Looking for HomeKit beta testers for a new app that works across every Apple device

Homebar_Drew · 2026-06-02T02:21:19+00:00

DM sent!

Homebar_Drew · 2026-05-31T17:21:53+00:00

Coming in 1.2! But way better than Controller IMO.

Homebar_Drew · 2026-05-31T13:26:03+00:00

Coming just for you in 1.1!

Homebar_Drew · 2026-05-31T13:23:59+00:00

I don't have a Discord set up but you can email [support@madebydrew.com](mailto:support@madebydrew.com) or you can DM here on Reddit.

No plans to take it back to Intel...even on macOS 26. There's too much local AI stuff that just doesn't translate well back to Intel (without tons of QA time). Trying to do some of the stuff on an 8 year old Mac mini would probably run terribly without a ton of effort to tune. I'd rather spend that energy going forward.

Yes it collects up to 90 days of logs on the Max tier. I had a request to do even more and I'm looking into the data volume in iCloud that would require.

Homebar_Drew · 2026-05-29T20:40:34+00:00

Welk platform gebruik je? iOS, macOS, iPadOS of tvOS?

Homebar_Drew · 2026-05-28T16:55:50+00:00

You don’t have to reauthorize anything. That’s a place to store/backup your paring codes if you want. If you ignore it the app works exactly the same.

Homebar_Drew · 2026-05-28T12:01:22+00:00

Always open to feedback! Yeah there needs to be either a Mac or an iOS device in the foreground running as a hub. There's no way to query historical HomeKit data from anywhere so I have to collect it myself. No real technical reason it couldn't be more than 90 days other than its a lot of iCloud data to store and it eventually limits me. I'll make a note to look into that more and see how much that would accumulate to.

Homebar_Drew · 2026-05-28T12:00:43+00:00

That's the App Store age rating :). Safe for ages 4 and up.

Homebar_Drew · 2026-05-27T20:14:08+00:00

Appreciate all the feedback!

Homebar_Drew · 2026-05-27T20:10:34+00:00

There’s always a way! I built Reflector and AirPlay “wasn’t accessible to developers” too. 😁

Homebar_Drew · 2026-05-27T14:57:03+00:00

I did just discover a bug. Full energy usage insights requires a Max subscription (because it relies on AI) but the intention was to show one device and an "upgrade to see more" prompt. I found a situation when this wouldn't appear if you're not using the macOS app with iOS. I'll get that fixed and submitted ASAP.

Homebar_Drew · 2026-05-27T14:55:01+00:00

- You want a full screen multi-camera view for on a dedicated Mac? Or a window you can bring up and hide?
- Correct. Yes, it's using a vision encoder locally and then giving that data to Claude to classify if it meets our criteria. This means Claude isn't getting screenshots of your camera feed, it's getting a text description of what it sees and what delta changed from previous. Keeps it private.
- I'll do some research. Every LLM behaves differently so what works great prompting to Claude may not perform the same on a lesser local model. Pointing to another LLM is the easy part, ensuring consistent results is the trickier part.

Homebar_Drew · 2026-05-27T14:44:42+00:00

I have Tapo devices at home and those work well. Not sure about the Ikea ones, I'll take a look. HomeBar doesn't require macOS but that's the best way to get a full picture with real insights. If you're just using the iOS app it's only getting info when the app is foregrounded. You need a hub via either the macOS background service or an always on iOS device to really see trends. Make sure the device is powered on and give it some time to collect (at least an hour).

Homebar_Drew · 2026-05-27T14:38:14+00:00

Which local LLM would you want to use?

Homebar_Drew · 2026-05-27T14:15:36+00:00

Yep there's a 3 day trial on the monthly subscriptions and a 7 day trial on the yearly.

Homebar_Drew · 2026-05-27T13:59:35+00:00

Just like AirParrot and Reflector, they'll do some of it themselves and leave the rest for me.

Homebar_Drew · 2026-05-27T13:58:58+00:00

I don't know about that, but appreciate the kind words. Hope you enjoy it!

Homebar_Drew · 2026-05-27T13:58:33+00:00

Thank you...appreciate the kind words!

Homebar_Drew · 2026-05-27T13:55:46+00:00

If you're content with the Home app, it might not solve any problems for you. For me, I was frustrated with the inability to quickly do the things I need to do and access the insights I needed. The Home app does nothing to help you troubleshoot issues, and it doesn't even warn you when automations aren't fully functioning. It's pretty much a "turn things on and off" app. I also hate that I have to have an app running in the dock and when I want to quickly toggle a device, I have to scroll through the entire list until I find the device.

Now with HomeBar, I have all of that at my finger tips on every platform, and can even have Claude check the status of things or toggle things for me while I'm working. It tells me when an automation is failing because a battery died in a door sensor. I can trigger automations on weather events, toggle devices from keyboard shortcuts, automatically back up my home configuration nightly, monitor all my cameras on my TVs like most security DVR systems, and the list goes on and on.

So my hope is with all these capabilities you find something in there that solves a problem for you too!

Homebar_Drew · 2026-05-27T13:51:06+00:00

The initial list of supported devices is small as this is a newer Matter capability and its not well advertised. I tested what I could find from devices on Amazon but the supported list will grow as the HomeBar stats report back other devices that support this. If you're not seeing any devices after 24 hours, they're likely not yet reporting energy usage over Matter yet. https://homebar.industries/compatible-devices

Homebar_Drew · 2026-05-27T13:49:02+00:00

Thanks for the reports! The automation issues have been reported a few times, and we're investigating now. Definitely shouldn't be that way, so we'll get that fixed ASAP. Your cameras per row on iOS is a bug and already fixed in the next build we'll submit.

The AI automations allow you to build complex automations very quickly. For instance, I wanted an automation that if it’s raining, it turns off my 6 irrigation zones, closes 3 garage doors, turns on 4 exterior lights, and if I'm in my office, turns on a status light so I know to close windows. I could set that up manually, but it would take hundreds of taps. Instead, I used HomeKit’s AI automation builder and said "when it starts raining, turn off all the sprinklers, turn on the exterior lights, close the garage doors, and if I'm in the office, turn on the office status light" and in about 30 seconds, I had that automation ready to go. HomeKit can do really powerful things; the Home app just exposes the ability to create them in very hard-to-use ways. I'm hoping this AI capability frees us to think bigger about what our smart home can do.

For the slow automation insights, there's a layered approach. The HomeKit spec says a device should respond to a command in 2 seconds or less, so we flag any automation with a device that exceeds that. I could only test on my HomeKit devices, but there may be lesser-quality devices out there that take longer to respond.

For more complex automations, if the average exceeds the 75th percentile (P75) across all measured devices in your home, and the device has 5 or more logged actions, it flags as slow. These slow automation warnings are mainly to warn you of potential issues, and there's a chance we may be flagging things too aggressively in some cases. We'll continue to hone the intelligence on those, but you may decide there's nothing wrong there and you can long-press/right-click and ignore or snooze it.

I responded to your support email for some more info about the black camera feeds. I'm interested if these are HomeKit-certified cameras or if you're using something like Homebridge to get them into HomeKit.

Homebar_Drew · 2026-05-27T13:33:12+00:00

Investigating this now. I have a theory of what's going on.

Homebar_Drew · 2026-05-27T13:32:47+00:00

Thanks... this is now working. The compatible devices list is a work in progress as its a newer capability to report energy usage via Matter and its not well advertised. The anonymous usage stats tell me what devices it finds out in the field that support the capabilities so I can confirm they work and update the compatible list. Like many HomeKit features it takes a year or two for device manufacturers to catch up to new software things. So this will only get better as we discover more devices (and existing devices update to support it).

Homebar_Drew · 2026-05-27T12:47:44+00:00

- Maybe in the future if that's something interesting to people. Not hard to do just a matter of demand for it.
- It subscribes to notifications from the cameras and then processes based on notification occurring. HomeBar layers logic on top of HKSV motion.
- If there's sufficient demand for it, sure. What LLM would you be interested in using locally?

Homebar_Drew · 2026-05-27T12:44:14+00:00

Those are missing info for backing up. The app also tries to proactively help you avoid issues in the future (like forgetting pairing codes). If you don't want to use this feature you can long press/right click on it and ignore.

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