Take Control of Apple Home Automation

Set Scenes

As your accessory collection grows, home automation can go from being a novelty to a pain—constantly tinkering with accessories gets tiresome. Thankfully, HomeKit offers shortcuts, called scenes, that let you combine actions. For example, you could have a scene called Good Morning that turns on all of your lights, a scene called Leave Home that turns off your lights and turns down the thermostat, and a silly party scene that turns your living room red.

I argue that scenes are the most important aspect of home automation, and now that you’re thoroughly familiar with the basics of HomeKit, it’s time to learn about this powerful—and perhaps even life-changing—aspect.

Creating scenes is easy. Figuring out the right scenes to make is the ...