Homekit Automations are broken in iOS 16

Since installing iOS16 my home time of day automations have become very erratic. Some WEMO power plugs only work manually, some WEMO dimmer switches have glowing Red lights. Some Scenes like Sunset or Sunrise used to be reliable. Now they might work one day but not the next.

Any help is really welcomed,

I have recreated “Home” and that has no effect. Since 16 release, any modification of a automation causes that automation to stop working. The workaround I have found is to delete the automation and recreate it. The recreated automation will work until it is modified, then it stops. I can recreate this issue any time an automation is modified.

My workaround to my timed automations failing to run has been to restart my Apple TV home hub every day. I do this via Restart in the Settings System menu.

Before I arrived at this, my automations would seem to work for about a day but then one or another would fail to run.

It’s especially annoying and borderline a safety concern when my outside lights fail to turn on at sunset. I wish Apple would take this appropriately seriously.

Since I’ve been doing this daily restart, so far for a few days now, things have been working. Obviously it’s a crummy workaround.

(I wish I could figure out an automation that would shut off the power to my Apple TV once a day with some automatic way for the power to come back on after a short interval.)

Speculating, it’s almost like the software thread on the Apple TV hub in charge of timed automations crashes, or at least hiccups, after about a day.

I have no HomePods and never have. I have the latest Apple TV with the thread border router functionality.

So you have the 128GB Lan capable model and it still shows flawed automations? Thank goodness you shared that. I was literally considering upgrading my 2017 model. Not going to now. I have disabled my Apple TV as a hub and now just have my HomePods handle the automations and this seems to work as long as the HomePod is nearer the devices. I think HomeKit does a suboptimal job of routing instructions to the nearest HomeKit router and making sure they arrive. I follow this thread. If you sort out the issue on your tv I would appreciate an update here. Cheers.

Maybe try something I reported earlier... I realised that my automations scheduled for the early hours sometimes failed. I noticed that my Original Homepod was acting as the Home Hub (an Apple TV 4K was on standby).

I decided to try forcing the Homepod to stay awake by playing music in a loop (at very low volume). This seems to fix my problem.

So... I am wondering if you could try the same with the Apple TV - play music continuously.

Maybe also check for wifi issues such as appliance interference.

Robin Phillips1 wrote:

My best suggestion is to make sure whatever devices are acting as your home hub are running 16.2, for example HomePod or appletv.

For many of us (but perhaps not all) that has fixed it.

This would very likely be the solution for many more people than have tried it. I still see many struggling with complex work-arounds when simply checking to make sure your home hub(s) are running the latest OS update (and forcing them to update if they aren't yet) is probably all they actually need to do.

Yeah, I stopped replying because I kind of assume that people have tried that. But maybe not?!

It’s really an essential first step to troubleshooting to make sure devices are updated.

If people are still having problems post 16.2 update then I’m sure Apple would want to know.

I did end up updating everything to 16.2 (and did homekit architecture upgrades before Apple pulled them). At first everything was working just fine but as time has gone on pretty much everything is not working, any time based automations (sunset, sunrise), location based automations completely messed up. Apple Home thinks I am away when I am home, seems completely random when it triggers things. I have checked all location/privacy settings.

I have deleted a few automations and disabled some others, but will HOPE that Apple will correct this problem. This is extremely disappointing so Apple if you are listening. GRRR

I also upgraded to the new architecture in my two homes, after having factory reset all homepods and appletvs to get my automations running again. Then upgraded all devices (iPhones, iPad, appletv, homepods, Macs, etc.) in two homes (2-3 hour drive away depending on traffic). Upgraded! Fast response, automations worked, no accessories that had "no response".

Cut to now. I started getting messages when I got to my primary home if I wanted to run automations for my other home. It got more frequent to where it didn't know or care where I was. Then it kept brining me to my 2nd home in Homekit as a default. Weird. No responses again. Can't get Schlage lock for primary home front door 40% of time - 60% of the time...,. it goes on from there.

I'm done. I'm going to dismantle the 2nd home from Homekit completely. I am tired of the hours and hours of troubleshooting and navigating Apple products and software. This ecosystem has been expensive and I'm going to move on.

Any ATV or Homepod that is setup with the same Apple ID as your iPhone and is on the same wifi network will become a Home Hub - either as active or on stand-by. Hubs are listed in Home Settings in the Home app (iOS or macOS).

You can change the ATV settings to disable this but you cannot disable a Homepod. For troubleshooting purposes you need to unplug Homepods.

I am pretty close to doing this as well. Two homes here and especially any automation that depends on geofencing is broken in some form. And the time I spent to get it working at all after iOS 16 is just not justified anymore. Either it works in the next 3 to 6 months through proper updates by Apple, or I am done. I will not spend any more time trying out different ideas to fix their problems. Fortunately, at least my second home is 99% relying on KNX and Homekit is just the front end. So it should be not too big a deal to change it to something reliable, though possibly not as pretty.

It was the homehub software (HomePod and appletv) that broke stuff, not iOS.

It’s just that people aren’t aware of their homehubs updating in the same way they are of their personal devices updating.

Automations run on the homehubs.

This reinforces what I have experienced since apple introduced the HomePods. The more Apple devices I've purchased (phones, MacBooks, appletvs, OG HomePods...) and more sophisticated my smart homeS became, the more super user I've become, the worse Apple value has been in product and software quality, testing, support, overall ecosystem subject matter expertise.

This 16-16.2 alignment with the "new" HomePod launch, crashing so many customers home automations, and zero customer communication only highlights how completely tone deaf Apple leadership is at best, or doesn't think it will impact their sales at worst.

I'm not buying any more HomePods or other new ecosystem products.

Yes but any automations that leverage where people are use iPhones. And I wouldn't be surprised if there are other things tethered to iPhone like shortcuts, or how updates to Home across all these devices and historical data you don't see impact what's broken.

What broke stuff is, as far as I can see, still a mystery to Apple engineers.

Yes be aware of all the versions of all your devices and the myriad of different ways to update them. But know this: this HomeKit architecture release is the first one where every single device in all locations, for any connected users, had to be upgraded to the latest version.

And for whatever complexities and differences of how we use HomeKit, many of us went from mediocre to Twitter-like dumpster fire.

Well… I myself can’t wait to see a hands-on article with the CES 2023 introduced Nicla Voice. Let’s see how that stacks up to a HomePod. I don’t think it will be any better. I see no Alternative to Siri. Without voice any home automation is almost useless, barring time/geo/sensor-driven automation.