Apple announces all-new Home app

Apple announced an all-new Home app for its HomeKit smart home platform at WWDC this week. The new app will arrive with iOS 16 later this year.

The new Home app has been redesigned from the ground up, starting with the underlying architecture, which Apple said makes it more efficient and reliable, especially for homes with multiple accessories.

The navigation has been redesigned, integrating Rooms and Favorites into the main tab of the app. There are new categories for climate, lights, and security, and when you tap on a category, you see all the accessories in it organized by room. This would make it easy to say turn off all the lights, or lock all the doors, even though they are in different rooms

A new multi-camera view will show four security cameras at once, with more available as you swipe. Tiles also get a redesign to use shape and color to indicate the status of each device.

There are also new lock screen widgets to help you get to your accessories quicker.

Image: Apple

Image: Apple

Apple also gave a shoutout to Matter, the new smart home connectivity standard Matter, which enables devices to work together across platforms. Matter is due to launch later this year, presumably right around the same time iOS 16 drops. Apple said the new OS will bring support for the standard to the Home app.

During the keynote, Corey Wang said Apple contributed HomeKit as the “foundation of this new standard” and that Matter supports some of HomeKit’s core principles, including the highest levels of security and privacy. She also hinted as to how Matter will help HomeKit users integrate more device categories into their smart homes. To date, HomeKit has been missing a number of categories in the smart home, including robot vacuums and pet feeders.