To enhance Apple users’ smart home management experience, the company introduced a redesigned Home app with iOS 16 which offers a refreshed look, simplicity, and most importantly, a range of new devices with Matter support.
Apple’s Product Marketing executive, Cecilia Dantas discussed the new Home app in an interview with Parade to highlight easily homeowners can upgrade and maintain their smart homes.
Redesigned Home app makes the “idea of a smart home more attainable and much less confusing”
On iOS 16, the new Home app features redesigned Home tab with a simplified user interface (UI) divided into different categories for users to easily and quickly view important information at a glance like climate, lights, security, footage from cameras, scenes to prepare the house for when you arrive or wake up, Entry to check which doors are locked, blubs are on or off and more.
Dantas explained that the new Home app is designed to make it easy for new and existing users to manage their smart homes more efficiently and conveniently. She added the categorization of any type of smart home device works, “be it thermostats or fans under “Climate” or things like locks or garage doors under “Security.”
Using Home, you can control Belkin Wemo smart plugs, a Nanoleaf light panel, or even a HomePod Mini from any of your Apple devices.
And Dantas is quick to point out that the Home redesign caters to both first-time users and long-standing ones, explaining: “We took the opportunity to rethink and redesign the Home app. It has this fresh new look and it scales beautifully, even for those who are just starting out their smart home with a few accessories or for those who have an advanced setup.”
Moving on to support for Matter protocol, Dantas highlighted that now Apple users have a wider range of smart home accessories at their disposal. They no longer have to worry about which accessory would work with which ecosystem.
Dantas describes Matter in its simplest form as “language that helps control your smart home.” And that means from smart home accessory to accessory, but also to your HomePod (Apple’s smart speaker), your phone and other devices.
“It’s this language that bridges the gap across ecosystems as well,” explains Dantas. “So this means that you could have this light bulb that speaks to your Apple Home ecosystem, but it also speaks to other ecosystems out there. And that really broadens the options that customers can choose from.”
As users’ privacy is at the center of Apple’s innovation, the executive reassured that even with the Matter ecosystem Apple “continues” to offer the same level of privacy to its users with all their data protected by end-to-end encryption; “So there’s no way for Apple to read this data. And Apple doesn’t build a profile around what accessories you use, or how you use them.”
The Home app is Apple’s native smart home management tool integrated across Apple devices for users to view and manage their smart home accessories from an iPhone, iPad, Mac or Apple Watch at any time.
