Siri Is Ruining My Smart Home

I started crafting a smart home around 2012 with a set of Hue bulbs and the first canister-looking Alexa. Now, after years of slowly migrating to fully embrace Apple’s HomeKit, Siri’s inability to turn on and off certain lights reliably is about to burn everything down.

The Problems Keep Spiraling

In baseball parlance, neither Siri nor Apple’s Home app has ever batted 1.000. There have always been times when it wouldn’t turn on or off a connected device. However, sometime around iOS 16.1, as Apple added Matter support to its Home app, the reliability issues in my home became more regular and more noticeable. Compatibility increased, but functionality slipped.

As a resident living and working at home, the degradation has been slow and inconsistent. Lights and devices still work, but the failure rate has been more obvious. In addition to Siri just not performing certain tasks, the Home app constantly shows a rotating list of items that aren’t responding (a long-standing problem before Matter entered the equation).

Now, after several months of the condition worsening, specifically around our kitchen lights—which haven’t been touched in years—my wife is demanding a return to the dumb wall switches. It’s primarily because Siri on a second generation HomePod or HomePod mini (the newest models available) just won’t perform tasks reliably.

Ask once and some lights turn on. Ask again and another one will turn on. Ask a third time, and you might get the final ones to turn on, or nothing will happen. Sometimes they turn on but dimmed. It’s always something different.

There Isn’t One Single Problem (It’s More of a Foundation Concern)

The inconsistency is the insult to the injury. A modern smart home has so many parts that it’s hard to know where to begin.

It even brings up existential questions like: does Siri have the same capabilities across an iPhone, HomePod, Apple TV, and Apple Watch? The first section of Apple’s Siri landing page includes the proclamation, “With the capabilities provided by Apple Intelligence, this year marks the start of a new era for Siri.”

It says, “Available now” with an asterisk. That footnote at the bottom of the page states that “Apple Intelligence is available in beta on all iPhone 16 models…” with “…Additional features…available in early April.” It’s as clear as mud whether the non-Apple Intelligence HomePod is as smart as an iPhone 16. All I know is that the communal HomePods that we all use, including one child without a phone, can’t figure out smart home devices.

I’m focusing on the smart home aspect, but there are lots of examples out there about how Siri’s ability to answer questions and get them right is worsening too.

In an effort to bring peace to my home, I’ve tried most things to make the problems go away. I’ve reset the Apple TV 4K that’s used as the Home hub. I’ve marked that central one as the permanent choice in the settings, instead of letting it drift to other devices.

I’ve looked into all the settings. There’s no silver bullet buried among the menus that will solve my specific issues.

Apple’s Smart Home Ambitions May Be in Trouble

I could buy expensive hardware and re-wire my outlets to be even smarter, but my (temporary) reprieve for the most problematic room has been to move a Google Nest Hub to the kitchen and use that. It’s not perfect either, but its hit rate is much higher than calling on Siri.

Google Nest Hub (2nd Gen)

Affordable, powerful, and compatible with a laundry list of apps, the Google Nest Hub 2nd Generation is an excellent smart display to help you bring order to your home.

The solution is workable because the Google Home app can see all my smart devices. The app is available to use on my iPhone. But that’s the thing. We are an Apple-device family with Macs, Apple Watches, iPads, HomePods, and iPhones. I would prefer to have a unified solution. I’ve already gone down the road of having three different voice assistants in my home and it drove everyone crazy.

There are rumors that the company is on the cusp of releasing at least one home-focused device. It has shifted people around internally to address Apple Intelligence and Siri. Matter, the underpinnings of the new smart home world, is still maturing.

And, sure, if Apple doesn’t get its smart home plans sorted out in 2025, then it will likely lose me as a Home user. I’m sure no one is sweating about that. The bigger concern, at least for Apple, is that people abandon Siri altogether. It’s downright archaic in the face of other chatbots. A reliable large language model (LLM) powered smart speaker for the home is going to be a game-changer. Amazon is hoping Alexa+ can be that.

I can take the pain as an early adopter, but my family keeps reminding me that they didn’t sign up to repeat themselves over and over to a digital assistant. Especially if a completely revamped Siri is delayed, again.