HomeKit update of 9/20/23 is a disaster!

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11 points

HomeKit update of 9/20/23 is a disaster!

Things started to act weird last night and I got a notice on my iPad that HomeKit was being upgraded. This has turned out to be an utter disaster rather than an improvement!

The devices are visible in HomeKit and do occasionally respond, but there is a huge lag and the devices constantly drop into Updating status!

l’ve rebooted my ISP’s (xfinity) router.
My Apple TVs all have the latest OS and I have 4 home hubs in play if Include the HomePods. One of the Apple TVs is currently the primary.
My iPhone and iPad are on iOS 17.
The smart devices are made by fully vetted vendors that have spent a considerable amount of time in Apple’s own store!

I was going to sign up with iCloud+, but I don’t trust the long term reliability of HomeKit anymore!

Please tell me there’s hope and that this behavior is a known issue that Apple and HomeKit vendors are working on.

At the very least this is a disastrous rollout of whatever they were trying to achieve.

Posted on Sep 21, 2023 7:52 AM

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Answer 1

CanIGetAnID Author

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11 points

Sep 21, 2023 2:58 PM in response to CanIGetAnID

l’m hoping that this might be a temporary period of weirdness with Apple’s HomeKit platform iand/or the ios 17 rollout.

The weirdness with devices going offline did preempt me being prompted to update the HomeKit platform on my iPad, if only by a few minutes. Devices are occasionally dropping of the radar from HomeKit’s perspective, but it’s not as pervasive as this morning.

It seems little out of character for Apple to allow something like this to persist for several hours (12+ by my experience), if my assumption that this appeared to be a temporary cloud based is anything to go by.

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Answer 2

CanIGetAnID Author

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11 points

Sep 22, 2023 11:43 AM in response to CanIGetAnID

Hmmm!

The Apple OS updates seemed to have created a structural issue. If you have multiple Apple devices that can become your primary home hub the broader HomeKit infrastructure does not seem to trust who to talk to. So far it seems to like my 2nd gen Apple TV but I’ll continue to monitor.

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Answer 3

CanIGetAnID Author

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11 points

Sep 22, 2023 11:09 AM in response to CanIGetAnID

This is interesting…

I tried to force promote each of my home hub devices to primary by disconnecting all of them from power and turning them on individually. This test seemed to suggest that the home pod minis suck as a home hub if promoted. When I turned my 2nd gen Apple TV (the other is 3rd gen) on I was bombarded with cached device alerts. Bear in mind that all the potential home hubs have the latest os / firmware as of a couple of days ago.

In general stability is still unreliable and seems to coincide with updating the os of my iPad Pro and iPhone at the moment. I have an older iPad that is stuck on iOS 15 that I’ll try to use as a comparison.

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Answer 4

CanIGetAnID Author

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11 points

Oct 15, 2023 1:48 PM in response to CanIGetAnID

This appears to have simply resolved itself over time for one reason or another. I rough start to HomeKit under iOS 17, but thankful for a return to some sense of normalcy for now.

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HomeKit update of 9/20/23 is a disaster!

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