We’re all familiar with Apple’s Home and it in fact may be our daily driver as it were for our home automation needs.  Alternatively, we may prefer a more comprehensive and thorough app like Home 3 to get things done in our smart home.  We may even employ a manufacturer’s app for its ease-of-use or added benefits.  But rarely does an app come along that does something that none of the aforementioned options do yet adds value to the HomeKit experience, and so enter HomeFlash.

As you may have guessed from the name, Home Flash allows you to flash HomeKit-enabled lights.  A novel yet practical idea for subtly reminding your loved ones that they’re running late, letting them know they’ve been in the shower a bit too long, or gently persuading them to turn down that infernal racket.  

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Features

While other apps may have similar functionality, I’ve yet to come across one that is vendor agnostic.  For example, LIFX, Phillips Hue, and VOCOlinc all offer lighting effects through their respective apps, but these lighting effects only extend to their products, not to other HomeKit-enabled lights.  Along these lines, you can also flash lights that are connected to HomeKit smart plugs and switches which is pretty darn clever.  I suppose you could be sneaky and use this to flash other devices connected to a smart plug, but I can’t think of what nor why you would want to and it might even do damage to the connected device.

One of the flexible features of HomeFlash is the ability to flash an entire room or an individual light in a room, but from what I can tell, we cannot flash all of the lights in a home meaning that we need to know in which room the people are who’s attention we want.  This isn’t a huge deal-breaker however and should be relatively easily solvable in a future update, however if you are trying to let several different people know you are waiting for them who may be in different parts of the house, a “home” flash would be useful.

The standout feature of HomeFlash as I see it is probably Shortcuts integration allowing you to choose customized Siri commands to advise other household members of your need for their attention and HomeFlash makes setting this up an absolute breeze.  You can also take this much, much further integrating it with other services to create complex automations with a nearly endless variety of conditions and services.  

Design & Functionality

The app is designed in a beautifully simplistic manner making it more likely that you will actually use it.  The lights in your home are organized by room and to flash them, you simply tap on them or you can opt to flash all the lights in an entire room by tapping the bulb icon to the right of the name of the room.  You can long press on the light to adjust the color if that particular lighting product supports color or you can add the effect to Shortcuts.  We have a relatively limited color range, but I’m assuming that the options we do have will suit most people’s needs just fine.

If we scroll down to the very bottom of our list of rooms and lights, we have our option for configuring a smart plug or switch as a light, but essentially the app uses HomeKit’s designation of the plug or switch as a light as its indicator as a light thus including it in the pulsating fun.  What a bright idea!      

Finally, by tapping the “Settings” icon at the top right, we have the ability to toggle haptic feedback and whether we would like configuration suggestions.  We can also find a comprehensive list of all of the Siri Shortcuts that the app is currently using and we also have the ability to add more if we so desire.

Improvements

HomeFlash definitely delivers on its promises and is ridiculously stable at least in our testing, but the app could potentially be tweaked to make it that much better. 

The ability to make adjustments to flash style, rate, and duration would be an amazing tool.  As it stands now, lights gently fade in and out 3 times, but being able to control if the light is a fade or more of a true flash, as well as the interval and the duration of the event would be appreciated.

Admittedly, I’m no developer, but it seems to me that if we are able to program an app that flashes all of our HomeKit lights, then we could potentially program different types of lighting effects across HomeKit lights.  This was one of my iOS 13 HomeKit wishlist items that doesn’t seem like it’s going to make the cut, but I would love dynamic lighting scenes.  This seems like it could totally be a limitation imposed by HomeKit itself though.

Final Thoughts

HomeFlash holds a unique position in the HomeKit world.  It’s the only app I’m aware of that allows “lighting effects” across all HomeKit-enabled devices.  It also has the added benefit of Shortcuts support for easy access via Siri.  Though the app itself may not be all that flashy, it’s a solid, yet small investment.  The app has also received a number of updates since its initial launch a few months back so I imagine there’s more in the pipline.

Got a hot tip on a useful HomeKit app that you’re keen on?  Let us know in the comments down below.  Don’t forget to follow us on social media @myhomekithome and if you want to whisper sweet nothings to us directly, questions@myhomekithome.com is a good place for that.

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Links & Resources

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/home-flash-for-homekit/id1453293391