The Best Smart Home Setup for 2024: HomeKit & Home Assistant

By combining HomeKit and Home Assistant, you can get the best of both worlds! In this video I walk through the strengths of each platform and I show you how to use these two systems in tandem.
00:00 Intro
00:52 HomeKit Strengths
01:52 Home Assistant Strengths
03:11 Setting up Home Assistant's Bridge
05:12 Setting up HomeKit
Relevant links:
- Getting started with Home Assistant: www.home-assistant.io/getting...

[@FutureSmartHome]

A few videos you might enjoy! - Smart Kitchen kzbin.info/www/bejne/sHm6hoqfndObaa8 - Smart Theater kzbin.info/www/bejne/joXWZJeDZaqGp5I - Smart Home Maintenance Reminders kzbin.info/www/bejne/epm4Y32tZ5Kippo

[@johnm9767]

Thank you! Have home kit now and didn’t want to have to sell HA to my wife. Knowing she can just keep using the home app makes all the difference.

[@FutureSmartHome]

Best of both worlds for sure! Thanks for watching.

[@boleric]

Thanks for this. Exactly the setup I want to do.

[@FutureSmartHome]

Glad to hear it!

[@chazdahda1058]

Thank you for this. I will be using this next week when I set up HASS to run our smart home. I’ll slowly be switching from Amazon to Apple because of this and other recommendations!

[@FutureSmartHome]

Great to hear it! Thanks for watching and good luck!

[@TheOliop]

Great explanation! Well done! Thanks!

[@FutureSmartHome]

Glad it was helpful!

[@simonsayshomeassistant]

Great video mate, welcome to the smarthome creator network!

[@FutureSmartHome]

Thank you!!

[@donpowers6033]

Just stumbled across your channel and appreciated the video because what you describe is exactly how I function. Got frustrated with limitations to building automations in HomeKit so took the plunge with Home Assistant and have never looked back. Like you my wife would run the other way from HA so I keep a suite of basic automations in HK and build the stuff that requires some heft in HA (far and away most of my automations). The other nice thing about HA is that it exposes far more features in devices (Aqara is a great example) than HK does reducing the number of devices required for many automations. Love the Apple ecosystem but Apple builds their smart home platform for the masses (which I get) rather than for those of use who want to be power users.

[@FutureSmartHome]

Glad you found it! Totally agree with your points.

[@abrindeyev]

Hi Don! Thanks for sharing! I have Aqara devices (most of them unused). Have you found a way to connect to them locally without hooking them up to their cloud? I'm also curious to know what features the HA integration adds to Aqara.

[@donpowers6033]

@@abrindeyev most of my Aqara devices are added to HA via Zigbee2MQTT using a Sonoff Zigbee coordinator. Does not involve an Aqara hub so no cloud. This approach exposes most everything that the Aqara devices have to offer (e.g. light sensors on their motion sensors). If a feature is available in the sensor more often than not it is exposed in HA via Z2M. Generally this works great except that I have not found that OTA firmware updates to be all that reliable. Even so, as long as the senors work I do not worry about it.

[@simonknight2973]

Thanks for the video. Nice summary. I used to use Alexa (echo voice clients), Home Assistant (automations) and HomeKit (mobile client) but have stopped maintaining HomeKit for about 6 months. I was getting very bad battery drain from devices constantly trying to reconnect on my iPad. Also, I found the requirement to add a new bridge for cameras, locks, media players (to make use of their full feature set) and so on quite confusing and difficult to maintain. Any idea if this is still needed? I couldn’t see it covered in your video.

[@FutureSmartHome]

I haven’t experienced any noticeable battery drain but will keep an eye out. And yes, cameras require a bit of trickery. I have nest cameras so mostly use the nest app.

[@olivier6681]

great video thx for all, my wife = homekit :)

[@FutureSmartHome]

Glad you liked it! Thanks for watching

[@scottskidmore8424]

I’m so glad I found you, and I'm looking forward to seeing all your videos. I’ve never used Home Assistant and am looking forward to trying it. What do I do if I already have things in HomeKit? Do I have to delete them and re-have them into HomeKit through Home Assistant?

[@FutureSmartHome]

Thanks for the kind words! Yes once you get home assistant set up you need to delete and add there.

[@mdfavero007]

This is great! Have you had any luck connecting Sonos through home assistant? That’ll be the next thing I look up. I’m trying to set up a permanent iPad in my kitchen to control music and automations and make it simple enough for my wife to use. Thank you for putting this video together. I’m excited to see more

[@FutureSmartHome]

I do have Sonos connected, it works well! AirPlay also might be sufficient for your needs from an audio standpoint.

[@FutureSmartHome]

And thanks for watching!

[@mdfavero007]

@@FutureSmartHome it’s such a proprietary interface, the AirPlay solution may just be best. I’ll dig into home assistant + Sonos and see which might be better for me. Thx for the content!

[@johnvanzyl4420]

Hi There. I am still very new to Home Assistant (Day 2) lol, but I have been building my HK smart home over the last 2 years. I have managed to get my Yeelights and my Govee lights into Home Assistant and they are working great. NOW I have a really NOOB question..... So I should rather load my devices directly into home assistant instead of HK and then by using the bridge get all of my devices into Home Kit? Thanks for the Video. 👍

[@FutureSmartHome]

Exactly!

[@chilson88]

Oh this is nice, now I want to set this up. When doing the bridge can you select all the options or go with the given selected options?

[@FutureSmartHome]

Very configurable. You can send over whatever you want.

[@JayLewis70]

I’m just getting started with home assistant and would love to implement your dual solution here, but can you please help me understand if I need to buy a HomeKit bridge too? I’m overwhelmed at all the usb adapters that it seems like I need to buy (zigbee, Z wave, Bluetooth, etc). I probably have too many adapters already because of my confusion. Thanks for your help!

[@FutureSmartHome]

It can be totally overwhelming. You don’t need to buy a HomeKit bridge. If you watch the video you will see it is just a built in component to home assistant. So, nothing to buy!

[@erikrose7041]

Would you still need a home pod mini to be able to control devices away from home?

[@FutureSmartHome]

Yes or an Apple TV

[@loganboyd]

What about making scenes in HomeKit and then triggering those scenes from Home Assistant. Or what happens if you add a new device to HomeKit and NOT to Home Assistant. Will it be visible to HA via the HK bridge?

[@FutureSmartHome]

HA is only aware of devices added to HA. Scenes in HK can’t be triggered by HA I don’t think. But you can trigger HA Scenes from HomeKit

[@simonsayshomeassistant]

Great video mate! Awesome to see another new Home Assistant youtuber. Let me know if you would like to come on my show as a guest!

[@FutureSmartHome]

Thank you so much for the kind words!! I’ve been subscribed to you for a while. Would love to come on the show, but maybe in a bit, need to build back up some momentum after taking a month off. The YT algorithmic gods did not like that gap 😂

[@simonsayshomeassistant]

@@FutureSmartHome Hehe good for you, give me a shout when you are ready!

[@CJBoom2012]

This is so helpful! Do you use HA green or yellow? which one should I get? Thx!

[@FutureSmartHome]

I actually run HA on a Virtual Machine on my Mac Mini. I had an old one I wasn’t using. But both of those are great options!

[@CesarGamino]

@@FutureSmartHome Did you create a video with steps doing this? This is EXACTLY what I'd like to do with an old Mac Mini. Just found your channel!

[@Isaac_kaufman]

Trying to figure out how to set this stuff up. If you integrate home assistant to HomeKit, does any of the data go through the apple cloud? Or is everything still local

[@FutureSmartHome]

It does go to Apple cloud in the sense that I can remote in to my home when I’m away through the Home app. Also I can share my home with others and they can control the home. If you are local, it’ll communicate locally.

[@A456GHk67]

Do you need a apple home hub to remote control?

[@FutureSmartHome]

@A456GHk67 yes if you want to remote via Apple Home app. No if you just want to use home assistant.

[@tdafan100]

Do you have remote access through HomeKit when you set it up this way?

[@FutureSmartHome]

Yes!

[@nmfireman]

I have been using automations for years using Alexa. I would like to transition to Home assistant can you do something on using Alexa with home assistant. Like your channel just discovered it today.

[@FutureSmartHome]

Hey thanks so much for watching! I'm not personally in the Alexa ecosystem so it would be a bit hard for me to do that at this moment, BUT if the channel continues to grow, that may change.

[@ZenoGotWet]

So as an Android and HA user, do I need home kit? So far on my new install I have two homekit items shown up in HA but they also show as WiFi devices. What does homekit give an android user?

[@FutureSmartHome]

HomeKit doesn’t give you anything as an android user - however you do get to add HomeKit devices to Home Assistant. Then you can do a similar thing and publish your HomeKit devices to Google Assistant

[@dkNian]

Hi. Nice video! I’m also new to HA. I’m currently running HAOS on a pi4. With HK bridge setup I can control via my iPhone Home app. But what if I need to share that Home to another iPhone users that’s within my family? Do I definitely need to buy a home hub (Apple TV/apple HomePod) in order to allow me to share to others? Thanks.

[@FutureSmartHome]

I believe you do need to have an Apple approved hub that facilitates iCloud sharing. Which is a bummer. But get an Apple TV they are great for lots of other reasons!

[@dkNian]

@@FutureSmartHome Thanks for the reply! Will try to search one and try it out. Should had tried the concept before they droppped the iPad as HomeKit hub.

[@FutureSmartHome]

@dkNian that was a bummer for sure. iPad was so easy! Thanks for watching!

[@stef27765]

@FutureSmartHome: Does it also work when my smart home is based on matter and I'm using Matter Thread in combination with a Homepod? How would I do that? Do I need Homebridge for that? I assume no: Because HomeAssistant and Homekit both speak Matter. Am I right?

[@FutureSmartHome]

You are correct!

[@raymondlabrie672]

Hello, What you do when your HomeKit is already up for years and have multiples devices already programmed into it?

[@cooldispatch]

Simply delete duplicates. The very same bulb will be listed several times if you are feeding HK from the several sources.

[@FutureSmartHome]

You can still add Home Assistant as a new bridge but you will get duplicates. So it’s not overwhelming you could start with one room at a time and within Home Assistant only import devices from that room by selectively including only those devices.

[@beauthompson5338]

hi what hardware do you like to run ha on?

[@FutureSmartHome]

Currently using an old Mac mini I had.

[@lanreadelowo]

I am trying to switch to Sonos speakers instead of the HomePod ( connectivity issues are driving me crazy ). Does this make any sense?

[@FutureSmartHome]

For sure. Check out my video on Smart Home Theater setup. I have Sonos as well!

[@lanreadelowo]

thanks!@@FutureSmartHome

[@JasonOJX]

Is aqara smart H1 switch able to control yeelight in this way? :)

[@FutureSmartHome]

I would think so!

[@opiatesmile]

I asked this in another video of yours, but what do I do if all or most of my devices are already in Homekit but I want to start using Home Assistant so that I can take advantage of the automations? Do I follow these same steps?

[@FutureSmartHome]

Set up HA first, then maybe go one room at a time and remove from HomeKit, add to HA, then mirror back from HA to HK using the bridge in HA

[@opiatesmile]

@@FutureSmartHomeWow it really has to be done that way? That's a bummer. Feels like a lot of work. Thanks for responding.

[@FutureSmartHome]

@opiatesmile you could do it all at once! But I figured room by room might make it less daunting. But yeah you have to unpair and then repair.

[@jrbarker7362]

"You should add devices to home assistant, not Homekit" - I have just installed Home Assistant for the first time. I currently use Homekit. Does this mean that I should be removing my entire home from Homekit, then add them to Home Assistant, and then expose them to Homekit? Will the thread network still work if its done this way?

[@FutureSmartHome]

Yes to all. That’s what I did. Unpaired everything and added to home assistant, then re-added to Home app. Though I’d caveat some things aren’t supported fully, cameras & media devices. I think I talked about this in the video or some commenters mention it. You could keep those in Apple Home directly.

[@jrbarker7362]

@@FutureSmartHome Sounds good, Thank you!

[@ReemOsman]

So am I correct in understanding nothing should be added directly to homekit, but all through home assistant?

[@FutureSmartHome]

Correct. There are a few devices you may end up wanting to add directly, locks & cameras are sometimes problematic passing through to HK from HA but in general adding direct to HA first is the way to go! Thanks for watching!

[@mikedrennan5827]

Yeah I’m trying to set up a Yale lock HomeKit module in HA (which I previously had added directly to HomeKit). No matter what I do it isn’t discovered in HA. 😢

[@FutureSmartHome]

@@mikedrennan5827 that sucks! I’m sorry! 😢

[@Switchrunner23]

Can you add a Google only device in home assistant and bring them into home kit? 🤔

[@FutureSmartHome]

Yes!

[@loganabbott9150]

A lot of weird stuff going on with some devices coming from home assistant to homekit. I have a few devices that you click on in homekit and then within that there are 3 or 4 more switches named the same thing. 🤷‍♂️

[@FutureSmartHome]

Hmm haven’t experienced that myself. What devices?

[@loganabbott9150]

@FutureSmartHome mostly media players that get weird. I guess you need to add a second bridge for locks, cameras, and media players and then you have to add them as accesory!