HomeKit Geofence only works with Home location now
For years I’ve used HomeKit during the winter months to turn the thermostat down “When the Last Person Leaves Home” and put it back to the comfort setting “When the First Person Arrives Home”. Occasionally I would use a custom automation to set the thermostat back to the comfort setting when leaving a location, ie a restaurant, by entering its address in place of “Home”. That way the house had extra time to warm back up.
This winter, the arrive/leave Home automations still work but a custom location doesn’t. To eliminate the thermostat I’ve tried turning a light on when leaving a location without success. To eliminate my phone I set up an automation on my wife’s phone that didn’t work. Today, to eliminate cellular data I turned off Wi-Fi, set up separate automations to turn one light on when I left home and turn another one on when I arrived. They both worked as did the thermostat automations.
It seems something is broken with iOS 15 where custom locations in HomeKit no longer work. What I’ve noticed is different between setting up the location automations is that for the Home location, it permits any or all of the people included in that Home to trigger the automation whereas for a custom location, only the person the phone is associated with can trigger the automation. I don’t recall if this was the case before.
Has anyone else had this issue and found a fix?