The most important thing in Apple's Home app

🎞️ RELATED VIDEO

Guitar music mentioned:
The Blue Album by Pablo Sáinz-Villegas

➕ SUBSCRIBE:

📨 NEWSLETTER
My monthly newsletter on Apple and smart home tech

🧵 THREADS:

📸 INSTAGRAM:

🐘 MASTODON:

CHAPTERS:
00:00 Intro
00:53 How to make an Apple Home Scene
03:23 Why naming a scene matters
04:14 Scenes you should set up
05:06 Why scenes help automation
05:55 Adding music to scenes
06:42 How I add music to scenes

#applehome #smarthome #homeautomation

💼 DETAILS:
- Some links in this description are affiliate links and might support the channel at no additional cost to you
- This video and all of Eric Welander's channel is a production of E. Welander, LLC

[evlnte]

My problem with scenes is that they sometimes fail for no apparent reason. I would imagine it has to do with a specific device that is slow to wake from sleep, but I would like Homekit to have a user-set threshold for scene timeout. I also don't like that two separate scenes have to be created for the On state vs the Off state. I also wish Shortcuts or Scenes would also allow settings modifications for notifications so that either could change my notifications settings based not the Status of the home vs my geolocation or time. I want certain notifications when I set the home to Bedtime vs Home or Away.

[KevinBaggott]

I like the office bright, dim, off idea for each room. I would definitely be interested in the app you mentioned to help with creating HomeKit room setup. Great video - thanks! Kevin

[dronewanderings]

Thanks for the video! I have a question. I have a motion sensor that turns on my bedroom lights when motion is detected. But I don’t want it to do this when, and only when, a specific “sleep” scene is active. How can I do that? Similarly, if a scene controls a light, but an independent device also controls that light (say a motion sensor), which one has priority over the other one? If the scene makes the light off but there is also an automation that turns the light on if motion is detected, which one overrides which? The scene or the automation? Thanks !

[Yoskio]

Scenes could be useful if allowed to run shortcuts

[debbiebridygham]

I have a fairly complex lighting setup in my residence, one of my frustrations with smart home lighting is that there’s no simple way to gradually raise the lighting or gradually lower the lighting, for instance I would prefer to have an automation gradually raise the lighting from 10 to 100 over three hours. The only apparent way to do this to create a lot of fixed scenes and have them trigger at fixed times every few minutes. That’s a ton of work to achieve that simple effect, and if you need to change it based on season or schedule then every one of those automations ends up having to be manually adjusted, which is an annoying amount of effort.

[dylanmulligan]

What happens if you create a scene on the iPhone or hue app and use an Alexa to turn off the lights during the scheduled scene. Will the lights be conflicted?

[Dactylonian]

Thank you so much, Eric! I have been building my smart home over the past couple of years with Eve, Nanoleaf, Govee, and Logitech, and the Scenes feature is not totally clear to me. This video helped a lot. Your videos have truly been immensely helpful in my smart home adventure.

What is that bulb at about the 4:45 mark of your video - is it the Nanoleaf BR30?

[Patrick]

When we are adjusting audio for a HomePod scene I wish the volume slider gave the percentage.

[Patrick]

What if you had an Apple Home app playlist where there was three videos discussing scenes, automations and shortcuts? I finished this video about scenes and now are looking through your videos tab for a video about the last two topics.

[brainguynyc]

Yes, interested in that “small little free app”

[christianhotter]

I was thinking I was using scenes, but it looks like I mostly have automations. My only one that's a scene is my office lights. Let me see what else I can set up.

One thing I've not been able to figure out is a good way to have my HomePods chime when a door is opened. I have the new Aqara door sensor on my back doors and the thread response is fast when it chimes on my phone and iPad, but so far I don't see how to make that work on the HomePod. As far as I can tell, the HomePod just chimes for the doorbell.

[northerner-at-heart]

Do you know how to make a scene run a shortcut? Ultimately, I want to be able to run non home compatible devices like Kasa switches with just one button.

[pablomedok]

If only scenes could enable/disable automations it would be a totally different game. I could create scenes like ‘Vacation’ that would not only switch off some lights, but also disable automations that are useless, when we’re away.

Some conditions would also be great. So if it’s morning a scene called ‘Waiting for guests’ would only switch on a water heater, but would not switch on some guest house lights (it’s bright already), but would switch on an automation that would do it in the evening automatically.

[koiphish]

Whoa... what app is that ambient sounds from???

[JayeRock]

I can’t get my animations in HomeKit to work, I can’t connect my Apple TV or my iPad as a hub. I am on the latest iOS please help me

[Patrick]

If we can control lights does Apple make it possible to fade in or fade out those lights?

[marka]

Can you use scenes to turn on the Apple TV? I would like to create a scene that turns on my Apple TV, turns off the main light, and turns on my strip lights but I can't get the Apple TV to turn on.

[garanceadrosehn]

I've been meaning to try some Scenes, but my smarthome isn't all that complicated yet so never felt like I *had* to. But this video popped up at a good time while I had plenty of spare time, so I tried creating a few. So far they seem to work very nicely. Thanks for going through all the steps!

[MelissaAtwell]

Another great video! You really post the best Apple Home content, and I have learned so many tricks & tips from you. Thank you!

[gavin]

I have a lot of scenes but had no idea you could change the logo and color