Unlock Your Front Door with No Hands

It’s been nearly three years since Apple introduced Home Key to the iPhone, allowing you to unlock your front door with a tap of your iPhone (provided you have a compatible lock, of course).

Like Car Key before it, Home Key still has one disadvantage, though. Just like paying with Apple Pay, you need to actually pull out your iPhone or place your Apple Watch near the door lock to trigger it. Car manufacturers solved that with a new Digital Key specification that uses Ultra Wideband (UWB) proximity detection, and now Apple is following suit by adding that to Home Key.

This will allow you to unlock your door just by walking up to it with your iPhone somewhere on your person. Some smart locks already offer similar capabilities, but they use Bluetooth. However, that’s trickier to make work properly as it has a much longer range and is more subject to interference. For example, August has to combine Bluetooth and geofencing to make sure your door doesn’t get unlocked again before you’ve left your driveway.

In addition to iOS 18, you’ll need an iPhone 11 or later and a lock with UWB support. That last part will be tricky, as no such locks exist yet. However, Apple has always taken an “if you build it, they will come” attitude to such things, and it’s likely accessory makers are already working on some UWB Home Key locks to hit the market not long after iOS 18 launches later this year. So, the bottom line is if you haven’t bought a Home Key compatible lock yet, you may want to wait a bit longer.