I’m getting my home outfitted with smarthome devices in Apple Homekit but they keep being assigned to “Default Room”. I hate it. How do I assign them to the correct rooms?
There’s quite a competition for smarthome devices and control systems happening right now, which is a bit of a mixed blessing. On the one hand we’re seeing lots of progress and development as each company tries to achieve dominance, but it also makes for a fragmented end system. I know because my smart home is comprised of a variety of different “smart” devices that don’t talk to each other. My thermostat doesn’t know if my garage door opens, and my window sensors don’t know if I am driving up the street, parked in the driveway, or 100 miles away for the night.
One of the companies competing in this space is Apple and after a number of iterations, its HomeKit system is really starting to show some promise. Very much still a work in progress, the features and functionality are nonetheless pointing to just how smart your home can be in a few years or so. It’s amazing: we have self-driving cars but we can’t figure out how to have our home devices talk to each other!
The Homekit (or just “Home”) app is definitely one area where there’s room for improvement, and you are seeing it when your devices are all being assigned to “Default Room”. My Schlage Sense lock is the same: When I added it to HomeKit, I got these sort of alerts:
Since I don’t live in a default house, I’m pretty sure I don’t want “Default Room” as the assigned room!
To change it, launch the “Home” app on your iOS device. It’ll show all your known HomeKit devices and sensors:
Here’s where it gets tricky. Tap on the device and it’ll change state. In the case of a deadbolt it’ll lock / unlock based on the current state of the lock. Instead, force-press (that is, push on the icon a bit harder than a regular tap) and a manual control widget appears:
Again, here’s where the interface is a bit weird. Do I really need a lock widget that’s 80% the size of my iPhone 7 screen? Probably not. Still, notice on the very top it shows the current state of the deadbolt device, and on the bottom is a button that you actually want to tap: “Details“. Tap on Details…
Ah ha! Here’s all the info that should be easier to find (in my opinion, at least) so you can set things up properly. In this instance, it’s the Location that we want to change, so tap on the “Location” line on the interface.
Notice I have no actual rooms set up yet. No worries, that’s what “Create New” is for. Tap it, and enter a desired room name. I’m going to use “Front Room” for this particular smart device:
A tap on “Save” in the top right corner and it’s all set up as I desire.
In fact, now on the home screen of the Home app, it shows the correct location for the deadbolt:
Pretty darn cool, actually. And it’s reasonable to expect it’ll take some effort to get your sensors and smart home configured to your liking. I just don’t know why Apple is hiding some of this behind force-touch gestures. But now you know!