It’s seems like only earlier this week we were talking about the updates to iOS 13.1 and now Apple drops 13.2 and along with it comes at least one of the long-awaited features, Secure Video.  Let’s look at it, a potential cure for a HomeKit headache, and some of the other features in this post, shall we?

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Airplay 2 Accessories in Scenes & Automations

What a way to get started here!  Since HomePod was announced, I have dreamt of automating it along with other HomeKit accessories to outline my actions throughout my home providing a soundtrack for my life and we now have the ability to do that.  

Grouping / Ungrouping of Accessories

That’s right!  Our cries and outrage were heeded and we now have the option to group or ungroup multiple services in the same HomeKit accessory.  While this is a brilliant solution to a problem that they themselves created, I would have liked to have seen it taken a step further allowing us to group multiple services from different accessories.  For example, I have a few different accessories in a few different rooms which provide temperature information and I would like the ability to group all of the temperature sensors together and declutter the room.  All in all, this is an extremely welcomed and manageable fix.

HomeKit Secure Video

The HomeKit Highlight of WWDC 2019, Secure Video allows users to store their HomeKit camera recordings in iCloud without actually using any of their available storage, granted you have one of the paid iCloud storage tiers.  While I can’t say that I’m completely happy with the scheme of 10 days of recording for 1 camera at $2.99/mo. or up to 5 cameras at $9.99/mo.; at least you get the added benefit of 200GB and 2TB of iCloud storage, respectively.  Secure Video eliminates the middle-man and I think for a lot of people, will get rid of the need to use the manufacturers’ apps for their HomeKit cameras.  And did we mention that it’s encrypted?

HomeKit Routers

Apple’s HomeKit framework has always held security and privacy as of paramount importance in the smart home and their efforts in iOS 13.2 further exemplify this notion.  While we can’t be exactly sure of what we’ll be able to do with a HomeKit router until manufacturers begin to release new hardware or update existing devices with new firmware, we can be certain that security of connected devices will be at the forefront.  We’ll keep our eyes peeled for the first vendors to hit the market.

Final Thoughts

For me, the stand-out HomeKit feature in iOS 13.2 is Airplay 2 accessories in scenes and automations. This really opens up a whole new world of automation possibilities and we’ll be exploring this in future posts. Apple definitely made a lot of people happy with the added ability to ungroup accessories in this version of iOS though I would still like the ability to group different services from different accessories i.e. to combine ll temperature sensors in a room together. The big HomeKit features for this go’round finally made their way to the platform in theory at least, but we’ll have to wait for accessoiy manufacturers to begin supporting these new features. All in all, I thought this was a very solid update for HomeKit. I do fear that this will be the last significant update in iOS 13 in terms of HomeKit features, but I hope I am proven wrong. It’s happened before. Which of the features we talked about are your favorites?  Which ones did we leave out?  Sound off in the comments.  Get more HomeKit news and behind-the-scenes updates regularly on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram @myhomekithome.

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