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anyberry1

Q: Unable to set up Apple TV (4th gen) as Home Hub

I updated my iPhone 5s to iOS 10 yesterday and today I updated my Apple TV (4th gen) to tvOS 10.

 

But I am unable to set up my Apple TV as a hub in the Home app on my iPhone - the Automation tab in the hub says "Make Apple TV (4th generation) the center of your home..." but offers no means to do it.

I found this article:

Automate and remotely access your HomeKit accessories - Apple Support

Which says:

  • On your Apple TV, go to Settings > Accounts > iCloud and make sure that your Apple TV shows HomeKit as Connected.

 

But there is nothing about HomeKit on that settings page on Apple TV. (Yes, my Apple ID has two-factor auth enabled.)

 

Does anybody have this working? Any hints?

 

Thanks,

Martin

Posted on Sep 14, 2016 12:00 AM

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Q: Unable to set up Apple TV (4th gen) as Home Hub

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  • by John Laury,

    John Laury John Laury Sep 20, 2016 6:02 PM in response to anyberry1
    Level 1 (38 points)
    Apple TV
    Sep 20, 2016 6:02 PM in response to anyberry1

    Same problem here.  I not only do not see Home or HomeKit in Setting>Accounts>iCloud on my Apple TV, but I don't have a home settings choice in settings on my iPhone 6 running iOS 10.0.1.  Pictures I've seen have a "Home" settings Choice in Settings>Home, appearing right below Settings>News.

     

    Confused.

     

    I've tried turning iCloud keychain on and off, signing out of iCloud everywhere, everything is on the same WIFI network.  Signing back into iCloud, waiting... waiting.. still nothing.

  • by arjanfromlaren,

    arjanfromlaren arjanfromlaren Sep 21, 2016 11:54 AM in response to anyberry1
    Level 1 (11 points)
    Sep 21, 2016 11:54 AM in response to anyberry1

    Hi, Found the trick after trying a lot of things in all sorts of order.

     

    What works is:

    1) Sign out of iCloud on your ATV4

    2) Restart your ATV4

    3) Reset Homekit under Settings/Privacy

    4) Restart your ATV4

    5) Login to iCloud

     

    Of course 2 factor verification should be on.

    The ATV stays connected in Standby mode and works with Ethernet and Wifi.

  • by John Laury,

    John Laury John Laury Sep 21, 2016 1:42 PM in response to arjanfromlaren
    Level 1 (38 points)
    Apple TV
    Sep 21, 2016 1:42 PM in response to arjanfromlaren

      I gave up after a few hours of signing out if this and rebooting that, and ensuring all the ducks are in a row.  For giggles, today, (the next day) I looked at Settings>Accounts>iCloud on my TV, and low and behold, HomeKit is showing and connected.  I then set up Home on the phone and turned off WIFI to simulate being away from home, and everything is now working as intended both on the Phillips Hue end and the Apple Home application.

     

      I must say, there's definitely room for improvement, both on the accessory maker side as well as setting up Home on the iOS side.

     

      On the Phillips Hue side, I opened the package when it arrived, it contained two white 800 lumen bulbs along with the Phillips Bridge, and a piece of paper that basically said, plug it in to power and my router/modem, download the app, and follow the instructions.  I did, but when I went to pair the bridge to my phone, it said it couldn't, and didn't say why.  After fiddling a bit, the app told me there was an "update" to the app, so I applied the update hoping that would fix the issue.  It didn't.  After a bit more fiddling, the updated app informed me that there's a newer app, and that this app will still work, but isn't being updated anymore.  It kindly offered to download that app, which I did.  Then, when I ran the second app, it paired right away.  Then... it informed me that there's an update for this app.  So.. feeling daring, I decided to update this app hoping it wouldn't break anything, and, luckily, it didn't.  At that point, everything was working fine between the Phillips App and  the bulbs/bridge, but I wanted to be able to set up my TV as a hub, and have the ability to control my lights from Borneo, and do cool stuff like turn on the lights when I pull in the drive....

     

    ... so to the Apple Side.  Two Factor on, check. Signed into iCloud on all devices under the sun, check.  iCloud keychain on, check.  All devices signed into the same WIFI network, check.  Signed out of and back into and toggled every imaginable switch with various reboots, check.  After a few hours of that and searching the web for answers, I finally gave up.  Checked in on it the next day, and finally the Apple TV had connected to HomeKit on it's own during the night or sometime the next day.

     

      If there's one word of advice I'd give, it's to simply sign out of everything, reboot everything, sign into everything, ensure two factor and iCloud Keychain are enabled, and then wait... like 24 hours, and see where you stand at that point.  Apparently, enabling HomeKit on the TV falls pretty low on the iCloud server's totem poll, so sometimes it just takes some time for some of these network aware devices to actually become.. well, aware.

     

      Finally though, now that everything is working, I'm excited that I can turn two light bulbs on and off from anywhere, and look forward to getting more smart home devices up and running such as door locks and thermostats and the like, plus whatever stuff comes down the pike that hasn't been thought of yet.  We do have to take into consideration that we're still in the baby steps era of the "Internet of Things", and over time, things will certainly get smoother than they are now.  I go back to a time where you had to manually dial a phone number to connect to the internet or a BBS, and you had to know a bunch of codes to put your modem in the right mood to talk to whatever you were connecting to, but now, you plug in a computer to power and a router and everything just works, and is considered a given.

  • by TasmanHopper,

    TasmanHopper TasmanHopper Sep 22, 2016 3:36 PM in response to anyberry1
    Level 1 (4 points)
    Sep 22, 2016 3:36 PM in response to anyberry1

    What finally worked for me was setting up 2 factor authentication on BOTH my apple accounts (i.e. normal account for icloud/mail/messages, and iTunes PURCHASING account).

    Once the second account was verified as 2 factor, I then had to sign out of both accounts on the TV (gen 4), sign in to both (which sent out verification codes for each account), and the TV HomeKit setting at last appeared under my TV settings/accounts/(iCloud account).

  • by John Laury,

    John Laury John Laury Sep 22, 2016 3:39 PM in response to TasmanHopper
    Level 1 (38 points)
    Apple TV
    Sep 22, 2016 3:39 PM in response to TasmanHopper

    I'm curious as to why you have two Apple IDs.  Usually you only need one for all services, iTunes, iCloud, iMessage and FaceTime.

  • by TasmanHopper,

    TasmanHopper TasmanHopper Sep 22, 2016 3:49 PM in response to John Laury
    Level 1 (4 points)
    Sep 22, 2016 3:49 PM in response to John Laury

    Well, I'm one of the many (hundreds of thousands or more!) people who signed up for apple services using another email address (before iCloud came along).   My purchases are done with a hotmail email address, and all normal apple services(mail/messages/etc. with my Apple email address.  There is NO WAY these two accounts can be merged.  There is no tool or process to merge them.  I've spoke to Apple and Googled it for years!   It's probably most irritating thing Apple does.  In fact, ironically, it's the only reason I can't shut down my old Hotmail account.

    I don't really want to lose 10 years of purchases on my purchasing account just to have one neat account for all, so stuck with 2 account for now!

    Still, maybe other's having TV Homehub issues have this same setup.

  • by John Laury,

    John Laury John Laury Sep 22, 2016 3:52 PM in response to TasmanHopper
    Level 1 (38 points)
    Apple TV
    Sep 22, 2016 3:52 PM in response to TasmanHopper

    Well, you can shut down the hotmail account if you wanted to.  Since that account is a non-Apple email, you can change the primary email address of that ID to any available non-Apple email address.  As far as merging is concerned, you can't (and likely never will) have that ability.  Mainly because Apple doesn't want someone leaving Apple selling or giving that account to another person to merge all their purchases to their own ID.

  • by TasmanHopper,

    TasmanHopper TasmanHopper Sep 22, 2016 4:00 PM in response to John Laury
    Level 1 (4 points)
    Sep 22, 2016 4:00 PM in response to John Laury

    Like I said, I've googled this for 10 years, I cannot change my current Apple email to be the primary address unless it is a NEW Apple email.  It won't work if I already have the account setup.  I've spoken to Apple.  I can't shut it down.  I won't go through it here, it's been discussed and argued for years on this website And many others.

    Please, no more on this.  I really do know about this.

     

    Hope I managed to help someone re the TV Homehub!

  • by grobinson245,

    grobinson245 grobinson245 Sep 23, 2016 9:27 PM in response to anyberry1
    Level 1 (12 points)
    Apple TV
    Sep 23, 2016 9:27 PM in response to anyberry1

    I got it working without an Ipad. I struggled with this for a while but found a few threads where people did the following with success:

     

    Setup Two Factor Auth

    Logout of iCloud on all devices

    Reboot all devices

    Reset Homekit on your appleTV Settings>General>Privacy>HomeKit>"Reset HomeKit Configuration"

    Login to Icloud on all your devices (Apple TV last)

    You should now see that HomeKit is connected on the AppleTV in Settings>Accounts>iCloud>

  • by grobinson245,

    grobinson245 grobinson245 Sep 23, 2016 9:32 PM in response to anyberry1
    Level 1 (12 points)
    Apple TV
    Sep 23, 2016 9:32 PM in response to anyberry1

    Worked for me too.

     

    Setup Two Factor Auth

    Enable iCloud Keychain

    Logout of iCloud on all devices

    Reboot all devices

    Reset Homekit on your appleTV Settings>General>Privacy>HomeKit>"Reset HomeKit Configuration"

    Login to iCloud on all your devices (Apple TV last)

    HomeKit is connected on the AppleTV in Settings>Accounts>iCloud>

  • by Cartaa,

    Cartaa Cartaa Sep 24, 2016 1:48 PM in response to anyberry1
    Level 1 (11 points)
    iPhone
    Sep 24, 2016 1:48 PM in response to anyberry1

    After researching for a while I realized the Apple TV uses the location to determine HomeKit hub settings for iCloud. What worked for me is restting the HomeKit settings and location settings on the Apple TV. You can access this by going into Settings  > General > Privacy > Location / Homekit.

     

    I Reset both the location settings for HomeKit and the HomeKit settings within the privacy page. My assumption is location is what fixed it but it might be worth trying both if needed. HomeKit showed up in icloud immediately after applying these settings.

     

    Hope that helps anyone else with this issue!

  • by margreg,

    margreg margreg Sep 26, 2016 6:38 AM in response to anyberry1
    Level 1 (4 points)
    Sep 26, 2016 6:38 AM in response to anyberry1

    I think it all has to do with the ios 10 update. I went into my iCloud account on all my devices, and HAD to re-enter my password. Everything worked as designed after that.

  • by anyberry1,

    anyberry1 anyberry1 Sep 26, 2016 7:25 AM in response to margreg
    Level 1 (8 points)
    Apple TV
    Sep 26, 2016 7:25 AM in response to margreg

    Of course it has to do with iOS 10 - there was no Home Hub prior to iOS 10 / tvOS 10. And yes, after upgrading to iOS 10, you are required to re-enter your iCloud password. But even after updating and re-entering the password, it did not work (Apple TV could not be used as a home hub). And that's the problem we're trying to solve here.

     

    I would love to be able to pick a correct answer among the posts here, but there doesn't seem to be one correct answer. Many people report that once they tried this with their iPad, it then magically started working with Apple TV as well. That seemed to be the case for me too. But then there are others who don't own an iPad and still got it to work eventually.

  • by Alrizo,

    Alrizo Alrizo Oct 1, 2016 1:33 PM in response to grobinson245
    Level 1 (4 points)
    Oct 1, 2016 1:33 PM in response to grobinson245

    I also cousnt see home option in atv4 wgile ipad worked as a hub no problem. have been fiddleing with power on/off ipad atv, iphone. Icloud acc signin/out. Nothing worked until i did atv4 RESET, not restart. Let it reinstall everything and used my iphone bluetooth to get it configured automatically. And bingo, after few mins Home option appeared under iCloud on aTv4. Seems patientce , try/error is the way to go

  • by Cheese7007,

    Cheese7007 Cheese7007 Oct 1, 2016 1:46 PM in response to TasmanHopper
    Level 1 (14 points)
    Apple TV
    Oct 1, 2016 1:46 PM in response to TasmanHopper

    I am curious about how you set up two factor authentication on the AppleID you use for iTunes purchases.  I have the same double Apple ID situation, but it is my understanding the second factor authentication code is sent to devices logged on to iCloud with that Apple ID.  Since all my devices are logged on to iCloud with my non-iTunes Apple ID I would have no place to get that authentication code.   I am glad you found away to do this.  Can you tell me how you do it or what I am missing?

     

    Thanks

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