Homekit hubs appear in multiple homes - with separate networks, making devices not reachable. (homepod minis)

i took two screenshots off my phone of my home and garage which are separate everything. Hubs and routers. On my home, I was able to disable the garage hub on my Apple TV in the living room which was always connecting to the garage somehow thus losing access to my house. I haven’t tried my bedroom Apple TV yet because it never has connected to that yet. When you look at my garage settings,(these screenshots are from the home app on garage and home then I click on home settings from each entity) you can see now that the living room Apple TV is disabled on the garage side so now it can’t connect. I believe it’ll also disable the bedroom tv as well if I went into Apple TV and disabled the garage on it. This has worked for me ever since for like a month and I’m all over the country. I haven’t checked the settings on the mini home which is in my garage to see if I can disable anything in my home, but if you have appletvs, this is how you do it and it should be the same across the board of every device. I say should, but I haven’t checked yet.

so all in all, this is the solution.

Here are 2 temporary workarounds. Method 1 is the best solution but more time consuming.

1. Using a separate account to create secondary home

This method is painful because you have to start over on your second home but it will separate the hubs according to the home.

a) create another apple ID. login to this new appleid on your phone or ipad.

b) Create a home with the new apple ID

c) add your primary appleID (the one you regularly uses) to the home as an admin

d) login back to your primary ID on your phone. You can still manage/add devices/people using your primary apple id.

2. Restart your router daily.

This method is easy as long as you can schedule your router to reboot daily. Every time it reboot/disconnects from the internet for a short amount of time, it'll disconnect from remote home hubs and switch back to the local hub. Downside is this won't fix the problem when it switches hubs in the middle of the day.

a)schedule a reboot daily at night, at a time you won't be using the homekit network.

Until apple fixes this, we are stuck with these options for now. Method 1 works very well.

This issue happens to me about once every 3 days, it’s so frustrating. The fix that i’m using is that I have all the relevant hubs plugged in through independent wifi power supplies controlled by e-welink. This allows me to remotely cycle the power of the hubs until the hubs realign with the proper homes devices. It’s annoying to say the least and I’m shocked that a simple solution hasn’t been written into the devices firmware yet. In my case I only have 3 hubs, 2 in one home and 1 in another so the power cycle solution is pretty easy, not sure what I’d do if I had many hubs.

Yes, I've done it. It works. It's a PITA to re-do things but it makes things easier. On the second home/ID, make sure you add the apple ID that you primarily use day to day on your phone etc. as an Admin. That way you can add/manage the second home without switching to that apple id.

Our situation is very similar to yours. We have a two family home, but different networks for each (and also different Apple Homes)—so Home A and Home B and then a third in different city (Home C). Everything is under my Apple ID. I have disabled the one Apple TV device we have and use HomePods in one home and HomePod minis in the other two (all Homes are also named differently.) There is more than one HomePod / HomePod mini in the three homes. In Home A and B, most of the other Home HomePods appear as available hubs and in the case of Home C (located in a different city) all HomePods appear as available.

As you mentioned, Logitech security cameras/doorbells are temperamental already—but they also immediately go to ‘no response,’ when a Hub switches. For us it can be a router firmware update, an Apple update, momentary internet outage, brief power outage, lighting software update, etc. that causes a Hub to switch to one located in a different home. There have been a few times where I couldn’t pinpoint the reason, but it could have been one of the reasons mentioned above and I just wasn’t unaware.

Resetting everything is such a chore, especially with the home in the other city as my in-laws struggle with just using the connected devices, let alone trying to reset things.

It seems like it would be an easy fix to add a software update that allows users to at least bind specific hub/hubs to a specific home.

We have resorted to using Google Home instead for some devices/lights and also purchased alternative security cameras/doorbells. The frequent calls from in-laws worried that their lights/security cameras were suddenly non-responsive was too stressful for all.

I don’t think anyone is still using an iPad as a hub and folks with this issue have updated every device whenever updates are released to no avail. This issue is with separate homes (and on entirely different networks, geographical locations, etc.) under the same account being treated as a single home. Hubs in the different homes show up as available hubs for all homes and the hubs switch out for other hubs randomly/if there is a power outage/a device update/numerous other causes. Devices/homes have to be reset/set up again, but this is only a very temporary solution as the triggers mentioned above will cause the controller hub (HomePods) to switch homes. Homekit devices then once again can’t be controlled/used.

yes, also resetting the HomePodMINI via wifi resolves the HomeKit hub assignment for a while

not sure if support is reading here, so grab your phones and report this sh** to them and stress the problem. In my call they said, they have a ticket for this and it's a question of 1-2 weeks to fix it...

Thank you for this. It takes a couple of hours if you have a few Apple TVs and HomePods but after a year (I didn't want to delete the Homes and start from scratch) every hub is where it should be. I'd recommend the extra step of restarting Apple TVs between every step in the process. In fact, I needed a final restart to make cameras at the second house disappear from the first house.

I don't know why all this happened. My theory points at my own fault: maybe I added an accessory to House 1 while I was connected through VPN to House 2.

Anyway, thanks, this solved it. The "Settings -> AirPlay and HomeKit -> Room -> Remove From Home" is the key, and it is buried down there.

I have used HomeKit from day one, have every kind of device you could imagine, also have two homes set up. Everything worked 100% flawlessly for years. Then recently no matter which home I am in, Home A or Home B, all the hubs for all the homes show up in the HomeKit app. So what this means is my home lighting system and Home A will connect to a hub in Home B and then we cannot control any of our lights via HomeKit. Nor any fans, the thermostat, HomePods, everything. This used to happen once a year when Apple was prepairing the software updates for the next iOS platform. I have worked in home automation for years, worked personally with every home installation system you can imagine all the way up to the high-end private installer brand names for home control. HomeKit has always stood up with the best of them and had an absolute fraction of the cost. But it’s unacceptable to explain to someone that for two weeks a year their security cameras, lights, fans, thermostat etc. just will not work correctly. That is the really big difference between HomeKit and one of the more professional dedicated home automation systems. You have to deal with complete failures for two weeks a year with HomeKit. I do not understand why I can’t choose which hub to have HomeKit currently connected to. Right now I am at Home A and all the lights here are connected to a hub in Home B which is 3000 miles away. This morning I called someone who I trust to go into that home and unplug the living room Apple TV which is acting as a hub. Instantly here in Home A we regained control of all of our home automation. Hooray! Oh but wait there’s more. About 10 minutes after my friend left the HomeKit system switched to an Apple TV in one of the bedrooms there at Home B, we lost control of all our HomeKit here again! This is ridiculous. I am having all Apple devices in Home B that are able to act as a hub unplugged and disconnected from power today. Otherwise they just keep hijacking control of my system here in Home A 3000 miles away and nothing works again. I don’t know why this is suddenly happening? The geofencing used to be absolutely accurate and you could switch seamlessly between homes. Why doesn’t Apple give us the ability to choose the hub and keep it fixed unless it absolutely needs to switch to another one? That would be a simple fix instead of me having to pay somebody to go to my Home B and start unplugging devices. I’ve never seen Quality Control dip so low for an Apple product as this HomeKit issue. This should be a software fix overnight, not something we are dealing with for weeks.

I haver this issue, too. Started end of March. Super frustrating. I signed out of all of my Apple TV's in my primary home and signing back in seems to temporarily resolve the issue by making the Apple TV that I signed back into the "connected" home hub vs the HomePod mini from the 2nd home. However one day later, my HomePod mini that is now always listed in my primary home (but shouldn't be) is the main one that is connected and practically nothing in HomeKit works in my primary home as a result... not even automations so lights aren't coming on like they are programed to. I'm sure this two home scenario is not tested as much as one home is... but c'mon Apple. You have plenty of executives who have two homes who are noticing this bug and not happy, just like your customers. Seems everyone with two homes and a HomePod mini as a home hub in one of the homes is experiencing it. This better be resolved quickly. The premium we pay for HomeKit certified devices is not worth it if the entire home doesn't even work due to bugs like this. Better off with something else as problematic but at least 1/2 the cost.

i agree. reporting the bug here is only the first step. All of you experiencing this issue should report it as well via phone to apple support. This will more probably make them aware of the severity of this bug.

Same issue here: s . It shows me the HomePod of house B in the hubs of House A. At one point one of those HomePod of House B took control of house A and nothing worked. I temporarily solved that by unplugging the internet from the WiFi so HomeKit was forced to choose a Local homepod to control the house. Everything is now working but I still see the HomePods of house B in my House A setting.

Update: Loaded the last update from yesterday on all devices, hubs, phones etc.., still same issue. Actually one HomePod from house B took control of House A last night setting off all my cameras off and I had to unplug the internet so a local hub would take over again. Fun thing to have to do at 1:30 AM. 🤦‍♂️

I don't think this is the root of the problem. I have one of my homes (the main one) on a GSM connection too and the only way to have it to work is to disconnect the HomePod of our second homes when we leave so as to have only the AppleTV working as a hub.

From the latest news about iOS16 and others, I guess Apple is not interested in what happens up to the current version of Homekit and will not solve the issue. There have been massive changes under the hood for iOS 16 and the iPad is no longer considered a valid hub. I guess iPodOS is already preparing the transition and grabbing the hub function more aggressively than everything else including AppleTV.