Easy HomeKit Automations
HomeKit is without a doubt the most powerful and feature-rich home automation platform available among the major players, but sadly much of that power has previously been hidden under the hood and never fully explored.
For example, you may not even know that HomeKit lets you do things like automatically turn off all of the lights when only the last person actually leaves home. Or that you can actually have one accessory trigger another, such as making sure your garage door is closed when you turn off your porch light, or turning on your lawn sprinklers when you turn off your bedroom lights to go to bed.
iOS 14 aims to bring some of this to the forefront, offering up suggested automations for each of your individual accessories to let you easily enable them with a single tap while also triggering some more creative thinking. For example, a garage door opener may offer quick switches to enable it to be automatically opened when the first person arrives home, while a light that’s in the same room as a motion sensor would offer options to automatically integrate it to turn on and off based on when motion is detected. You can even pause your HomePod or Apple TV when the last person leaves your house.
In addition, each accessory page will now prominently show you which home automations are enabled for that accessory, letting you see at a glance what else is affecting it without having to dig into your HomeKit Automations screen.
Apple has also beefed up the HomeKit options in the iOS 14 Control Center, which now presents a collection of buttons for scenes and accessories that change based on the time of the day and your normal routine.