Automating with Signals for HomeKit - Part 1

Apple’s iPhone and Home environments have a wide variety of automation possibilities, and I get a lot of questions about how to automate with Signals for HomeKit - and I don’t blame anyone for this. The automation landscape is complicated, and sometimes what you want to automate simply isn’t possible with Apple’s built-in tools, or it’s only possible in certain circumstances.

In this series, I’m going to try to add some clarity around how you can Automate with Signals, what you can’t do on certain platforms, and what you can do with a little ingenuity. This article is going to focus on Apple’s most popular platform - the iPhone - and what you can do here.

iPhone’s Automation Limitations

iPhone has two primary ways to automate - Home Automations and Personal Automations with the Shortcuts App. All automations generally have a trigger and an action, or set of actions, and getting a sense of where the limits are with these will help you think about them more intuitively.

Home Automations that you create in the Home app can trigger based on your family members’ leaving or arriving home, at a specific time, or when a HomeKit devices senses something, or is turned on or off. In general, the Home app gives you some basic options, but even more options are opened up if you use a third party app like Controller for HomeKit — sadly, however, this is where we run into our first limitation, at least as far as 3rd Party apps come into play, as Home Automations can’t run any 3rd Party Shortcut actions, even with the Convert to Shortcut option. Why? I can only guess that Apple wants to avoid a situation where “strange things happen” without the user directly taking some action to trigger them — and I can understand this for many users who may be experimenting, but it’s a shame that Apple doesn’t make this easier for more advanced users (but if you do have a Mac, Signals for HomeKit can help out here 😉).

You might be thinking “Why can’t an app like Signals just trigger the action itself? It can see my HomeKit devices, right?” This is where limitation number two comes in — 3rd Party HomeKit apps can only see your HomeKit devices when the app is running, and in the foreground. This means that while you are actively using the app, and it’s open on your iPhone, an app like Signals can see when a door opens, or when motion is detected, but as soon as you close swipe up to close the app or lock your phone, Signals looses the ability to see any of your devices. And to some degree this makes sense - our phones go in our pocket, so Apple should be limiting what apps can do when they’re not being used, or else we’d quickly find our pockets heating up, or would be greeted with a dead battery before the day is out. Again, though, it’s a shame that Apple doesn’t provide some controlled way to provide this access with user permission (and believe me, I’ve been trying to convince them of this for years!)

So this leaves us with Personal Automations with the Shortcuts App. Let’s see what we can do here.

Shortcuts App to the Rescue

Over the past several years, Apple has been adding capabilities to Personal Automations to the point where they’re becoming extremely powerful. As of iOS 17, there are nearly 20 different types of Automation Triggers available, including

• Time of day and some time before or after Sunrise and Sunset

• When any specific Alarm goes off, is snoozed or is stopped

• Some time before your bedtime, or after you wake up

• When you arrive at or leave from any given location

• Some time before your morning or evening commute

• When you connect to CarPlay

• When a emails or messages arrive

• When you use ‘Tap to Pay’ with any of your cards or passes

• When you join or leave WiFi networks

• When you connect to or disconnect from any specific Bluetooth device

• When you tap a specific NFC tag

• When you start or finish an Apple Watch workout

• When a specified App is opened or closed

• When going into or out of Airplane Mode

• When going into Low Power mode, or when your battery drops below or rises above a certain point

• When your iPhone connects to or disconnects from power

• When you go into or out of any of your Focus Modes

• When Sounds Recognition detects a specific sound

This is a huge, and growing list of Automation opportunities, and this is the key to automating with Signals on the iPhone!

We’ve written about using Signals to flash your HomeKit lights with your morning alarm in the past - what other ideas can you think of? Using your HomeKit lights to communicate at home with automations can be powerful and fun. Have an accent light in your kitchen? Flash it green and leave it that way when you leave work, to let your family know you’re on your way. Want to make sure you don’t miss an important email from your boss? Flash your desk lamp whenever you receive an email from her. Want to let your family know you need to focus on work for a while? Tap on an NFC tag to flash an accent light outside of your office red and leave it that way. Have someone sick in your home, and want to make sure you know if they need help? Use Sound Recognition to flash your bedroom lights whenever your phone hears them cough.

These are just some of the opportunities you can take advantage of with just your iPhone or iPad - have fun with it, and be respectful of your family members!

But what about my Apple Home devices!?

In the next part of this series, we’ll talk about what you can do with your Apple Home sensors with Signals for HomeKit on your Mac - it opens up even more possibilities!