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Massive Home app makeover brings Matter support and more

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The Home app has been rebuilt from the ground up, Apple said at WWDC22.
The Home app has been rebuilt from the ground up, Apple said at WWDC22.
Photo: Apple
WWDC22 - Brought to you by CleanMyMac X

Among the many new products and features Apple showcased at WWDC22 came news of a revamped Home app for the HomeKit smart-home platform.

Arriving with iOS 16 later this year, the app is rebuilt from the ground up. Apple said it will be more efficient and reliable, especially for homes with many accessories. And it will support the new Matter smart-home technology standard.

How to easily schedule HomeKit devices with Siri commands

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How to easily schedule HomeKit devices with Siri commands
You can tell Siri to turn a HomeKit accessory off in a few minutes and it’ll happen. Here’s what you do.
Photo: Cult of Mac

You know you can turn on a HomeKit accessory by talking to Siri, but are you aware you can order devices to turn on or off at some point in the future just as easily?

Here’s how to set impromptu schedules for your HomeKit accessories with Siri commands — and why you might want to.

HomeKit bug can send iPhone into reboot loop of death. Here’s how to avoid it.

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Apple Home app
Beware random Home invitations.
Photo: Apple

A newly discovered HomeKit bug can render unsuspecting iPhone and iPad users with a completely unresponsive device. All it takes is for a smart home gadget to be given a super-long name.

Once the bug affects an iOS or iPadOS device, the gadget will continually freeze and restart itself. The only way to fix it is to factory reset the iPhone or iPad — and avoid logging into your iCloud account.

Monitor air quality with Aqara’s new accessory for HomeKit

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Aqara's new air quality monitor works with HomeKit and other smart home systems.
Aqara's new air quality monitor works with HomeKit and other smart home systems.
Photo: Aqara

Smart home accessory maker Aqara’s new gadget for HomeKit lets you monitor air quality in your house. As pollution rises from wildfires and other causes — depending on where you live — you may find it handy to glance at the Aqara TVOC Air Quality Monitor to know whether you need to do something about the air you breathe.

How to allow a guest to control your HomeKit devices

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Add a guest to the Home app
The safe and easy way to share HomeKit control.
Image: Apple/Cult of Mac

If you’re going away this summer and leaving your home in the hands of someone else, you might want to give them control of your HomeKit devices. And it’s really easy to do that inside the Home app.

Here’s how to invite anyone with an iPhone, iPad or Mac to control your smart home gadgets as a guest.

Give your drab Home app a spiffy remodel with HomePaper

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HomePaper for HomeKit lets you customize the Home app.
HomePaper lets you quickly give the boring Home app a fresh coat of paint.
Image: Killian Bell/Cult of Mac

New app HomePaper for HomeKit lets you quickly customize the look of Apple’s notoriously bland-looking Home app — with zero hassles.

With the app, you simply select a photo from your iPhone or iPad camera or take a new one. Then you can quickly adjust the color(s) and make your own customized wallpaper for the Home app. There’s no fussing around with a complicated image editor or painstaking resizing required.

Here’s how to use HomePaper, which runs on iPhone and iPad, to give your Home app the remodel it deserves.

How to reset HomePod and HomePod mini to fix strange glitches

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How to reset HomePod and HomePod mini
Bring an unresponsive HomePod back to life.
Image: Killian Bell/Cult of Mac

Many of the glitches and frustrations you might encounter with HomePod and HomePod mini can usually be fixed with a simple factory reset. It’s easy to do and doesn’t take long, but Apple doesn’t make it immediately obvious how a reset is performed. So we’ll show you what you need to do.

How to use Intercom on HomePod, iPhone, AirPods and more

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How to use Intercom
Intercom is on its way. Here's all you need to know.
Image: Apple/Cult of Mac

Apple’s new Intercom feature lets you use HomePods to send short audio messages to almost anyone with an Apple device. While Apple showcased Intercom when unveiling the upcoming HomePod mini smart speaker, the feature also works with the regular HomePod as well as iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch and more.

If you a HomePod, and you’ve updated it (and your other Apple devices) with the latest software, you can use Intercom to communicate with your family or housemates in new ways.

HomePod setup bug afflicts some frustrated owners

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iPhone X
A perplexing HomePod setup bug leaves some people exasperated.
Photo: Ste Smith/Cult of Mac

An apparent bug has left some HomePod owners unable to get their new Apple smart speakers up and running. Complaints about a mysterious “Setup Failed -6722” error message surfaced soon after HomePod launched last Friday.

Stop other HomePod users from polluting your music recommendations

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Apple HomePod smart speaker Listening History
Don't let everybody else's bad taste ruin your music recommendations.
Photo: Ste Smith/Cult of Mac

Instead of recognizing the voices of various users and serving up their personal tunes, HomePod is tied to one person’s Apple Music library. That leads to an unfortunate side effect: Whenever anyone in your home tells your HomePod to play a track, that song is added to your listening history.

That means your teenagers’ ironic Ramones session, or your spouse’s un-ironic David Hasselhoff listen-a-thon, will pollute your listening history — and affect your future recommendations. Here’s how to stop that from happening.

Samsung nearly tops Apple in J.D. Power smartphone rankings

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Samsung
The exploding Note 7 didn't hurt Samsung's status.
Photo: Jim Merithew / Cult of Mac

The gap between Apple and Samsung is narrower than it has ever been, according to J.D. Power’s 2017 smartphone satisfaction rankings that have the iPhone-maker in the lead by just one point.

Apple took the number one spot with a total score of 840. Meanwhile Samsung somehow crept up to the second spot with 839 points, even though it had a disastrous last half of 2016 with the exploding Note 7 fiasco.

Apple’s smartest moves of 2016

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2016 wasn't all missed deadlines and mysterious battery problems for Apple.
2016 wasn't all missed deadlines and mysterious battery problems for Apple.
Image: Ste Smith/Cult of Mac

2016 Year in Review Cult of Mac Apple pissed off a lot of people in 2016. In hindsight, some of Cupertino’s moves look clumsy, and others seem truly clueless, but Tim Cook and Co. also made some brilliant moves during this turbulent year.

Let’s go to our happy place and relive the smartest moves made by Apple in 2016.

World’s first HomeKit community springs up in San Jose

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HomeKit is now getting packaged into new homes.
HomeKit is now getting packaged into new homes.
Photo: KB Home

Apple’s HomeKit platform is set to power an entire community currently under construction in San Jose.

Real estate development firm KB Home revealed today that its new community, Promenade at Communications Hill, will be the first ever in the US to have HomeKit technology built-in, providing a seamless experience from the foundation up.

watchOS 3 is ready for your wrist

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With watchOS 3, Apple is promising pretty new features -- and an end to that depressing lag.
Apple Watch feels all-new thanks to watchOS 3.
Photo: Apple

Apple Watch owners just got a big update today in the form of watchOS 3 that completely changes the way you use Apple’s wearable.

The huge new update comes after months of beta testing by developers and public testers, adding new features like a Breathe app, the ability to unlock your Mac, a new Dock for apps, faster performance and more.

iOS 10 hands on: Your iPhone will never be the same

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iOS 10 hands on
What new features will wow you the most in iOS 10?
Photo:

With a host of new features, many of which go more than just skin deep, iOS 10 will bring loads of new functionality to iPhones and iPads.

We got the developer beta up and running to get a look at all the new iOS 10 features in action, and caught it all on video to share with you. Get a glimpse of the iPhone’s future in our iOS hands-on video.