HomeKit remote access not always working

So after almost a year of banging my head against the wall and countless restores, removing and re-adding all my accessories. I decided to call again and be adamant it was an iCloud issue. Passed me up 3 tiers of support in the first 20 minutes of the call. Spent almost 2 hours on the phone with Mason. Long story short, he was awesome and actually put effort into figuring it out. Low and behold, it was a “block” on my AppleID. He literally “unchecked” the block at his end and almost instantly I was able to send invites, and after about 10 minutes, AppleTV was recognized as the hub again and I could control everything remotely. So if anyone has also been banging their head against the wall for almost a year, call in and tell them to check that. Kudos to Mason and his excellent customer service for actually making the effort to look into it and ask his peers. Last time it was an endless loop of being passed off by support for 3 weeks until I got frustrated and gave up. Persistence pays off I guess. I knew it wasn’t at my end. Hope this helps anyone else having the same problem! Good luck!

Had a very similar issue after updating to 11.2 . I ran a Wi-fi scanner and protocol checker and noticed that when my Apple TV connected to 5ghz band the issue occurred.

I’ve worked around this by restricting my Wi-fi router to mode 2 and turning off the 5ghz band.

Also had a further issue where my Apple TV remote on iPhones would no longer see the Apple TVs. This also appears to have resolved the issue.

My lights and thermostat are all working consistently with remote access.

Here’s what I spent a good chunk of last weekend doing.

• Setup my new TP Link AC5400 router to replace the old and tired AirPort Extreme
• Delete all scenes and accessories from HomeKit
• Delete/unpair/unregistered all devices from their respective apps
• Deleted my home from the HomeKit app
• Factory reset all devices (when I say all I mean all, including Apple TV and iPhone)
• Sign into the newly-reset iphone and then the Apple TV
• Installed the Lutron app for lights And setup the entire Lutron system in the Lutron app
• Installed the Hue app And setup my one individual Hue bulb in the Hue app
• Installed the Ecobee app and setup the Ecobee 3 device in the app
• Opened HomeKit for the first time since deleting my home in step 3
• Added my 3 systems one by one into HomeKit making sure each device was setup before moving to the next one, this way I don’t have to go back and change a single thing once I’m done
• Configured individual scenes and tested each scene after it was created
• ** dramatic pause **
• Turned. Off. WiFi.
• ** second dramatic pause **
• IT WORKED!

I was able to tell Siri to turn on the lights for the dogs and everything happened like clockwork. I left WiFi off on my phone for the rest of the night to make sure the other Siri controlled scenes and schedules worked. The next morning I woke up and the lights I scheduled for my morning routine we’re all running properly. So I turned WiFi back on for the phone and felt my eyes welling up with tears.

When Apple says reset or factory reset, they mean EVERY. SINGLE. THING. Perhaps all of this wasn’t necessary for most people. But with the new router I changed my SSID for a couple reasons. So reconnecting everything to WiFi is really only two steps away from factory resetting it all.

Lets see what the next few days hold for me. It was a solid 5 hours of non stop resetting/downloading/configuring/testing and I’d really like it to last longer than a week this time.

It’s sad that you never received a reply to this.

I’m having the same issue as you. Everything is up to date, signed in to the same account, etc. I logged out and back in on all devices, etc., still no remote access when not connected to home WiFi.

I just managed to fix the issue by going on the Apple TV to Settings > Accounts > iCloud and toggling “Connected” / “Not Connected” off and on about 6 times with the Home app open on my phone.

Somehow this solved it, but we’ll see how long it lasts.

So my issues started when the iOS 11 came out! What I ended up doing was update my phone (iPhone 7+) and my ATV4. Then I went to my iPhone and opened HomeKit and hit the location arrow in the left hand corner and scrolled down and removed home. Then I had to re-install my devices which were the lutron bridge, chamberlain garage door and my Augusta lock. My ATV4 was made my hub and now everything works perfectly weather I am home on my WiFi or away I can control my devices!

I hope this helps and good luck!

I wanted to share my update. This morning, I reset my AppleTV, and set it up again from scratch. I did the Reset and Update. When asked to set it up, I used my Phone to complete the setup with my user ID. I still noticed that not all my devices were responding in my homekit app, but the native app for the Ecobee was working. So I went to the Ecobee, and reconnected to the network, again, using my phone to complete the connection. My devices started working in the Homekit app. I was then able to shut off my wifi on my phone, and still control ALL my devices. However, I did remove the Leviton device from the Leviton app, which in-turn, removed it from my Homekit. For now, I'm going to leave that device removed from my system to see if my system stays stable. My suggestion, if you are having issues, would be to first do a complete reset of the AppleTV (which is acting as my hub) Keep in mind, I did have to reconnect my devices which were still having an issue, but after doing so it seems like it has been working for the past few hours. Good Luck.

This has frustrated me as well for some time. The following two things may help some of you:

1. I have the ApplTV set to never sleep and just assumed that it was not going to sleep. Apparently, however, my television overrides the Apple TV and automatically caused the Apple TV to sleep after a period of inactivity. I shut this setting off on the TV so that the Apple TV will listen to its own setting and actually not sleep. This seemed to work until 11.2 or 11.2.1 which then caused my Hue Bulbs to not respond when not controlled by wifi.

2. I am no techy, but I assumed that if the system works on wifi, the problem must stem from the ATV4's connection to my router since the remote connection goes through that connection whereas, I think, the wifi connection is straight from the iphone to the Hue hub. In order to make sure that something was going awry in that connection, I set up a static ip address for the Apple TV so that it would always use a connection I know would work. While it is still "early," these two fixes are currently working for me.

Good luck to those experiencing this frustrating problem and please post any other fixes since I am uncertain if mine will hold long term.

3 days ago I made a few tweaks and since then I have not had any connection issues with my Homekit remotely:

> on my Netgear router 2.4: I switched the channel from auto to 11

> for good measure I also gave my apple TV a static route

It takes around 6 seconds for my Iphone to connect to my homekit remotely.

I will continue to test and see if it continues to work as it is supposed to.

I did a full reset on the Apple TV. Basically wiped it completely and set it back up. On the ecobee, I only reconnected to the WiFi. It has been working for the past few days with no issues.

I hooked my Apple TV directly to my router using an Ethernet cable and so far it’s been working fine.

Had the exact same problem, no response from devicwhile on cellular but works fine on home WiFi. I turned off WiFi on iphone then reset Apple TV then force quit home app then reopened home app. Seems to work for me.

I have had similar issues with outside the home connectivity as well as intermittent inside home problems.

My system includes Ecobee, Hue, Lutron, Liftmaster, Eve, Hunter and Schlage locks. Th biggest issues were with the Lutron, Liftmaster and Hunter accessories. The Ecobee was intermittently connected and usually had the wrong setpoint.

I have had a surprising, substantial improvement by simply restarting my WiFi router. Inside house on WiFi works again completely. Away from home connection works with occasional hang up with the hunter fan.

Good luck.

So since my last posting on Apr 22, 2018, I just resolved my issue last weekend.

After going through every setting, and updating and factory restoring my iPhone and AppleTV, I finally have a working HomeKit that works away from home.I believe there's an issue or bug with my old iCloud drive account that hasn't been update and the fact that I have several Apple computers that aren't running the same MacOS.

1. Follow Apple's instructions - Automate and remotely access your HomeKit accessories - Apple Support

and make sure Homekit works while at home.

2. Check to make sure Location Services are enabled on your iPhone.

Settings -> Privacy -> Homekit -> Enable all devices

Settings -> Privacy -> Location Services -> Homekit - While using

Settings -> Privacy -> Location Services -> Homekit - ANY Device listed should be ON - While using

Settings -> Privacy -> Location Services -> Homekit - System Services -> HomeKit - ON

3. Check to make sure Home Hubs is listed and "Connected"

3. Click on your name listed in People and my issue was that "Allow Remote Access" was OFF and grey out so I can't enable it.

a. To resolve this, you'll need to reset your iCloud drive. I don't recall entering a 4 digit security code, so I ended up deleting everything including the save iCloud Keychains which probably contains some HomeKit security settings.

b. Delete the Home with all the devices.

c. Remove the iCloud account from your iPhone

d. recreate the home check to make sure your account now has "Allow Remote Access" enabled. I don't know why it can't be changed at this point.

e. Invite other users. Their account allow for both Remote and Edit settings to be enabled.. strange.

4. Go to your AppleTV and logout and log back into your iCloud account. Make sure your new Home is listed there.

5. Check on your iPhone to make sure Home Hubs is listed and "Connected"

6. Disable wifi and bluetooth and test it out.

Anyways, good luck. I'm on day 3 and it's still working. I'm now going to finish purchasing the rest of my home automation devices, but not the HomePod until the 2nd or 3rd generation.

I've struggled with this off and on for some time. Finally, as a last resort, I updated to the absolute best modem router combination I could afford that was recommended by my ISP, and now I have zero problems. I couldn't believe it when I was at work the first day and everything worked and it continues to work without flaw.