Can't get rid of Phantom Hub(s) - Please help!

Has anyone had any luck resolving this without erasing the entire Home and resetting everything up?

I think most people with that problem just don't have access to the old hub anymore (sold, defective, etc.).

Updated password

17.5 hasn’t fixed this

Suffering exactly the same issue as you, and have also tried the same set of troubleshooting steps. Also unwilling to completely rebuild the entire thing, so hopefully an update soon will fix it. If you figure out a way to resolve I'd love to hear how you did it!

When you go into settings on an iOS device - your name -scroll down to all devices listed in your Apple ID, are they in there? If so use > remove to remove. Devices sometimes linger in there and need to be removed further.

Thanks for the suggestion! I’ve already covered those bases, though. I was an early upgraded to the new Home architecture when it was first released in 16.2 and my first “phantom hub” failure occurred under 16.4, which didn’t present the architecture upgrade as an option because I’d already done it.

In both cases, the phantom hub had been removed from the iCloud device list of all Home members and the separate Apple ID I’d used for iTunes and App Store purchases.

The second failure occurred in a brand new home with all devices running on 16.4.1, again affecting an Apple TV HD, though I’d successfully added and removed a HomePod mini without the issue occurring on that device.

I broke down and did the rebuild a second time, and I’m hoping I’ll dodge the issue as I no longer have any Apple TV HD devices in my setup and hopefully won’t have any cause to remove any Apple TV’s for awhile, but I feel like something is definitely up software wise. I just hope it’s found and fixed before I have to remove an Apple TV again…

So, there's no fix for orphaned devices. Given the complexity of my home (and there are many much more complex) and the fact that Apple doesn't provide a back-up service I just ignore it rather than deleting my home and rebuilding it.

I'm running the new architecture and after my ATV4Kg1 failed I was able to remove it as one of my devices but it's still in the AppleHome/HomeKit database as non-responsive.

When removing an Apple TV HD, I just experienced the same issue with 16.6. I now have two phantom home hubs on all devices that appeared a few days later. I have an open case with apple. I too will live with the annoyance. I have over 100 devices and do not want to rebuild homekit again.

I’ve had the same issue with an Apple TV HD that was removed. I’ve also had issues with HKSV recordings being extremely slow to load, which may correspond to the time that the Apple TV HD was removed. Has anyone else seen HKSV performance issues with a phantom HomeKit hub in their home?

It’s probably time to recreate my home to remove the phantom hub and hopefully restore HKSV responsiveness. There are HomeKit apps that can backup and restore configurations which should speed up the process, but it’s frustrating there’s not a built in way to remove these phantom hubs.

Apple engineering has escalated, don’t know when it will be fixed. Check discussion board and software updates dates in the future. I have gave them log files from all my APPLE TVs, HomePods and iPhones along video screenshots and software version screenshots.

along with a link to this discussion group.

What’s next? Hmm…

Same problem here. It happened after toggling adding/removing the Apple TV 4K from the Home. I noticed that I was able to make it responsive again but toggling it back into the Homekit Home, and then when I clicked 'Remove From Home', it would remove for a couple of seconds and then come back. Unfortunately now that I've factory reset the ATV, I tried re-adding it to the Home and now it basically shows up twice, one is connected, the other is non-responsive. I've tried powercycling all of the Homehubs but that hasn't fixed it.

Has anyone tried leaving all Homehubs unplugged for a while simultaneously until it says 'No Homehub Responding'... has that solved it for anyone?

Given the number of folks that have recently noticed this issue, hopefully Apple corrects this in an upcoming update. For other that come across this thread, don't waste your time power-cycling and/or resetting all of your Home Hubs... I've just finished this process and it accomplished nothing other than creating yet another "Phantom" Apple TV 4K.

I love Apple, but they must catch up in the HOME game. I share my analytics and everything, and they still can't do anything about this. They don't even follow up anymore, and I have three different tickets open regarding it. The time and energy spent trying to figure this out is a travesty. I tried reinstalling everything under a new Apple Home, only to find out the phantom hubs still show back up after a few days, so save yourself all the hours and headaches and wait for an update.

Mine are not even an Apple TV that I don't have anymore. It's one I still own, just under a name I had before. I tried a million different things with Apple's IT Department, and they have given up on me and just said to wait. I wonder how long this will take them to figure out or if they ever will. Been dealing with this since May 2023.

Here is a pretty active Reddit thread on the subject which also details numerous false attempts to remedy the situation. It definitely seems related to the Apple TV 4K:

https://reddit.com/r/HomeKit/s/bIAHKN2u9I