Why are Signals’ Automations only available on the Mac?

Third Party HomeKit apps have to operate within certain operating restrictions - most of these limitations are designed to protect the battery life of the devices, and the privacy of the users, but it does limit their usefulness.

Mac Apps have more freedom than iOS, and have different ways to work within these limitations. Signals has the ability to respond to changes in your devices, even when you’re not directly using the app - it accomplishes this by adjusting certain energy settings, keeping it ‘awake’ as long as it’s running, even if another user is logged in to the Mac.

Activity Monitor says Signals is preventing sleep? Why?

Signals for HomeKit can respond to changes in your HomeKit devices, even if you’re not directly using the app - this is accomplished by adjusting energy settings for the app, keeping it ‘awake’ as long as it’s running. A trade off for this ability, however, is that it needs to prevent your Mac from sleeping.

This will have an impact on the energy usage of your Mac, and is an unfortunate, but necessary trade off. For these reasons, it is recommended that Signals be used on a Mac that remains plugged in and on all the time — it will work on a laptop, but if you put your laptop into Hibernation mode by closing the lid, Signals will hibernate as well.

I’m trying to create an Automation, but Signals can’t see my Shortcuts - why not?

In order for Signals to run your Shortcuts, you need to grant it permission. Normally, you’re prompted to do so shortly after you launch the app for the first time, but there appears to be some cases when the OS does not show the prompt. If this is the case for you (or if you accidentally denied the permission), you can change this by opening System Preferences on your Mac, and opening the ‘Security & Privacy’ panel. From here, select the ‘Privacy’ tab, and find ‘Automation’ in the list of services on the left. Ensure that Signals has the ‘Shortcuts’ option selected.

But… Signals isn’t listed in the Privacy section?

In very rare cases, you may find that Signals is not listed in the Automation Privacy section. This appears to be due to a bug in the Shortcuts App - I’ve contacted Apple about this, but in the meantime, the following one-time action should get it working for you. Open the Terminal app, and paste the following command:

/System/Applications/Shortcuts.app/Contents/Library/Helpers/Shortcuts\ Events.app/Contents/MacOS/Shortcuts\ Events &

This simple command will start the ‘Shortcuts Events’ process. Restarting Signals should now result in the system prompting you to grant access to Shortcuts.

If you’re still experiencing this issue, or have further questions, please don’t hesitate to reach out at HomeMadeAuto@gmail.com.