Frequently asked questions

Yes. HomeCare reads your home through Apple’s own HomeKit framework, so it sees every accessory the Home app sees — including bridge-connected devices from Philips Hue, Aqara, Eve, LIFX, Meross and Netatmo. It identifies each accessory type and picks a safe test method for it, so testing a lock does not unlock your door.

No. HomeCare is a one-time purchase of $9.99 with no subscription and no in-app purchases. Every feature — diagnostics, background monitoring, performance benchmarks, the logs viewer, scene and automation testing, and all export tools — is included.

No. All diagnostics run locally on your iPhone or iPad. Your accessory names, rooms, scenes and automations never leave the device. There is no account to create and no server holding a copy of your home.

HomeCare tells you precisely which accessory failed, when it was last online, and which scenes and automations depend on it, then shows the troubleshooting steps for that device type. The actual fix — power-cycling, re-pairing, moving the accessory closer to a hub — still happens on the accessory itself. What HomeCare removes is the guesswork about which device to work on.

An iPhone or iPad running iOS or iPadOS 16.0 or later, and permission to access your Home data. It also runs on Apple Silicon Macs and Apple Vision Pro through iPad app compatibility.

No. HomeCare works without a home hub, and will report the hub as unavailable. A hub is required for automations, remote access and most sensor triggers in HomeKit itself, so HomeCare checks its status as part of every scan.

“No Response” means your iPhone could not reach the accessory over the local network within HomeKit’s timeout — not that the accessory is off. The three usual causes are the accessory dropping off Wi-Fi, the home hub losing its connection, and the router isolating devices from each other (often through AP isolation or a split 2.4/5 GHz band). Because the accessory itself may still be working on its own app, the Home app’s label is frequently blamed on the wrong device.

One is enough to make HomeKit work; two or more add resilience, because HomeKit elects a primary hub and falls back to another if it disappears. Mixing hub types is fine — a HomePod mini and an Apple TV can coexist. What matters more than the count is that at least one hub is wired or on a strong, stable Wi-Fi connection, since every automation and remote command routes through it.

Yes, provided the accessory is added to your Home. HomeCare works at the HomeKit layer, so a Matter accessory paired into Apple Home appears and is tested exactly like any other. Thread accessories are reached through their border router, which means a Thread device that fails a HomeCare test often points at the border router rather than the accessory.

Yes — that is what the Automation Tester and Automation Health tools are for. The tester runs each action of an automation individually and reports which one fails, while Automation Health separately scans for broken triggers, conditions and actions, such as a step that still references an accessory you deleted months ago.