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!

Same problem here, kudos to the one who persisted with tech support to discover an iCloud block. If an iCloud block is responsible then I want to know what this means. Anybody know What an iCloud block is? How does it get initiated? Who’s responsible for these blocks? Who has the rights to unblock? Is it Only Apple tech support who can unblock? Please chime in, this is important. I’m tired of “No Response” on HomeKit.

The way Mason explained it to me, was that if you send 2-4 (can’t remember the exact number) of the same text message to someone one right after another, your Apple ID gets marked as a spam account (or something to that effect) and the block happens automatically. Only Apple has the ability to unblock it. Hope this helps.

I called Apple, and they said there are no blocks on my iCloud account. Still the "No Response" when away from home persists. Apple recommended I reinstall my apps, or reset my iPhone - quite a lot of trouble. No guarantee that even that will work. Anyway, thanks for the post. All we can do is try.

I’ve had this problem too... I’ve spent ages trying to troubleshoot it, and followed most of the suggestions made by various people in this thread. Some of the comments prompted me to check my wife’s iPhone to see if it worked on hers, and I found it did. So... I wondered if my iCloud or Apple ID was ‘blocked’ as per some comments here... but before calling, I figured a reboot of my iPhone would be in order.

That resolved the problem for me, straight off the bat, much to my surprise and frustration, as if I’d thought of doing that earlier, I may have been able to access my kit while I was away from home the last couple of days!

Anyway... just thought I’d share... I’m just hoping this isn’t a recurring issue. I’ll try to remember to update the thread in a couple of weeks when I know if the issue has reoccurred.

I think it’s a WiFi connection issue with the Xs and Xs Max. Never had these issues with my X. iPhone Xs Max had WiFi connection issues last night and it used a ton of cellular data last night. Not happy

Hi ottoharsh,

I’m not sure if you have the right thread with your comments about WiFi issues... unless I’ve missed something here.

Either way... if you’re not already aware, you can reduce the usage of cellular data usage when connected to WiFi by switching off ‘WiFi assist’ - you’ll find this in settings->mobile data, then scroll all the way to the bottom. This will also show you how much data has been used by this service since the last reset of data counters. I hope this helps you reduce mobile data usage, although you may already be aware of it. Basically, the service is intended to speed up data access when WiFi connectivity is poor or slow.

I cannot comment on the merits/drawbacks of either the X or Xs, as I’m still on the 7. But the WiFi assist service exists across all current models. However, it’s perfectly possible that the actual connectivity is poor on the specific hardware, for some other reason.

On a whim, I decided to unhardwire my Apple TV from our Eero network. One ATV reboot later and I can control our garage door remotely for the first time since getting the Insignia Garage Door Controller. I previously had a home-brewed raspberry pi setup that worked fine with the Apple TV hardwired.

No idea why being on the same network is insufficient; being on same WiFi/SSID is apparently important for some items. Also no idea if this will continue to work, but so far I am hopeful.

Hope this information is useful to someone.

This is my situation: on LTE, even if the signal is good, often the accessories are not reachable and I have to make more attempts to connect closing and opening the app Home. On WiFi (mine or other) all the devices are connected and respond without problems.

My hub is an iPad.

I’ve tried all of the last 7 pages. It’s frustrating to log out of iPhone I cloud because of all of the resets. My guess is there is a conflict between HomePod and Apple TV. It’s getting a little tiring to not have lights on for my dog in the evening when a $5 plug in timer worked perfectly fine. Instead, I’ve adopted to an entire hue system integrated into HomeKit and my little guy sits in the dark. So.. I upgraded to a HomePod. Didn’t fix it. Then.. I upgraded my ATV from a 2.0 to a 4 and it got even worse/less consistent. Maybe I’m biased as I come from the real estate industry and expect/see automation that works. What gives, apple?

Not biased at all. HomeKit has been around for over 4 years and it’s still just as buggy and inconsistent as day 1. I’ve had the latest gen Apple hardware at every product release for those 4 years and updated to the latest TvOS, iOS, MacOS as soon as it is released. I have yet to go a month without a failure (minor or major) of the HomeKit system. The worst is when I have scenes scheduled to make sure the house warms up for my dogs after I leave for work and then coming home to find out my thermostat didn’t change at all.

HomeKit is a product failure in my book. Something that should make life easier and take some of the thought/worry/effort out of the day, that instead has me worried it’s too cold or thinking about turning on the lights so the house isn’t dark when I get home.

Worst of all, my HomeKit was entirely setup using a centralized account on an iPhone that sits in my living room on WiFi 24/7. That device should always be able to connect even if the thermostat doesn’t want to participate with remote access. And yet I came home today to 1 of 3 lights I expected on, and two shivering dogs because the thermostat never flipped the heat on. So even having a device on WiFi aside from the home hub and accessories doesn’t make the automation work. Complete failure.

Wow that’s worse than me! (Based on your efforts)

ive migrated off the HomeKit automation and have individual apps using their independent controls. A little clunky since there isn’t integration, but reliable. Fortunately , I never surrendered my ecobee schedules to HomeKit so they have been intact.

I respect this is an apple forum, but it doesn’t seem we are seeing results. Anyone try the wink system? I hear it’s pretty reliable.

I had this issue lots. I’ve now set up three homekit homes. My biggest issue was Philips Hue, it is a rubbish system that I will never use again (I once had 34 lights) due to the poor customer service from Phillips and service agents that knew less about the system than I did. My best recommendation is remove it.

I now use a combo of; lifx, koogeek, Eve Elgato. They all have minor issues eventually but these seem to recover from toggling the power vs Phillips hue requiring a full delete and readd.

Well, it is February 2019... Just in case anybody was wondering all of the problems reported in this thread still exist with HomeKit. I was very relieved when I found this thread because I felt vindicated. All of the trouble shooting and problem solving and replacements for items that I thought were defective... all time wasted. HomeKit is terribly buggy. Hopefully, you are reading this thread before you make a substantial temporal or financial commitment to HomeKit. Forewarned is indeed forearmed...

It’s been a whopping week and already problems.

When I’m on WiFi at home all my devices work just fine. When I’m not on WiFi at home I can control my Ecobee 3 and my Philips Hue system, but NOT my Lutron wall switches. The Lutron app can still remotely control my switches though.

Last night I did a restart of the Apple TV that acts as the home hub hoping that would fix it, but no luck. I also have a daily 2:00 AM restart of the Apple TV programmed into my Harmony system that made me not believe it would be the fix. I also restarted the Lutron hub to no avail. At least the thermostat works (for now) which was my primary concern. As it warms up in LA I’m going to need the air conditioning to turn on when it’s supposed to.

IoT is dead to me after this failed experiment. Aside from about $500 on equipment my only real investment is my personal time setting up over and over and over...and I still have the individual apps to control things. I just wish Apple gave 1/2 a flying fuck about their own product that has repeatedly failed for so many years for so many users.