Apple Home Invites Not Being Received

Same issue here. 16.2 completely removed a family member from the Home. Trying to invite them back does nothing; the invitation just shows as pending.

I spent an hour with a senior advisor who could not figure out the issue. Obviously something is broken on Apple’s end and they won’t admit it.

Set up your HomePod, HomePod mini, Apple TV, or iPad as a home hub - Apple Support (CA)

According to the Apple Support..you need a 4K AppleTV.. I had a 3rd Generation HD AppleTV so I thought ...

"You must set up a home hub to add Matter accessories to the Home app.

Thread-enabled Matter accessories require a Thread-enabled home hub,

such as HomePod mini or Apple TV 4K (3rd generation) Wi-Fi + Ethernet,

or a supported third-party border router."

.. and so with my stupid desperation, I went and got myself the Latest AppleTV /4K 128Gb WiFi + Ethernet ...!

The end result is STILL THE SAME problem ! No Go ! My shared users still not receiving any of my INVITATIONS, after sending several the Home App Invitations ! This is getting ridiculous ...

C'mon Apple Support !!! you need to acknowledge the problem or tell us whether the problem is in your HomeApp software or your iCloud Servers !? so we don't have to keep banging our heads, trying to figure out to resolve this Home App's Invitation Issues ! Give us the Fix , man !

I have the same problem.

I spent 4+h with an apple senior support guy, doing all kind of test/actions.

But still the invite is not received, neither on my wife nor my daughter iPhones.

We are all on the latest version of iOS (16.2)

Another update. I SOLVED the problem on both my wife's and daughter's iCloud account by resetting the home configuration using the HomeKitReset.mobileconfig profile using a device with the OLD iOS version 15.7.x (an old iPad stuck on iPadOS 15.7.2 for my wife, and an old iPhone 7 stuck on 15.7.3 for my daughter).

In short - using the device with the version 15.7.x of the OS

• Configure the device and make sure to login on iCloud with account of the profile that cannot receive the invitations
• Check that the "home" configuration is enabled on the iCloud settings
• Open the Home app - this will be not working and would not receive the invite to join any home
• Download and install the http://appldnld.apple.com/iOSProfiles/HomeKitReset.mobileconfig profile as above
• Reset the Home configuration using the new entry such profile created in the preference app
• Reboot the device and then open the Home app

In my case, I immediately noticed that something has changed since the device was showing the option to send invitation to join the (empty) home. Such option was not shown on the other devices with 16.x version of the iOS and iPadOS (both wife's and daughter's devices could neither send nor receive invite).

On my iPhone (with iOS 16.3) I then sent a new invite (eventually cancelling the pending one) to join my home, which was successfully received on all devices.

I joined from the old iPhone 7 with 15.7.3, and voilat, my daughter was back home :)

Same with my wife's iCloud account that I reset on the old iPad with 15.7.2.

I spent so much time on this that I hope this can be worth also for apple developers to fix this bug.

I suspect the HomeKitReset.mobileconfig profile works only on 15.x and not on 16.x.

Apparently this procedure posted on Reddit solved the problem!!!

Putting it here in case this may be useful for others too.

I did it the RESET only on my wife iPhone (not mine which is the home owner).

Before this, I also "removed" the home app from my wife phone and re-installed it back.

Then applied the profile reset below.

After some minutes of waiting, the invitation was received and she was able to join the home again.

download and launch the HomeKit reset profile Safari on both mobile devices (looks like they change the link periodically, so be advised link may be dated): http://appldnld.apple.com/iOSProfiles/HomeKitReset.mobileconfig (note: you can try first on just the one device and avoid full reset, but I was forced to do both devices)

install the profile on both devices then go to settings to install the profile per these instructions: Install a configuration profile on your iPhone or iPad - Apple Support

restart both devices (may be optional, but doesn’t hurt)

go to settings and scroll down. You should now see a “Home” icon to open then select to “Reset Configuration.” WARNING: this wipes out all your HomeKit accessories and settings. You will need to start over.

open HomeKit app on both devices. They said to leave app open for 10 minutes, but mine reset in a minute. This should force reset your configuration keys.

to test, I added a single HomePod mini to a new Home and then invited spouse. She accepted easy breezy.

It took over a month to get through support to this solution. Hope it saves someone some time and frustration. Good luck!

Credits to:

https://www.reddit.com/r/apple/comments/xwwv3b/apple_homekit_invitations_not_working_solution/

It worked from both my wife and daughter (who I removed at some point after which they were not able to receive the invitation anymore).

In addition to the above, I actually uninstalled and reinstalled the home app, removing all data too.

In details

• From the home app of the, remove any empty home and close+kill the home app
• Uninstall the home app and remove all the data from the dashboard
• Reinstall the home app from the App store. Do not open it
• Download and install the http://appldnld.apple.com/iOSProfiles/HomeKitReset.mobileconfig profile as above
• Reset the home data from the preference app
• Wait some minute
• Open the home app from the dashboard and wait some minute
• Resent the invite from the home owner phone (eventually removing the pending invite)

That worked for both my wife and daughter phones. It took a while to get the system back, and I possibly repeated the reset a couple of times.

I did not reset mine so I didn't loose any information.

Note that before doing that I tried all possible stuff (logout/login again from/to iCloud, remove people from family sharing, check that all emails were correct in contacts, disable/enable the home from iCloud, turn off/on whatever, change appleID email on my account, ...,). Nothing worked until the procedure above.

Note that my phone was able to send invitation to other people. And both my wife's and daughter's phones were NOT able to receive any invitation (neither from my phone, nor from other people). They were also not able to send invitation (from their "empty" home).

Same here.

I reconfigured a new home after using an iPad Pro became so slow that it was unbearable to work with (15s to turn on/off a light).

now this problem, seems as if the HomeKit app is just full with bugs.

When I invite my wife, it states “pending invitation” but no invitation is received. I reinstalled the apps, restarted all possible hubs, etc… but nothing works.

Updates are available for HomePods today. Please Install 16.4

Then if you wish to Upgrade to the new Home architecture - you can do that. Look in the Home tab in the Home App

You need to update all software first on every device, including those you are inviting

Then try your invites again.

Hi Cascada,

Thanks for reaching out in Apple Support Communities. You've completed some great troubleshooting steps so far. We'd like to provide you with a few additional things to check, so that you can share control of your home:

"• Make sure that you and the people you invite are signed into iCloud on an iPhone, iPad, or Mac. In iCloud settings, turn on Home.

• Make sure that you and the people you invite haven't blocked each other's phone number or Apple ID. Learn how to manage blocked phone numbers, contacts, and emails on iPhone or iPad and how to manage blocked callers on Mac.

• To invite people to control your home while you're away and edit permissions for them, you need to set up a home hub. If you don't have a home hub set up, you can only invite people when you're home and connected to your home Wi-Fi network."

We hope this helps.

Take care!

You will need to wait for the Home Architecture feature to resume via a future software update. It was released but paused. Some might have installed it while other family members missed out. This is causing some users not to be able to control home or complete the invites. We don’t know when Apple will resume this. See: Upgrade to the new Home architecture - Apple Support

It’s not available to upgrade, it still says ”:We temporarily removed the option to upgrade to the new Home architecture. The option to upgrade will return soon. If you already upgraded, you are unaffected by this change”

Upgrade to the new Home architecture - Apple Support

Only some people upgraded while it was available, or only some of their devices installed it.

• I spent three hours with an Apple advisor today trying to determine why I cannot receive an invitation from wife Home app. The app on her phone says invite is pending, but my phone receives nothing that we (me and advisor) can find. We have one Home Pod Mini, two iphones and two ipads that we are working with. This was third or fourth call to Apple with no actual solution. All devices are running IOS 16.3 and are on the same network. While my wife’s phone and ipad appear to showing connectivity properly right now it does not stay that way. Why can’t Apple address this issue?

Thanks, this also worked for me.

• Disabled home in iCloud settings on other accounts
• Renamed the home, to something never seen before
• Enabled home in iCloud settings on other devices
• Sent the invites and all worked

After the Home update that required all devices to be updated, our other phone kept saying that all devices needed to be updated even though this had been done. It was in a strange state because the phone saw the home but could not access it, and so re-inviting had no effect.

Not wanting to do the nuclear option mentioned elsewhere in the thread of wiping out the profiles and starting over, I tried a modification of the steps and it worked.

1. Create an open invite to the 2nd device in the Home Settings. Wait about a minute.
2. On the 2nd device, delete the Home App from the phone completely. Then reinstall it.
3. Restart the 2nd device.
4. Open the Home app on the 2nd device. You will probably still see the unresponsive home.
5. On the primary device, cancel the open invite. After a few seconds, send a new one. It may take a few minutes but the unresponsive home should disappear on the 2nd device and a default home might get created. The invite should trigger within a few minutes.
6. If the home does not appear within a few minutes, cancel and resend the invite again. After a few minutes it should appear on the 2nd device correctly with all settings intact.
7. Once this is done you can delete the default home if you wish by switching to it and using the Home Settings.

I'm not sure which of these did the trick but the key is to somehow get rid of the unresponsive home, which seems to prevent new invites from working.

All our IT consumer products are from Apple where possible (iPhones, iPads, appleTVs, Airpods, ...), so using HomeKit was my default choice for "ultra" integration. But boy oh boy what a disappointment!

I posted here some time ago that I was fed up with all the bugs in Homekit and was going to build the frontent myself in Node-Red. This was when I was trying to resolve other HomeKit issues by removing the Homekit config and reconfigured everything on a new appleTV 4K with Ethernet. But, as everybody here already knows, it is not possible anymore to invite guests. So my wife was locked out and she had to call me to open the gate as we use HomeKit to trigger a switch to open our gate.

All "solutions" provided did not work. Only to let frustration grow.

What apple tends to forget is that HomeKit is kind of a mission critical application regarding a home. Switches for my heating, my gate, and other important stuff was managed thru Homekit.

As the issue was urgent I worked thru the weekend to create a dashboard using Node-Red. A lot of work but I really like the end result. The iPad in my living room now looks like this:

When somebody rings at the gate, a picture pops-up for 2 minutes: a ton of features not possible with Homekit.

But most important: finally a stable solution! No delays, no connection issues (what a relief).

I also created a dashboard for our iPhones

I use the RemoteRED application: that application broadcasts the Node-Red dashboard webpage thru a secure tunnel to an iPhone app. So basically, my Node-Red webpage becomes an app:

Automatically opening our gate is now done thru Shortcuts, where the RemoteRED application is used to send a command to Node-Red:

The result is full control of my home and automations without any HomeKit.

My main message is: when you rely on an application or framework that does not work, even if it is from a giant like Apple. Just search for alternatives that do work :-)