HomeKit invitation failure / spinning wheel on specific Apple ID's

I have not been able to find a solution. Here are all of the things I tried incase it is helpful to anyone.

• All tests with iOS 12.1 and macOS Mojave 10.14
• Signed out of iCloud and back in
• Deleted Home app and toggled its iCloud on/off setting
• Created entirely new iCloud accounts
• Sent invitations in both directions

The closest I got to success was the following steps:

1. Created new non-Gmail-email iCloud account.*
2. From that new account, invited existing iCloud account (using existing account's Gmail primary email address).
3. Success! Invite was accepted.
4. When I continued, from new account, inviting second existing iCloud account using its Gmail primary address, the person accepted in step 2 disappeared and instead the person invited in this step showed up. This result was not useful to me.

* I know the mention of Gmail is strange. I found that when I created a new Apple ID with a Gmail address these steps didn't work. It only worked using an email address with a different domain (in my case my work email address).

Same issue here right now. I added a new Lutron hub to HomeKit, it was not showing up on my wife’s home app. My changes to rooms/device names never seem to reflect in her account, but it’s all been additional bulbs to my existing hue hub and those show up at least, so I could just adjust the room/name on her phone to match mine... But, since the Lutron hub and devices were not showing up at all I decided to delete her from the home, and start over in hopes that the new hub and future devices would work. But now I’m stuck in the same situation where the invite just spins on her phone. So very frustrating... stop gap I’ve installed hue app on her phone, so at the very least she can control her bedside lamp.

I have the same issue and have for awhile now. Can’t Invite my wife but does work for my sons device. Only thing I can think of is she used to use my Apple ID but switched to her own without setting up her iPad/iPhone from scratch.

That is an interesting point. We did the same on my wife’s phone... However it was working with HomeKit on her account shortly after separating accounts. I do recall it took a few attempts to get it working that time.

I’m having the same issue.

I think it say something to do with AppleID alias’.

Could everyone having issues check this?

What I found was that if I send an invite if comes from my last alias not my primary AppleID. It then goes into a loop.

For the people who’s invites work.. do they have any alias’? Or just a single AppleID?

Easiest way is to log into iCloud.com -> email -> settings (bottom left cog).

From that panel you can view your aliases.

I’ve logged this with Apple support. It’s made it’s way up to an engineer so hopefully will get resolved. It has very clear repro steps which helps.

Regards,

Simon

I am sure, that is the problem. my wife and me have booth an alias. i have an alias which is very old (@me.com).

i tried to invite the alias, but that didn‘t work. I have an issue at apple service and sent the logfiles to apple. I had to log the invitation-process and sent this to the prof.

Hello,

After months worth of struggling with this exact same issue, having provided a lot of diagnostic data to Apple on different occasions from both the device/ID sending the invitation, and from the device/ID getting the stuck invitation (mine), here is what finally worked for me. I have no doubt Apple will figure out a solution eventually, sadly iOS11.3 didn't do it for me though. Do keep in mind, this may not work for you. I tried a lot of other things, including using an old iOS 9.x device in an attempt to delete the stuck invite, renaming the Home sending the invite, but nothing else worked. Finally, you may not need all of these steps for the fix to work, but I am not going to re-create the issue to prove that.

Note: devices listed below are those associated with the AppleID that was stuck receiving the Home invitation.

The steps 1-14 aren‘t necessary. You can delete your homes on both ios-devices and than turn off icloud-homekit. After restart of the idevices, you can open the home app and turn icloud on. After that, the red 1 is gone.

I wait for the answer from apple usa. Because i sent the information to apple germany, but now the case is in america.

That’s a very good point, but assuming I understood you correctly, removing the home from the App on both devices, and therefore losing dozens of preconfigured home devices and automations, was sadly not an option for me, nor was creating a new Apple ID for the receiving device.

HI,

So when you finally got the invite to work did you check who that was sent from? Was it still from an alias or having turned off your alias from iMessage and Facebook did it come from your main AppleID?

I still think that's the issue for me, and something I can't get around.

No matter what I do the invite gets sent from the last alias in the list, not my primary. I can't remove all of my alias's so I'm stuck.

Another thing I've noticed is that once an invite is sent and accepted (which then changes the details on my side to whoever I sent to) I can no longer remotely use HomeKit with any device.

Hopefully Apple are sorting this. I've also sent info and clear repro steps.

Hi SimonPickard,

The invite came from the other person‘s main address on iCloud. In my case, I think the problem was on the receiving end though. The sending side would have no issues sending homekit invites to any other AppleIDs, it was just mine on the receiving end getting stuck.

Have you looked, for the sender, at appleid.apple.com to ensure it matches what you would expect? You can do an Edit under Account to change the AppleID account to any of the aliases you might have defined there. If that looks good, considering Homekit seems to use iMessage under the covers to send/receive the invites, then on the sending device of the invite I would also go to Settings, then Messages, then Send & Receive, and at the bottom you could try changing the ”Start new Conversations from” to your desired address. I doubt this is related, but maybe worth a try.

Regarding your last statement, have you enabled Remote Access to each of the invited IDs to allow them to do so? Or are you saying it prevents remote access even for the owner of the house?

I have this issue, but with a small difference. I can invite my wife, but she can only accept on one device. It works when she accepts on her iPhone, but then the iPad can't accept. If I remove her and send again, and she accepts on the iPad, that works, but then the iPhone cannot accept.