Homekit Automations are broken in iOS 16

I too suffered from my automations no longer working after upgrading my AppleTV's (4K and HD) to TV OS 16. After about 5 days of troubleshooting I cannot say what specifically is wrong but I can provide what seems to be a consistent way to create HomeKit automations that consistently work on IOS 16 / TV OS 16.

1. First, the iphone / ipad you run this procedure on must be running IOS 16 for this to work.
2. Delete the automation in question (either via the Home app or the Shortcuts app)
3. Create the automation in the latest version of the shortcut app (Do NOT use the Home App).
4. In the shortcut application when you create your automation, do not select your scene or accessory in the first menu, instead scroll down to the bottom and select "Convert to shortcut"
5. In the shortcut menu select your scene or accessory as you normally would.
6. Before hitting "Done" in the Shortcut menu, select the small arrow at the very bottom right of the screen to test your script. Assuming it works as desired you can select "Done" in the Shortcut menu.
7. Now don't panic, it takes approximately 3-5 seconds to copy the new automation to your home hub before it will be listed in the Automations screen.

This has worked consistently for me for both simple automations such as turning on a light at a certain time as well as complex automations based on location that SSH into a remote server.

Good Luck

i had similar issues with my HomeKit automations. I removed few automations under iOS 16 and it persists. Furthermore, some of my time sensitive automations executed randomly. At the end, I went to home app —> home settings —> home hubs & bridges, then look which hub is currently “Connected” and reboot it. In my case, my Apple TV located to my guest room which I didn’t turn on since the day 1 I upgraded it to tv oS 16. After rebooted it, now the “Connected” hub moved to the Apple TV I use every day and seem like all my automations run correctly again, including those deleted automations aren’t running any more. I hope it works for you guys.

Update to my cranky message above:

I was on hold with Apple Support when I decided to follow the suggestion of someone either on this thread or this reddit thread:

https://www.reddit.com/r/HomeKit/comments/xdt2iz/ios_16_time_of_day_based_automations_not_working/

The gist of the thread was to sign out of your Apple TV and sign back in again. Given I was on hold, I figured, what the hey, why not try it.

The second I had signed back in, the lights in the room (on a motion sensor and not working), flicked back on, as if to chide me for calling support in the first place.

Try:

1. Removing all Homepods from your Home and re-adding (doesn't affect automations / accessories).
2. Deleting / Reinstalling Home App (doesn't affect automations / accessories)
3. Signing out / signing in of Apple TV (this is what fixed it for me)

I think going forward, I may turn off automatic updates on my Hubs to avoid getting bitten by this. The Apple support agent also recommended making a backup prior to these updates, which is a good recommendation.

Ok today I was told to try this with my own broken HomeKit automations (4 lights I control )

“Is the AppleTV your only HomeKit hub? If it is, and the Home app on your iOS app has no issues with testing automations, it's possible that the AppleTV doesn't have a clean download of the HomeKit data from iCloud. A reboot won't fix that. But this should:

On the Apple TV, sign out of iCloud. Once you've done that, now reboot the AppleTV (A soft restart via the System menu is good enough). Once the device is back up, sign back into iCloud. Allow 10 mins for the HomeKit config to re-download. See if your automations run after that.

Oh and if they are time or location based, the AppleTV needs Location Services to be on so it knows where it is.”

I followed this (my location services was on) and now my automations work at least the first time we will see it this remains fixed hopefully it will.

OK, I'm starting to understand why my "complete" installation from scratch was a solution, but from what I'm reading it looks like many don't need to go that far.

I see a lot of comments that talk about signing off and on again with iCloud account on the Apple TV which should rebuild the config from iCloud on the Apple TV.

What I forgot to mention in my previous reply, is that also my old installation was on another iCloud user account (my wife's account) on the Apple TV, which I have renewed to my own iCloud account while settings things up again. SO, in fact everything is installed on a "fresh and unused iCloud account".

So, I'm really starting to believe the rumors that it might be caused by corrupted data on the Apple TV which requires a reset to rebuild the config again.

I can also confirm what many others are noticing, that with my newly installed home I have the feeling that all devices are more responsive than before.

This is the case for Shelly devices, devices linked to bridges via Home Assistant, even RF and IR devices that are running via a Broadlink plugin on a Homebridge that is running on docker in Synology. I really don't notice any delays in any of the manual tasks or automations anymore.

I would still try to play around with the accounts on the AppleTV to get it solved.

Update: Can confirm that (for me at least) this is a hub issue and not an issue with the Home App itself.  I went to each Apple TV and went to Settings -> System -> Reset and Update and reconfigured each potential hub.  All my Apple TV’s are on Ethernet as well.  All automations seem working again, and I didn’t have to change anything in the Home App.

While it’s not super easy to reset the Apple TV’s, it’s way easier than setting up all the devices, scenes and automations in the Home App.

I found a problem is in the HomePods. For some reason some did not recognize my account login anymore and I had to reset them. Fortunately it’s real easy to reset a HomePod and I only took a few minutes.

Everything seems to be working OK now. The speakers were set up to automatically update and for some reason they weren’t updating either.

I wrote about what helped me a while back and I thought it might be helpful if I added exactly what I have done and what my setup consists of.

I have:

• 4 original HomePods - all with up to date software.
• 2 HomePod Minis that are a stereo pair for my Living Room AppleTV. Software is all up to date.
• 3 AppleTVs - 2 are 2nd Generation 4K and 1 is 4th Generation HD Software is all up to date
• iPhone 14 pro with iOS16.02
• Numerous iPads and Macs that all have up to date software.

I also have:

• 17 Insteon switches, dimmers, outlets all on an Insteon Hub Pro which is HomeKit enabled (only made for a couple years)
• 4 Wemo Thread plugs
• 1 Lennox iComfort Thermostat
• 1 Eve Aqua water controller

I have 13 Automations and have cut my scenes down to only 2. I handle turning off lights at bedtime using a Shortcut that turns off both Scenes and individual devices.

I had to update iOS16 when I first got my new iPhone but everything still worked fine. I believe the HomePods and AppleTVs did not update as quickly and I left town for a few weeks right after getting the new iPhone. I turned off all my automations before leaving my house for my trip. My AppleTVs are set to automatically update as do the all the HomePods though if you can control the HomePod updates I'd like to hear how. They were all up to date when I got back from my trip.

While on my trip I updated my iPhone to iOS16.02. I turned back on my automations while still traveling expecting to have lights on when I got home and the heat on too. Nope. All my automations were not working but I could manually control all devices and scenes.

After looking at the early posts to this thread I went into the settings on all my AppleTVs and disabled them from my Home. I then reconnected only 1 of the newer AppleTVs. After a little while everything seemed OK but after accessing my home and the automations from outside my area via cellular some of the automations failed.

I then deleted all my automations and recreated them and I have no idea if this had any impact, but I did do this.

I then logged out of my iCloud account on the only connected AppleTV and logged back in. I then reset all the HomePods including the two Minis. I have created new test automations and tried turning them on outside my WIFI network and turned others off and on from outside my network and all things are working just as they should with no problems.

The above steps are all I have done and in the order in which I did them. I believe what worked was disabling and reconnecting the AppleTV to my Home and the logging out and in to my iCloud Account. I believe the issue is with the AppleTVs and not iOS16. The iPads and Macs don't seem to have anything to do with these problem but again that's just an opinion.

My iOS 16 problems extended further than automations. Ever since the iOS 16 updates, my spouse couldn't use Siri to play her own music, and frequently it wouldn't work for me either. So today I decided on the whole slash-and-burn method.

1. On both Apple TVs, I removed them from Home and signed out of iCloud completely.
2. On both HomePod minis, I removed both and then did the complete physical reset on both (unplug, plug in, wait 10 secs, hold finger on top until it turns red, wait for 3 tones).
3. I removed all family from Home, then removed my Home.
4. Created a new Home, and added only one HomePod mini. I actually had to reset the HP twice before it started behaving itself.

Currently in the process of adding all my devices and automations. It sucks, but I'm using the opportunity to swap out a few old non-Thread Meross plugs with new Eve Energy Thread plugs. They added without a hitch and are so much more responsive than the non-Thread ones.

Once everything is set up the way I want it, then I'll add the second HomePod mini and the Apple TVs to the Home, so they can get copies of the new configuration. And finally add my family members back.

Fingers crossed all this effort pays off.

I saw similar issues.

I would suggest you look at all the HomePods and make sure the most current version is installed. It seems like they're having trouble updating themselves even if you have requested that they upgraded automatically.

Each HomePod can act as the hub, and it seems like sometimes they jump around from HomePod to HomePod. When it's in an updated HomePod it will work fine, and then it will go to another HomePod and has issues. If you get all the HomePods working and updated your Apple TV+. Also, you're gonna find out they work pretty well.

OK, the Problem (for me)…

4 HomePods. I have created a Scene for all 4 to play a particular radio station. I set up an Automation for the Scene to start at a specific time. It didn’t, or rather usually didn’t because every now & then, it worked but God knows why. Usually though, it failed.

Solutions tried, none of which worked…

1. Deleted Home, deregistered the HomePods from my account and then reinstalled the lot… Home app, HomePods, Scene & Automation
2. Same again but signing out of my Apple ID as well
3. Full factory reset of iPhone, restored from MacBook

Solution that did work, courtesy of Grennch on here…

1. Create Scene as before to play the radio station. Tested OK
2. In Shortcuts (important) click + Automation
3. Create Home Automation
4. Select Time of Day & Days, then Next
5. DO NOT select the Scene
6. Scroll down to Convert to Shortcut
7. Set the Scene on the next screen
8. Done on next screen
9. On next screen, scroll down to bottom right arrow & test the Automation by pressing it
10. Next & Done. It takes 5 seconds for the new Automation to appear

That’s it. Don’t ask me why it works, it just does 😜

Glennch’s resolution worked for me.

1. Delete all HomeKit automations that are problematic.
2. Close HomeKit.
3. Open the Shortcuts app, go to Automations and follow the prompts to create a new HomeKit automation from within the Shortcuts app.

Be patient. The created automations take 5”-40” to show up in the Shortcuts app. They will eventually show up in the HomeKit app as well.

Since following this prescription, the automations have remained stable and function as configured.

Apple, please take a look at this and correct this bug.

Good luck!

I'll skip past the ranting and just say it looks like it is fixed in the upcoming 16.2 update.

It looks lite it here at least.

"The 16,2 update also introduces support for an updated Home app architecture that improves performance for smart home devices."

I was having the exact same issue.

Automations that require GPS (ie Arriving home)

and automation triggered by Motion both stopped functioning working 1 month ago.

I tried deleting individual items and scenes but this didn’t solve the issue.

Deleting the “home” wasn’t an option for me as I have well over 100 smart items

Last night I updated my iPhone to 16.1.2 instantly all automations started working.

It maybe a coincidence as this doesn’t make scenes to me, that it shoul fix the issue, but wanted to share my success just in case it may save someone else from the drastic measure of deleting their “home”.

Discapp wrote:

Is your AppleTV the hub for the automations? Would you try to turn of the “hub” option on the ATV and turning it on again? That resolved my issues. I’m curious to see if this works for others too.

This solution worked for me. To be completely clear about how this is done, in Settings on your AppleTV navigate to the AirPlay and HomeKit menu, and from there to Home Hub. In this menu, disconnect and then reconnect. You do not have to wait, reboot, or delete anything. Please try this before taking any of the more drastic and time-consuming steps described in this thread.

I'm not sure if this worked for me because I have a relatively simple setup compared to many, consisting of one hub (AppleTV) and five connected devices, two of them with time of day automations. One of these automations continued to work and the other did not, which told me the problem was limited to the one non-working automation. Perhaps disconnecting and reconnecting the hub refreshed the automation that wasn't working from iCloud. I'm not sure. I only know it worked.

Now, another thing. I don't see how this issue has anything to do with iOS 16. Your phone does not control your HomeKit devices, your hub (either AppleTV or HomePod) does. Your phone is a programming device for your hub(s). Probably what many experienced was not caused by the iOS update but by AppleTV and HomePod updates, which Apple pushes out simultaneously with iOS. Unless you've set them to not do so, they update automatically and overnight, so you may not even know they've been updated.