Companion app for iOS 2023.12: Let’s go!

If in case you have HomePods or Apple TVs and also you even have a Thread border router in Residence Assistant, you might wish to reap the benefits of Apple’s community to manage units in your house. Now you can import your Apple Thread credentials into Residence Assistant after which make Apple the popular Thread community.

We up to date the Apple Watch App Icon with the brand new Residence Assistant brand.

Beforehand, you would need to disable scenes one after the other to cover them in your Apple Watch. In the event you, like me, have a Philips Hue bridge, you’d in all probability see a number of auto-generated scenes (like ‘Lavatory focus’ and ‘Lavatory Arctic aurora’ beneath 😀 ) that aren’t all the time related to see in your watch. We added a button to rapidly toggle between all scenes now within the iOS companion app.

We now have added a What’s new? hyperlink in companion App settings so you’ll be able to rapidly entry the most recent App launch notes.

Within the new 12 months, we are going to do some housecleaning to make it possible for the iOS Companion App is ready for the long run. To take action, we are going to cease supporting iOS 12, 13, and 14 in launch 2024.01 of the Companion App. We all know our customers are repurposing older telephones and tablets into dashboards and controls for his or her properties, which aligns with our deal with sustainability. It’s why we attempt to maintain our apps operating on older units for so long as we will.

At the moment, lower than 1% of our customers (in keeping with the App Retailer analytics supplied by customers who gave permission to share their information with Apple) are nonetheless on these three iOS variations. Supporting them makes the codebase laborious to take care of and blocks us from utilizing newer iOS options. This transformation will make it simpler for brand spanking new contributors to really feel snug contributing to the iOS codebase, which can be one in every of my targets. With a extra trendy codebase, we can provide extra consideration to PRs and assist different contributors have every thing they should really feel snug submitting PRs.

This doesn’t imply your iOS 12, 13, or 14 units have develop into unusable. You possibly can nonetheless entry your Residence Assistant utilizing the browser when you’ve got a tool that may’t replace previous iOS 12, such because the 2014 iPhone 6 or iPad Mini 3. All different units at present able to operating iOS 13 or 14 might be up to date to iOS 15 or larger and use the brand new variations of the iOS Companion App.

Questioning what we now have on the roadmap for our Apple apps? We’re nonetheless engaged on it, however you’ll be able to anticipate additional developments to make Residence Assistant on the Apple ecosystem extra built-in, bringing shared options between iPhone, Apple Watch, iPad, and Mac – and I’m trying ahead to getting my arms on Apple Imaginative and prescient Professional and seeing the chances it brings to the Open Residence. We’re additionally planning on enhancements to Siri shortcuts widgets and as many new sensors as attainable. One other function that’s on our radar is Help; in 2023, we accomplished the 12 months of the Voice. Android customers benefitted from some further capabilities in comparison with iOS customers, and we wish to ensure we catch up and convey these options to iPhones as properly!