Apple gives Apple Home users something they’ve been begging for

Apple gives Apple Home users something they’ve been begging for

With iOS 18, Apple Home users will finally be able to insist the smart home platform use their hardwired Apple TVs as the primary Home hub. | Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge

While Apple barely mentioned its smart home platform during its WWDC 2024 keynote this week, Apple Home users can still rejoice over an update discovered in the first iOS 18 beta: they’re getting the option to choose a “Preferred Home Hub.” This fixes the problem of your smart home “deciding” to run over Wi-Fi through a HomePod when there’s a perfectly good Apple TV using ethernet sitting right there.

Eagle-eyed Redditors on the HomeKit subreddit spotted that, in the iOS 18 beta, there’s a new option to select your preferred Home hub instead of relying on Apple’s automatic selection, the current choice.

HomeKit users took to the thread to express their joy at this move, saying, among other things, that “This is the most important…

Continue reading…