and scenes, but automations are really just routines as you probably already know them. And the good news is that creating both is super easy. The hard part is applying your imagination and coming up with interesting ways of using them.
Whether it’s having your lights turn on when the sun goes down, or having Siri lock the doors and power down the house at bedtime, you can make it happen with HomeKit’s automations and scenes. In this guide we’ll walk you through setting them up, but first, a little on what you need.
How to automate with: Alexa Routines | Google Assistant Routines
What you’ll need
- An Apple TV, HomePod or HomePod mini
- The Home app
- An iPhone, iPad or Apple Watch
The short version
- Make sure your HomeKit hub is set up.
- Open the Home app on your iPhone or iPad.
- Tap on ‘Create New Automation‘.
- Follow the on screen instructions.
How to create HomeKit automations
To create HomeKit automations, you first need a HomeKit hub. This can be a HomePod or HomePod mini or an Apple TV. You used to be able to use an iPad but that’s no longer possible and an iPhone won’t work either, though you can of course use either of these devices, as well as an Apple Watch to control your HomeKit-compatible devices through the Home app when you’re all set up.
Once your HomeKit hub is set up, as long as your iPhone, iPad or Watch has a data connection, you can send an action through the Home app and your hub will pick it up over the internet, giving you remote control. You can read our full guide on how to set up a HomeKit hub, so we won’t go too deep on it here, but it’s pretty easy to do so don’t worry.
To give you an idea of what you can do before we go deep on how you create HomeKit automations and how you create HomeKit scenes a bit further down, Scenes let you create many actions across your home at once, while automations involve events or actions triggering other actions. For example, you could create an automation where unlocking the front door turns on your hallway lights and adjusts the thermostat. A Scene meanwhile, might turn all of the smart lights in your home red at the same time.
- Open the Home app to get started
All automations are made in the Home app. To get started then, open up the Home app on your iPhone or iPad and tap the Automation tab at the bottom in the centre of the app. If this is your first time, there’s a helpful big yellow button in the middle that reads ‘Create new Automation’, otherwise you need to tap the ‘+’ symbol in the top right corner.
- Pick your trigger
You’ll then see the five different trigger types for automations: people arrive, people leave, a time of day occurs, an accessory is controlled (for example, a light turns on) or a sensor detects something. The first two are controlled by the Home app determining the location of your iPhone (you can also do this with a cellular Apple Watch in your iCloud settings). The rest rely on other conditions being met, be that a time of day or an event like a motion sensor detecting movement, or a light being switched on.
- Pick the conditions
For demonstration purposes we’re going to create a basic automation for when we return home. So we’ll tap the People Arrive option and then we need to set the conditions. The action is set so it will happen when it detects our iPhone is at the location of ‘Home.’ But we can tap on this and choose any location, which can be done by entering an address in the search bar. There’s also a handy map at the bottom that shows my GPS location in proximity to ‘Home’.
- Select any sub-conditions
Automations get more clever the more sub-conditions that are available. In this example, we can also set the time of day we want this automation to occur. We’re creating one that turns on a couple of outlets and switches on my lights, but we don’t want this to happen if we come back home in the middle of the day, right? By selecting Time we can choose to set specific time perimeters in which we’d like the automation to happen. Alternatively, we can select At Night and then tap on the information button that appears to put restrictions on it. We’re restricting it to 15 minutes before sunset and ending it at sunrise.
- Choose the action
Head to the next screen and you can select the accessories – or action – you want included in the automation. We’re just using outlets and lights for this, but you could have a heater turn on, or adjust a thermostat. If you’ve already created any scenes, you can also make them part of this. In fact, you may prefer to simply use automations to trigger scenes.
- Adjust the specifics
Once that’s done you can make adjustments to the specifics of how each accessory will behave. For example, a press on any lights will let you set exactly how bright you want them to come on. You’ll also see an option for Turn Off. This is pretty handy, as it lets you switch off all of the HomeKit devices after a specific period of time. This is set to Never by default, but you can adjust if you like. A good example could be a porch light you’d only want on as you arrive, but would like it to turn back off after a couple of minutes.
The other automation “types” follow a similar procedure. For a time-of-day automation, you can select not only the time but also the days of the week you’d like it to occur. So you could trigger a scene at 4pm every Tuesday, if you like.
For accessory automations, you can create a chain where turning on one device will trigger a bunch of others. We’ve previously built one where turning off our bedroom light after 10pm will turn on a fan during the summer months, but we also don’t want it turning on earlier in the day when we’re not actually in bed.
How to create HomeKit scenes
Scenes are simply scenarios where you’re adjusting the state of multiple devices at once. That might be a morning scene where your bedroom and hallway lights turn on, the thermostat cranks up the heating and your smart shades go up – all in one fell swoop. Or maybe a movie scene that dims the lights, but only those in the living room. Scenes can be triggered by you asking Siri (see below), tapping the scene on your iPhone or Watch, or through an automation.
To create a scene, open the Home app and from the overview page, tap the ‘+’ icon at the top right. Then tap ‘Add Scene’.
Apple will give you some suggestions here, like a good morning scene or a scene for when you leave the house. These aren’t just suggested names either, as if you select one you’ll see it’s created a full scene based on your devices. But you don’t have to go with these: below you’ll see a button called ‘Custom’, which lets you build a scene from scratch.
If you go with ‘Custom’, first you need to create a name for your scene. Keep it simple and sensible, especially if you’re going to make a lot of scenes, else you’ll risk confusing yourself down the line. We’re going to make one called “Back From Work.” Pretty self-explanatory.
Once named, your scene needs some accessories – so tap ‘Add Accessories’ button below. You’ll see a list of all your HomeKit devices that are currently connected. Choose the ones you want to control in the scene, then tap ‘Done‘. On the next page you can set the specifics of how you want each accessory to behave. We want our living room lights to come on, but not all the way, so we can press on each individual bulb and set them to 70%.
You’ll also see a toggle for ‘Add to Home View’. If you toggle this on, the scene you create will appear on the main dashboard when you open the Home app, making them easier to access if you don’t use Siri or an automation to trigger them.
Controlling scenes with Siri
As well as controlling your scenes through the Home app or triggering them with automations, you can get Siri to do it without lifting a finger. Siri will recognise the names of your scenes (again, why it’s important to name them sensibly). You can simply say, “Hey Siri, start my Back from Work scene” to trigger it.
Check out our full guide on essential Siri commands for controlling HomeKit devices.
