Homekit Automations are broken in iOS 16

I’ve had a number of major problems with HomeKit over the years. A couple of them have been escalated by Apple support to engineering.

min that time I’ve ended up removing and re-adding the home to my iCloud profile a few times. It’s a total pain and I really resent this being a support recommendation without a viable backup solution provided. Fine, if it fixes the problem that’s great. But it never has so then it’s just a massive waste of time getting everything set up again.

It’s always been set up initially via my Apple ID.

Anyway, that’s some back story.

We have been suffering from this problem for a few weeks. It’s really annoying.

Mostly automations fail to run. Sometimes they do run if they have been just created and are due to run just a few minutes in the future. Sometimes they run at the wrong times.

This is the most puzzling of them all and the most annoying because of waking up our daughter in the middle of the night. Simply unacceptable.

It’s early days but I think I might have found the cause of the problem and therefore the solution.

My wife’s home app had multiple ‘homes’. Presumably a hangover from the previous support requests to remove and re-add the home. Thereby each time creating essentially a new home for other members of the household.

Deleting the other disused ‘homes’ seems to have prompted things to start working better. It’s early days but fingers crossed.

Apple’s unhelpful and time-wasting support policy — I think — might have been the cause of this problem for me.

This comes after yesterday I had a long disagreement with a senior Apple support rep who was insisting I must delete the home and redo it or they wouldn’t continue to assist. The irony.

@glennch

YES. This worked perfectly. I first created a couple of automations to test and it worked. I then deleted all of my automations and recreated them with your instructions and it worked perfectly.

Thank you!!!

I recently upgraded my IOS to 16. After the upgrades the automations stopped working. My automations would test fine when clicking the "test this automation" button but would not run at the specific times as per the automation.

If you're having this problem, go to page one of this thread and look for a comment from "Glennch". follow the directions. This worked for me.

I turner of the option to use Apple tv as HomeKit Hub, while waiting 5 minutes to turn on the functionality on the apple tv, automation started work running from my phone as well. When Apple TV was selected as HomeKit Hub, automation still runs nicely.

The easy fix I used was to create scenes for the automations. Looks like anything new will work but the old automations are dead. That worked for now. Don’t want to start all over recreating all of the automations individually so hoping for a fix soon.

This seems to be an on and off again issue. My automations were broken for the longest time with iOS 16 and they started randomly working again in late October somewhat reliably. Yesterday (11/29) they all mysteriously stopped working again. This is completely unacceptable. I've had several automations working rock solid without an issue for years and now for the last 3 months they are completely unreliable. What in the world is going on at Apple?

The key is the controller.

HomeKit devices in in general, are not going to fail because of an IOS update. This is why, switching from the current active controller, usually a HomePod, to another controller in your system solves the problem. Updates to these wireless devices, especially the HomePods, are quirky don’t seem to update very reliably.

when a HomeKit automation fails, the simple solution is just to force it to go to another controller by taking the currently active controller off the line for a minute.

rebuilding your system completely is really not a very good solution. It’s like trying to hit a fly with a hammer.

Focus on the current active controller, don’t rebuild an automation that was working, don’t try to rebuild a system that was working, look at the active controller and upgrade/take off-line for a minute/reset and the problem goes away.

basic electronics

Completely agree. It keeps happenings intermittently to me, even after I did all these other steps to get automations working again.

For me now the consistent issue is the home hub becoming unresponsive. It's like it goes into a deep sleep. When that happens, HomeKit fails to fire anything since the hub isn't responding. I restart it, which reactivates it but also swaps the home hub to one of my other devices. This has been my fix now for this issue. Otherwise, when the home hub is acting as it should, all automations fire correctly.

I've sent feedback to Apple about this with logs. Hopefully this gets some movement. This happens on both my Apple TV and my HomePods, so I think it's an overall issue with the way the devices are programmed to sleep or something.

im reading these and agreeing with most posts and im the same.

Worked Perfectly

iOS16 update

Nothing worked properly, no pattern, intermittent success and failure within automations, so sometimes some lights work in a single automation and some didnt,

Removed, added automations, some worked, some didnt,

This week, some that worked stopped working, readded, still dont work.

My Wemo smart plugs all shat the bed as well as other devices - I just have bulbs and outlets. Removing them from HomeKit and adding then back USING THE WEMO APP on my phone worked. I recall some automations were saved when I re-added them to HomeKit, at least it asked my if I wanted to use some I had made in the past.

It does seem like Apple has neglected this, why no backup of automations etc ??

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”.

I don’t think it has to do with beta. I didn’t do the beta and it’s not working for me. I think Apple is just getting sloppy.

Thanks for the tip on recreating the

entire home. That is a pain, but makes sense as to why it would fix things. I’m thinking when they upgraded the Home app, they didn’t program the transition from the old version properly.

It's not as simple as delete automations and recreate. it's more related to the complexity of an automation and if you use the home app on the Mac OS. If you edit automations with the Mac OS that has scripting in it, it breaks the automations. if you edit/create the automation in Mac OS none of the scripting functions work. I left screen shots above. in the past and even with this latest update I factory rest everything but still have issues with automations. I also use automations that are not just detect motion turn on a light. mine are a little more complex. for example. every 1 minute check the light LUX level and if someone is home turn on the light. these are the types of automates that get blown away every time apple updates the app. the reason I factory reset is because its much quicker to factory reset than to contact apple to get ZERO help. I have called in the past. they collect information that never goes anywhere. the factory reset either fixes it or I have to wait till the next update. support has never even suggested a way to resolve the issues that works out.

I tried recreated my home under iOS and re-adding all my devices. What a waste of time - spent my entire morning doing it. I can use Siri and Home app to turn things on and off via iPhone, but automations will not work, nor will "test automation" button do anything.

All Phillips Hue devices automated in the Hue app work perfectly. However I have a few Meross smart plugs that are only controlled by HomeKit which won't work under HomeKit automations.

Phillips uses a bridge, but allegedly you can use AppleTV as a hub/bridge. I have two AppleTVs that are set up to use HomeKit so clearly that's not the problem.

Clearly Apple has some work to do.

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.

I had this same problem. I am running iOS 16.1.2 on my iPhone. I unplugged my two HomePod minis and my AppleTV 4K. Left them all unplugged for five minutes. After the five minutes, I plugged them back into their outlets. That seems to have fixed my timed automations problem. Woke up this morning and my automations were running smoothly.