WWDC Follow Up with All the new Smart Home Features Coming Fall 2025
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Welcome, welcome, welcome everybody to another exciting episode of HomeKit Insider. You've got me, your host as always, Andrew O'Hara, and I am riding once again solo this week. It's a little bit kind of just like a chill episode, I feel like. I hope everyone is like...

recuperating the high of WWDC is wearing off. You know, this is a week later from Apple's big annual dev conference. Personally, I have been traveling so much. I was actually out in Cupertino for dub dub. So that was, uh,

amazing as always. It is just always so cool to visit Apple's campus, to speak to so many developers that are hanging out there. It's just always such a, a great time, a great opportunity. Saw so many friends. I only get to see, you know, a few times a year. Um, uh, Nikki is Brian Tong. I just Dean, I didn't get to see Sigmund judge this year. He always has so much stuff on like TVOS. I didn't see him running around, but there's just so many people.

There's a lot of you. I love you all. Seriously, we all just talked for so long. There was so much news that was coming out.

So of course we're going to get into it during this episode. We're getting close to kind of summer here, so that's also just like in the air. There's just energy everywhere. I have to tell all of you that we're expecting our new little one very, very soon. It is still baking. No baby yet. So if an episode has to be later something, you'll know why. But as of now, no baby. So still just faith...

I, Faith Harrison, and I hanging out around here with all the animals waiting for baby number two to decide it is time to show up. But I just love all of you. You guys are all so supportive of everything, all the great well wishes with the baby on the podcast, on Twitter, on everything. So it's been great. So let's get into the episode. Let's talk about the news.

Now, one of the things that I saw a lot of people reacting to, especially in the smart home world, was there was no home OS, right? Apple did not announce their new smart home operating system. And personally, I was not surprised. So I did want to kind of talk about that at the beginning of the episode. I know it's a little bit of a letdown that Apple didn't announce this, but based on what we know of home OS thus far,

It makes sense that it was not going to be there. I did not think it was going to be there unless Apple had like the hardware and stuff at the same time. What we know right now is that Apple is likely to not support third party applications at the launch of its new smart home hub, the home pad, whatever this thing is going to be. I hope that's not the name.

I've heard many people refer to it as that, and I kind of hope it's not. I don't love Homepad. I don't know. Whatever name Apple comes up with.

There's going to be no third-party apps at launch. So I think it would have been really, really tone-deaf for Apple to stand up in front of a room full of developers and say, hey, check out my home OS I've got here. You guys can't even touch it. Not for you, developers. I just think that would have come off terrible. So if there was no hardware to announce, home OS was not going to be there. It just didn't make sense to show it off

two developers that couldn't touch it. So I was not expecting to see it. I was hoping to see it. When this thing was wrapping up at the hour and a half mark, I'm like, okay, we're like 90 minutes. Apple's got time here. They got room to vamp. There's going to be one more thing, isn't there? We're going to get some surprise hardware maybe. We're going to get this. And I was thinking it as we're getting to that 90-minute mark, but

And then Tim Cook came back out and wrapped things up with a bow. So it didn't happen. I'm not disappointed. I know things are coming along. We're getting progress, and it's still going to be exciting. Gurman actually had a report out on Sunday that basically doubled down and said the same thing. Said he was not expecting HomeOS either at this event. Apple was originally going to launch HomeOS in the smart home hub in March before WWDC.

But between the redesign and the pushed next-gen version of Apple's Assistant, it didn't make sense to bring it out ahead of time. So, Gurman's last kind of talk about it, the last release window we have heard for Apple's smart home display situation is towards the end of the year at the earliest. So, we still could see this at a September event. I think it could still make it out. If not...

We're looking at early 2027. You guys know how optimistic I was heading into 2025. Sorry, I said 2027. I meant 2026. You guys know how optimistic I was heading into 2025? Like this is the year of the smart home, I called it.

Apparently I was too excited by that. We're going to have to punt it in 2026 perhaps, where we'll get the smart home display, we'll get home OS, and that's also when Apple's first smart home camera is intending to launch. The doorbell situation is also a work in development, but we have no time frame on that yet. But maybe it'll be 2026.

Maybe. Because then we're going to have a big version of Matter this fall, which means possible hardware for 2026 then. So...

It'll be interesting. I hate just talking about the same rumors again and again, feeling like I have no new information to share with you all. But I did have several people asking about home OS like that was like the number one thing people asked me up to the event and then after why we didn't see it. So that is what I know and what my opinion on the matter is. So

So let's talk about what we did get, right? Because I have a ton of notes here. There was a lot of things to talk about for smart home users. Even if it's not any of the big stuff that I had on my wish list, I want to be able to share home keys. Where's that feature, Ben? I want, you know, be able to run automations based on person detection and things. Like there's a lot of things that I had on my wish list that we did not get. Higher resolution cameras. Where's that at?

Nope, nope, nope. But we did get a lot of new things, so let's go through it.

Starting out, Apple Home's app got the new liquid glass redesign, of course. This could still see tweaks as we get through the beta process. Right now, it didn't get a lot of love, I feel like. It still looks very similar to the Home app that we had before, but with the standardized UI elements automatically getting upgraded to the new liquid glass aesthetic. The way that Apple usually works like that is the same thing with third-party apps, right? People use these familiar UI elements, like things like a tab

bar. You can just insert it into your app and it has like the stock look that you can continue to modify, you know, develop, can get crazy and add their own unique skins and things to it. But if you're using the ones that look like very at home on iOS, as Apple upgrades iOS, those automatically get re-skinned to match. So that's what we have here with the home app. Apple is using standardized UI elements. And as we move to the new version, we're getting things like new tab bars that look more at home with Apple glass or liquid glass.

So a little bit of an upgrade there. We also have new things for CarPlay with Apple Home. This was on my wish list, folks. I did nail this one as something that I specifically wanted, and we got it, which is widgets for CarPlay. I said I wanted to be able to see my smart home accessories. I wanted to be able to control them. I didn't need a whole home app, but I wanted to be able to see like, oh, I left a window open or I left the door unlocked.

The garage door is open. I left a fan running. Stuff like that. Then be able to tap them and control them really quickly from the car interface. And you can with CarPlay in...

iOS 26. So this is great. I love it. Widgets actually live on in their own space. So there are now extra views. So your main view is like that split screen view with like the maps and then a few different pieces of information that is now the second screen. So the first one all the way to the left is the new widgets of you. You actually have the

stack right there, which you can swipe up and down to change through the widgets. So you can get to any of your Apple home ones, works with third party ones like controller, anything like controller for Apple home, all of those you can pick from whatever you have that's running in standby mode can literally just run in context.

CarPlay. So that's super cool. I just even use like the Apple basic one. It works great, shows up, shows four relevant accessories for me, and I can tap and control them right there from CarPlay. You can specifically call out certain accessories or allow it to use like the smart suggestions. So set that up, try it out, let me know. I test this in a couple of different cars. I've seen up to three widget stacks, depending on the size of your car's

display. A lot of them though, they're still showing one and I'm hoping it's something Apple tweaks a little bit because it looks a little ridiculous with one giant stack showing like a clock or my Dexcom sensor or my Apple Home accessories. So I do hope that that gets parred back a little bit and we can see at least two on more CarPlay interfaces than we see right now. But I'm

Otherwise, really great to have like Apple Home and these widgets inside of CarPlay. I also like the new live activity support. So if there are any apps that support live activities, you can see them there as well. Going back to the app, there is a new thing that kind of fixes basically a bug we saw before. So if you favorited a certain part, so if you have a Switch that has like multiple accessories that show up in Apple Home and you favorited like one of them, you just wanted like the Switch to show up, but it also had like sensors and other things like that.

All of those ancillary accessories that were added to Apple Home will also show in your favorites, which could clutter things up. Now you can specifically favorite just a part of an accessory, and that is the only thing it'll show in that home view or the pinned home view. So that is nice. That's a good thing to see.

The no response alert has been renamed to issues, which makes sense because it can show things other than just no response. And when you see an accessory in that view that is non-responsive, it'll show you how long it has been non-responsive. So it'll say your light has been no response for 32 minutes, whatever it happens to be. So I think that'll be very useful for doing things like troubleshooting. So that's great.

Next up, the locks apparently can be added now to scenes that are like time-based. So you'll be able to set maybe a scene that runs at a certain time of day or after a certain amount of time. Those can now include locks. Is that going to stay like that? Hopefully it does. Apple has historically required locks just like other security accessories to require like a manual lock.

Yes, like an acknowledgement before they run. So any scenes that did that, it was always people were trying to find workarounds to still run these automations without having to actually run them. I mean, tapping a button to okay it each time. Like, do you want to run this scene? Yes, yes, I do. That's why I set it up to automatically run, but I can't do it because it contains a lock. So no, this will be taken care of automatically as long as Apple does not revert it back.

Then we have Energy Kit, which is this really cool little thing. So Apple has that thing where it shows, like, green energy and, like, your clean energy that you can use for running your home. Now Apple has made this into, like, a developer API, a developer framework where they can actually tie this into their own apps. You might be able to see other things going. Like, this can turn on automations and, like, run a washing machine based on when you're running clean energy that it's learning from from Apple Home. So I think, as we've talked about previously on the show...

As energy starts to become more important with Matter and with Apple Home, we're going to start to see people take advantage of things like this. So I think this framework is going to really grow over time in terms of what it can do. But right now, it's a little more basic. It's giving you, like, clean energy status, and we'll soon be able to get things like you're tying in your electric company to this so you can monitor how much you're spending and all that stuff. It's expansive, and I'm glad that Apple is starting to open this up to developers like Apple.

in full force. Now this next one, I don't have too much information on cause I'm waiting to see how developers are going to tap into it. I've talked to different developers like Aaron Pierce, who does a lot of the great home kit apps that we talked about on the show. Um,

I'm trying, I'm blanking on all the Aaron's app names right now. So I feel pretty terrible because we have talked about them many times, but all of Aaron's apps that you guys should absolutely go and download. I was talking to him about this and Apple is now allowing developers to tie into their LLM like on device. So there's a bunch of different applications for this AI model that is running specifically on your iPhone. So it doesn't even require cloud.

cloud tie-in, right? So it's especially great for smart home users that are doing things locally and don't want to have to send commands up to the cloud. Apple was able to show a few demos of this. So I was talking to developers who do all trails and they're able to use the LLM AI models on device even when you're hiking to get additional information and show you when points of interest are coming up and all this cool stuff that's just all done with AI, but locally on device, right?

with no cloud interface at all. So now Apple has opened that up, and I'm really curious at how this is going to work for smart home devs, right?

There should be a lot of information we have from a smart home. I'm excited to see, based on how you're controlling things, what developers will be able to do with this. So right now, not too much. A little nebulous. It's going to be used for a lot of things outside of the smart home, and I'm excited to see just what developers can start to do. So stay tuned for more on that, and as apps get updated this fall, I'll be sure to let you know. Or even if I get some fun betas to play around with, I'll let you know as I test those as well, assuming that developers are cool with that.

Now, moving outside of iOS, we have things for tvOS and visionOS. So on the Apple TV side of things, of course, we're getting our liquid glass UI to match everything else that Apple has been announcing.

It looks very nice. I do like it. It's a little more subtle, I feel like, on Apple TV, but it still looks good. So TVOS is only getting that new redesign for the latest versions of the Apple TV 4K, so the second and third generation Apple TV 4K. Crazy enough, Apple is still supporting Apple TV HD. That thing is 10 years old at this point, and Apple is still updating it. I am fairly certain this is like the oldest device that Apple currently supports.

which is nuts. Apple is finally adding pass through audio support. So we can go ahead and pass untouched audio to your receiver, your sound system without tinkering with it in any way. So that's now possibility TV and movie posters are vertical. When you were in the Apple TV app, Apple hasn't changed as too much, but I do like the look of these vertical ones. They just look more like movie posters and such, and they take up a little bit less space, but you are sacrificing vertical space. Um,

I don't know which one is better. I feel like it probably worked better for an Apple TV when they were horizontal because that way you had more...

rows, but then you had less, I don't know, whatever. Everyone's got their own preferences, but just based on the shape of an Apple TV, like or an actual television set, it's more, it's shorter, right? So I liked having more rows because I could see what else was coming, but then you only had four titles or so left and right. Now you can see a lot more in that list without having to scroll. So perhaps it's better. Apple seems to think so. So that's changed.

That was also changed the information that you see on an actual title card for like an episode or a movie that's in your watch list. You can still see like where it's going to play at. The episodic information is there. It just all reworked a little bit. Some new icons. It looks nice. I really like it.

We're not on my list here. Okay, so Apple is now allowing you to optionally have your profiles launch every time the Apple TV wakes up. So the idea is whoever wakes up the Apple TV can choose their profile on there, which will automatically bring up their relevant information. So that's going to show their watch list, going to show their photos, their Apple Music Library, all of that kind of stuff. If you open up the control center, you'll see their icon there, which is how you can switch between the different profiles.

profiles have been around for a while. They are not new, but Apple is just kind of pushing them a little bit more than in the past. As we've talked about on the show, profiles just don't get used very much. Like I even said incorrectly, man, I wish these profiles could tie to things like my Hulu accounts. I wouldn't have to choose my Hulu login every single time. Turns out they could, if the developers wanted to support them, same thing with Netflix or any other actual apps that support multiple profiles. Uh,

I think I would use them more if it actually mattered. But really, my wife and I just use my one watch list inside of the Apple TV app. So why do we need to move into two different ones? It doesn't make sense. And right now, I don't think it makes sense. I think I'll start using it for Harrison so that my watch list isn't flooded with Mickey Mouse, Clubhouse, and Bluey. But we'll have to see. Maybe this will be a thing that we start using now that Apple is trying to make it maybe a little bit more useful.

Personally, I feel like this could just be Apple pushing profiles to make them more useful ahead of Apple's smart home display. We're going to have profiles on that thing as well. And I think it would make sense the way Apple is kind of like making sure they are more obvious on Apple TV. That way they feel more familiar when we get to its shared tabletop smart display device that I'm not going to call the HomePad. We'll see.

Um, we have new, uh, Apple IDs can automatically log you into streaming apps. So this should make setting up a new Apple TV much easier. Apple is going to start syncing your login to your Apple profile. So when you go ahead and sign into your Apple TV, uh, you don't just get like all of your apps downloaded and sign into your Apple ID, but you're also going to get those saved passcodes that were for all of your different streaming apps automatically entered too. So really, really helpful should set that up.

Nobody wants to sign into 15 streaming apps, so I think this is going to be a fairly big deal. The music app, a little bit of a redesign. It looks better. We also have the new karaoke sing type feature. Literally, when I did the first version of this that came out on the last version of tvOS, I made the thumbnail me holding my iPhone up as a microphone, just like...

I don't know. It just felt natural, like kind of like as a joke to go along with it. And now Apple has literally just made that a feature. So you can now use your iPhone as a remote for your Apple TV. I tested this out and it works really well. There's a QR code that pops up on your Apple TV. You scan it and then you can have a little mute button on your iPhone. So you can mute it or unmute it, start singing into the bottom or the top of it. And it amplifies your voice through your Apple TV.

And there's a bunch of reaction emoji on there. So if other people are watching you or if you're doing this yourself, you just want to root yourself on, you can go ahead and press on those buttons and they'll show up on the screen like encouragingly to egg you on as you were singing Living on a Prayer. I don't know what your karaoke song is. You guys choose your own.

But I think it's really neat. That does only work on the latest Apple TV, though. I downloaded that on, like, where I updated one of my older Apple TVs, and I'm like, why isn't this showing up here? And I couldn't figure it out. Yeah, it's just on the latest Apple TV 4K third generation. Apple even adds a shortcut automatically to your home screen, which literally does nothing more than...

push you into the singing tab of the new music app, but you can turn that off if you go into settings. So that is good. You don't have to have that icon there if you do not want it. Also in the music app, it'll translate lyrics for you, which is super handy. You can turn it off if you don't want it though, but I think it's useful. FaceTime, it can show call notifications, contact posters, live captions, which works in French, Japanese, Mandarin, German, Spanish, I believe. And then you can turn it off

For audio as well, you can now permanently link an AirPlay speaker. It does not have to be a HomePod or a HomePod Mini. Now, any AirPlay speaker will work as a permanent destination for your Apple TV. You guys have been asking for this. I know. I have heard you ask for it. Now you can do it with the latest version of tvOS.

There's granular control for screen savers. You can actually go into the settings and turn on or off the various aerial ones that you guys want or don't want. I think this is really cool. Like maybe you like love all of them, but there's one that's like, man, I really don't like seeing...

don't know pick a flyover location the desert you're just not into deserts you're more into water so you can turn those off specifically and leave the other ones on but I actually like that they're really giving that granular control over those screensavers

Then we have Dolby Atmos 9.1.6 support. This is specifically adding front wide channels and two additional overhead channels for Dolby Atmos setups. I do not have a setup that crazy, but 9.1.6 is nuts. So if you have that, I bet it's pretty cool.

We have Thread 1.4 is also on tvOS 26. Thread 1.4, this is a version to like this Thread network, not to matter. So this is specifically Thread. So it's the latest Apple TVs, but this allows it to combine networks more like automatically. So this is just Thread in general. But right now, if you have like a Samsung network and you're at your Apple Home network,

Maybe you have some Amazon stuff in there, whatever. They can all create their own thread networks and like exist at the same time on your home network. Now with thread 1.4, those can all join together to create one more robust thread network in your home. Just basically before there was not this credential sharing between thread networks and it was causing issues. This solves them.

Of course, everything's going to have to be updated to Thread 1.4, but Apple's doing their part by updating Apple TV. I do not know if we're seeing the same update on iPhone, but that is more for direct control, so I don't think it's as big of a deal. This is great. I like it. I'm glad that Apple is adding Thread.

The red support here. So we still want to talk about vision OS, a couple of things there. I want to talk about the beta so far, how those have been going and then things that are happening outside of WWDC. But you know, with this whole baby coming up, one of the things that I like is, is being prepared, right?

And getting ahead of things and knowing where we're like, okay, if the baby comes on this day, what are we going to do? And having some plans in place to kind of get out in front of problems before they show up. So if the baby is like coming a certain time, I don't got a panic. What are we going to do with this thing? What are we going to do with Harrison while we go deal with this thing?

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So, going back to the news, we have Vision OS. Vision OS has a bunch of new things going on. It's really sweet. But I think for smart home users, the coolest thing is the widgets. Oh my gosh, are widgets cool, you guys. I am not kidding. I was shocked at how good widgets are in Beta 1 of Vision OS 26. So, widgets can be pinned to any surface, right? Like your walls, right?

And then they stay there as you move and after you reboot the system. So I'm sitting in the living room. I throw up a giant widget on the wall of some photos and stuff. It looks amazing. I throw up another one above the fireplace with the time.

I can just look up and there's a clock flat against the wall, like perspective and shadows and in not, I how it's crazy. Um, and then as I'm like walking into the kitchen, I happen to look out, like look to the left while wearing vision pro and I'm watching the fridge obfuscate the photos. Like there's literally like this depth blocking. Like I know there is a, a term like occlusion or whatever that Apple has for, uh,

the foreground items to block the widgets, but that's really what happens. Just like if it was actually on the wall. So as I'm like changing rooms, the widgets are staying where they are and being blocked out by other walls. It is, it is so cool. It is, it's, it's really cool. As far as smart home uses go, uh, you can use these with Apple home. Now, right now in beta one, I did not see an actual Apple home widget thing, which makes sense because heck home OS or Apple home, uh,

Apple Home app isn't even native on Vision OS yet, but it is there. So I'm hoping that Apple does add actual native Apple Home toggles to this, but that's okay. Developers are already working on it. I've already seen developers adding, like literally quickly making up Home apps and then making little simple controls. So you could literally put this on top of your...

like thermostat or something, you look at your thermostat and turn off your HVAC system. Like how, how cool is that? That's, it is so amazingly cool. Uh, I am really, really excited by this. And I think there's going to be a ton of applications. Um,

The original L-I-T-E, literally, Amchachad. But he says, like on Twitter, he's like, now that Visual Studio supports persistent windows and widgets to cry app launches, I just put together this HomeKit app that allows me to control the AC unit just by looking at it. And he shows like his window HVAC unit, just put a little control there that shows the actual temperature, and he can look at it and control it.

That is super, super cool. And I'm very excited to see what third-party devs are going to do with this when we get to the launch of Vision OS.

I think this is really fun. I think widgets are going to be huge and I'm really excited. Like I could literally put like a button on my desk and do stuff with it and tie it into shortcuts, automations, the smart home, all sorts of different things. So this is another one that Apple's like laying the framework for and then allowing developers to take and run. There are HomeKit apps on Vision Pro and we're going to see more of them now that we have support for widgets. So I'm pretty cool about that.

One thing I did see people say, like, oh, can you just use Apple Assistant, like, just do it by voice or whatever? Sure, you could, but also I'm not going to – I don't use Apple Assistant for everything. Like, there are so many times where I just want to use a keyboard or, like, a physical button or, like, widget in a control center, something that just – that's quicker and easier. And then sometimes I just don't want to deal with Apple Assistant right now, especially until we get, like, next-gen version of Apple Assistant, right?

Sometimes it's just easier, especially maybe if you have like multiple accessories you want to control. I don't want to have to send out three different voice commands because I can only ask Apple's assistant to do one at a time. So I definitely think this has its place.

Then the only downside on Vision OS I just wanted to make sure I mentioned because I keep calling it out is RoboVac, still not supported. They still show in the home app, but you cannot use them. You can build them into scenes, I believe. But yeah, you can't do anything with these yet. They just show up. They don't say unsupported. They're just like half built for Vision OS. So I'll be keeping an eye on that, and I hope that we actually get full support for robotic vacuum cleaners by the time that Vision OS 26 launches this fall.

Now, people have been asking how the betas have been so far. They're betas. The beta one, especially, it's honestly not bad. The biggest thing probably is battery life issues, which is completely to be expected and not a surprise at all in any way. So I think Apple is going to continue to really work on these, refine them and hone them. We've heard a lot of Apple interviews in this past week with multiple outlets. Joanne Stern really pressed them on it. iJustine asked,

Craig about it like you know what's going on where is it he says things were working internally but it was not where they wanted to be externally they truly believe the next gen version of Siri would have been here and it never happened uh at least in the time frame that they wanted and as soon as they realized that they made that announcement that it was going to be delayed the last we heard was that Apple is looking for a spring of 2026 to be their new launch window and um

I believe it. So it looks like it'll be vision-wise 26.4 if Apple's current timeline lines up. Otherwise, I don't have too much to report on the betas. Everything else is working pretty much as expected. I think we're just going to see a lot of UI refinements and tweaking and bugs being squashed by the time that we actually work our way through the cycle. But it's a beta. It's working very well for me. I have no complaints. Nothing unexpected.

unusual out of the ordinary. So yeah, we'll keep testing and we're going to get closer and closer to this fall. So if you guys want to know more about all these things, I do have a whole video up on tvOS and CarPlay. Both of those are live. I can link them in the show notes for you guys if you guys really want to get deep dives into these and see what they look like in real life and first person point of view and everything. So please check those out if you're at all interested.

Well, there are things that happen in the world outside of WWDC and Apple's new updates, but frankly, it's very small. Like, literally, this whole episode was built around all of Apple's dub-dumb announcements because there's very little going on outside of that. There's only one piece of real smart home news that I saw, which was that a car has a new product to launch, and it's not even here in the U.S. So, it wasn't even something that I am currently testing or playing around with, but it's the Acara G100 camera. This is a new product.

This is the second outdoor camera for Aqara. The other one is the G5 Pro. I believe G5 Pro, G50, G5.

We're going to go G5, folks. The G5 Pro, which has like the PoE or the Wi-Fi option. Great camera. I love it. I think it's probably the best outdoor HomeKit camera or Apple Home camera that we have at the moment. 2.5K works with Apple HomeKit secure video for storage there. But you could also go to like an SD card. You can go to a NAS server, all the sorts of crazy stuff. So it's a fantastic camera. And this is kind of like a smaller version of that. It's just a round face. It comes in white or black.

Big camera there on the front, and it has a built-in spotlight and siren. It is outdoor, so it's weatherproof and everything. Nothing crazy about this. This was first shown off at CES, and it has launched in China. And we'll see if we get a U.S. release for this guy anytime soon.

That is it. That is the news. That is what I had. That is what I've been able to find. Obviously, I've been heads down going through betas, but that's kind of all that I've seen actually launching this week. Everyone seemed to be quiet waiting to see what announcements Apple had. So I'm hoping things pick up this week, which I do believe that they will. So outside of that, I did want to go a little bit hands-on with another new product that I have been testing out for the last couple weeks. And that is the Govee Outdoor Post Light Lamp.

So this is a matter-enabled lamp, and it is, the first thing that I will say, it is big. It is huge. It is larger than I really expected it to be based on the images that I saw online when I was, like, looking at it on Amazon. I thought it would be a little bit smaller, but it was fairly expensive. I'm like, this is interesting. What's it going to be like?

It is big folks. Like it's real big. And I know I can't even show you because it's outside in the yard, but it is, it is very tall. I swear it's like seven, eight feet tall or something. It's a big old lamp. The head of it is I think 15, 16 inches wide for the top of this thing. So it's a massive for the actual top of the lamp. Um, it is not solar or anything like that. So it does have to be plugged in. So, um,

plugs in outdoor they give you ample amount of cord so that you can run it to where you need it to run to the cord is watertight and seals in between each of the multiple sections that you connect together

You do have to assemble everything. They all kind of like screw into each other. So you put the two posts together like for each section like one part and then the other part they slide into one another and then you put two screws on the side, two or three screws and they all lock in. Once you get everything assembled which took probably about 20-30 minutes for me to get put together, it was good to go. It felt very very stable, secure, really tall and large.

And you have three different kind of mounting options, depending on what you want to do. So if you're putting this onto a deck, you can actually bolt it straight down. There are four big old bolts that you can use to drill this into your deck or into cement, whatever you happen to have, to hold it securely in place. Your alternative is to use a water bag. So it comes with a big old U-shaped water bag. You fill that up with water. You can even do sand. And that'll go over top of the two, like, X, like, stand that it comes with, or plus sides, whatever.

plus two pieces are a lot, right? It's like an X on the bottom. So that'll cover up the legs of it to hold it stable, which is what I have currently been using. Your third option is to use these gigantic U-shaped spikes that'll go into the ground. So if you're putting into the lawn, you can use these and these are seriously again, like 15, 16 inches long. Like they're really long. So they're going to go really deep into the ground, which is going to be important because this thing is big enough that even a lot of wind, it needs to be fairly strong and holding it in place.

The thing that I really like about it is that it's more or less mobile if you're not bolting it down. So like I'm able to move this around our little patio area, which I think is really useful. So for me, I would like I would legitimately put this into the yard if we're hanging out in the yard and keep like the string lights over the patio area and this in the yard for additional lighting going on.

I really like that aspect of it, that I could kind of move it around if it's not permanently locked into place. So I do like that.

There are two different sets of lights on this thing. There's a set of white lights that are more or less downward facing. They're kind of like work lights, focus lights, or just typical like white lights. Then there's a bunch of RGB colored lights. Now these are like a second row, a ring of lights that shoot to the sides and spread out along the yard. So these are kind of supposed to be like more ambient lighting and they're going to give you like a bunch of like vibes and mixes and feelings and all that kind of stuff.

There's a ton of suggestions in the app, just like with every other Govee smart light. Basically, the same exact ones are there. So you have like fire and lightning, like thunderstorm situation or sunrise, sunset. Some of them are animated. Some of them are static, but a bunch of different ones to choose from.

To me, I personally think they are a little less convincing than some of the other smart lights that, like, Govee does just because you can just really see the bulbs and the lights and everything. So it's not quite as, like, selling the effects as some of the other ones that they have do, but I still like them. So...

The colors, maybe if you're syncing it to music and you're really making a party or something, I can see it. But in general, I really like it for the white lights a whole lot. I just think those are super, super useful.

So those are there. This thing is Wi-Fi, as I said, and it does connect over Matter. Now, I have had it go offline, unfortunately, but that's been a thing with like Govee and their Matter accessories. Really, it's just a problem with kind of Wi-Fi Matter accessories in general, and that's something that's supposed to be fixed in more recent versions of the spec.

And it was easy to fix. I literally unplugged it, plugged it back in, and we were good to go. But I've had the same original issues with my Govee Starlight Projector, which is, again, works over matter.

And with the Govee Ice Maker, another unique product that works over matter. Both of them had that happen probably like a week or two after I set them up and they just went offline. But then it quick plug and plug back in and they were good to go. And I haven't had issues with either of those since. I still regularly control them. I still have Harrison as part of his goodnight scene to turn on his Starlight projector. The same thing works with the...

the ice maker, it's part of my good night scene. So I say good night and it turns out the ice maker. So it's not making ice throughout the night and like tumbling down and wasting energy and everything. So those I have not had issues with, and I have not had issues with this light after I unplugged it and plugged it back in after that kind of initial problem in it going offline. But you do need to have like that wifi connection to make changes to different things.

So there are sensors in this, which is what I also think is super cool. There's motion sensors in it. So whenever you walk outside or the dogs go out, anything like that, the white lights can come on and they are super, super bright. They are very, they cover a huge amount of area. You can dim them through the app. Yes. But I have mine set up to come on quite bright to really fill in the yard and everything.

So I love it. So I have like floodlight cameras out there that turn on when the dogs go. And I put this in another part of our patio area just to bring additional light. So when the dogs do go out there or we go out there in the night, things are getting lit up. We can see things.

It's like a security light as well as like a smart light and stuff at the same time. I think it's more useful than like the floodlights when we're outside like at the fire or something. Sometimes the floodlights are a little annoying because they're kind of like facing into the yard. This is a little more subtle and it's like downward facing. So we're still getting utility lights, but it's not as glaring and as annoying. Plus you could always switch to the colored ones if you just wanted to go outside.

more ambiance at the same time and not necessarily so bright. But even like working on Harrison's bed and stuff in the yard, like I've been using this to get light while I'm working on my power tools and stuff. So,

really great. Really, really like it. Nothing else like it on the market. I'm excited to see more outdoor things. Make sure you have good outdoor Wi-Fi as Jimmy and I talked about, like the ear outdoor one. It's great. It's fantastic. So that's a big recommendation from me, but I like this. This is another really super cool, unique matter accessory. Works in the Apple Home app. Control the colors, all that stuff, including your scenes. It's great.

So if you guys want to check that out, I put a link for the show notes. I've also put my smart home roundups for iOS 26 and all those things for tvOS, CarPlay. All of that is also down there in the show notes. So check it out. Thank you to Nord Layer for sponsoring the episode. I hope everyone enjoyed it. A little bit chill, more relaxed. Thank you guys so much for freaking everything, for the baby well wishes, for support at dubdub, all of those things. So I feel like I'm home now.

This is comforting to get here and sit to talk to you guys. I hope you guys have an amazing week. I hope all of your work weeks or your vacations or whatever you've got going on go spectacularly well. I will see you guys in another week. In the meantime, just keep paying me visits over the YouTube channel for Apple Insider. So youtube.com slash appleinsider. If you want to watch the video version of this podcast and see my smiling face, you

You can see over at youtube.com slash homekitinsider. Please give the podcast a great review on any of your podcast players. 5, 10, 100 stars would be very welcomed. Stay tuned. We have a lot more fun guests coming in future episodes. I don't want to tease anything too much until the schedules are nailed down. But as always, I'm very excited for some of the guests that are coming on. So I hope you stay tuned for that. Otherwise, we'll see you guys next week. Peace.