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You already have the Apple Home app on your iPhone and iPad. This is also on Apple TV. So, on the one hand, it seems natural that it happens on Mac, but also a little useless. This is the application that allows you to control smart devices such as motion detectors and if you sit on your Mac, you do not really move much.
Still, even if it's true and even if you can take your phone to turn on your lights, Home on macOS Mojave is a good thing. It's a central place to control all your smart devices – and it's the central place where you spend a lot of time working anyway.
If you have never been worried about the iOS Home app or have not managed to get smart devices yet, this will allow you to access them.
What you need first
The Home app controls all devices around you, at home, in your office, possibly on your yacht, which use Apple's HomeKit. So you need smart devices compatible with HomeKit.
Far from all these devices, they work with HomeKit and, in reality, all have their own systems or even applications. Rather than using a Nest app for your thermometer or a Hue app for your lights, Home lets you combine everything it can in one place.
None of these apps for smart devices is wonderful, not even Apple's, but having only one place to go for all is good. Which makes it a bit odd that Home for Mac is missing a key feature.
Specifically, you can not add a new accessory like a light bulb to your home Wi-Fi network by using Home on the Mac. You have to do it through the own application of the accessory – or via Home on iOS.
Home for the Mac is a direct port of the iOS app, but it lacks some key elements.
That said, although you need to know these things or scratch your head, you can expect these differences to go away slowly. During the beta period of Mojave, we have already seen some important improvements, for example.
The main improvement since this video is the way Apple has added an iOS Home feature to easily have the best aspect: have the opportunity to know when you are at home.
Maybe it's just because it's a new toy, but we've not only played with it, we've been tempted to buy new Phillips Hue bulbs. So Home is a free application but it makes us spend money.
We are pleased with this, however, because we have now used Home on Mojave to automate our office once everything has been configured.
Install
The first time you start Home on your Mac, it will ask you for permission to connect to iCloud. When you have given this, it will check which HomeKit devices you have. He quickly creates a list and shows you what he calls your favorite accessories on one screen.
When you do this for the first time, Favorites is synonymous with Everything. You must remove items from the favorites list rather than adding them. Unless you have a lot of bulbs, say, around your house, we would not mind.
Click one of the rounded rectangular icons at the bottom of the screen to enable or disable a device. If the icon is gray, the device is turned off and if it is white, it is turned on.
A single click is enough to enable or disable. However, you can do more. Right click to bring up a menu and you will see Show controls and Settings.
The settings are where you can rename a device: if we have moved our WG Office bulb into the kitchen, it would be better to rename it or things will get confusing when we click on boring people in the kitchen. other room.
Likewise, it is there that you can say no, a particular device is not a favorite.
Once you click on it, the device disappears from your list. To retrieve it, you must click on the Home drop-down menu at the top left of the screen and look for it.
Settings and controls
You will not go into Settings very often, but you could spend more time in Show controls. Because it's there that you can say no, you do not want the living room light to be full, you want it to be sifted. Depending on the connected device, you can slide to reduce or increase the light level, increase or decrease the temperature, and so on.
If you use bulbs, depending on the type you have, you can get other options. With our colors white and color, choose Show controls takes us to the brightness but there is a button marked Color also. Click on it to adjust the color or temperature of your bulb.
Sometimes there is simply no control, by the way. Apple TV appears in favorite accessories, just like items such as dimmers or motion control sensors, and when you choose Show controls on these, you just get their name.
Whatever controls are available, if they exist and when you have finished defining them as you wish, you must return to the main page. With the iOS app, you just have to press the screen located away from the controls and you return to the main screen.
With Home on the Mac, you have to find and click on a Back button, which is oddly difficult to detect. This is in the window bar, next to the traffic lights icons.
here
So, right from your Mac in your office or the MacBook on your table in the kitchen, you can turn on or off the light. You may realize that you have left the garage light on and off without returning to your car. If, on the contrary, you do not know if you left it or not, Home will tell you.
Tell us all this is lazy and we could not argue. We are just waiting for you to try and join us on the lazy side.
Only, there is a step forward that Home on the Mac makes particularly easy and that will make you a smart converter. It's automation.
Automate your devices
We have not lit the light of the kitchen, the landing or the bathroom in our house for about two years. Correction: we turned them on two years ago and left them on – then we checked them through the Home app.
Your devices must be plugged in and turned on to be connected to your Wi-Fi network and be remotely controllable. When you see Home saying "No Answer", it usually means that someone has turned off the light switch in that room.
This prevents Home from controlling the device – and notice that we say Home. You are not you who control, it can be the Home application running according to your instructions.
The reason we have not touched these switches for years, is that we have motion sensors and that they light up when we enter the room.
You can immediately see that it means never again having to walk with something heavy and stumble for the light. What you do not appreciate until you have it, is that for ever, it just seems like the room is lit up around you.
Again, you need a motion sensor and a light bulb, but if you have any, they will appear in Home on the Mac.
So does a section called Automating. Click on it in the title bar of the window and you get a list of everything your accessories have been configured to do. The first time you look at this, it's probably an empty list.
However, you can click on the + icon at the top right and choose Add automation. This gives you a series of options for when you want something to happen.
Suppose you want the light in your living room to come on when you get to the driveway. The result is that the lights go on, but you must first think about what causes them, what triggers them.
Home gives you options for when a sensor detects something – a movement or perhaps smoke – related to the time of day or people arriving and departing.
It's a basic list but it's powerful. This hour of the first day, for example, is not limited to telling you that you want the thermostat to turn on something specific, for example 19h21 every night. This allows you to say that you want something to happen only on Tuesday and then at sunset.
No matter when the sunset takes place on Tuesday when you live, Home will know and do something about it.
The second step is to think about the devices you need to do what you want. With the car pulling for example, it would be a motion detector. With the thermostat, it's the thermostat.
Anyway, you first choose the device from the Home list. In the Automation section, you get the list of devices displayed in the same way as on the main page: large rounded rectangles. It would be better to have a real list because you can only see one couple at a time, but we do not have that option.
So, scroll until you reach the device and click on it. To choose Next in the top right and now you can say what you want to do. This is again like the main page but depending on the shape and shape: you can double-click or right-click to display the commands.
Click on Completed when you are finished and this automation will be added to your list.
A nice touch
The improvement since the beta is that alongside this activity of triggering actions at a given moment or when a motion is detected, Apple has added an additional feature on iOS.
You can configure as many automations as you want, but only work them when you are at home. It's really when your iPhone is on the same Wi-Fi network as your Mac and your devices, but that means you can go on vacation and know that the lights will not turn on at sunset all Tuesdays.
All this has been possible with Home and HomeKit devices via iOS and your Apple TV for a while. All that has happened now, is that a vast majority of the features have arrived on the Mac, but that is enough.
We would like to be able to add a new accessory directly from Home, but this is mainly because we are used to it. Home on iOS is less tricky than the installation applications of some accessories.
That said, you do not often add a new accessory. Or at least you do not have the intention of. Once you've used Home on your Mac, once you get lights, thermostats, and motion detectors, you'll continue to buy more.
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