HomeKit in iOS 14: Face recognition, Apple TV audio, Night Shift for lights

Cupertino, March 10, 2020

Apple's HomeKit smart home framework is expected to receive three major features in iOS 14 and tvOS 14, 9to5Mac learned. Big improvements to AppleKit lighting, cameras and audio TVs are under development for launch this fall.

Night shift for lights

Smart lighting is one of the initial categories within Apple's Smart Home. HomeKit has long had the ability to control the brightness, color and temperature of light and programming through automation and scenes.

New to iOS 14 for HomeKit will be the ability to automatically adjust the light color temperature throughout the day.

Cooler light temperatures are preferred during the day to match the lighting from outside sunlight, but warmer color temperatures are preferred during the night.

Currently, HomeKit allows you to manually adjust color temperature or schedule color temperature changes based on triggers such as daylight or sunset and sunrise, and iOS 14 will take that even further.

The Homekit application

Apple is developing a feature that we can only describe as NightKift for HomeKit lights: the update is expected to include the ability to gradually change the lighting temperature throughout the day, so that changes are more gradual and natural and not affect.

Some smart lights, including LIFX bulbs, already support this feature, but currently require manufacturing applications to run and control not exposed in HomeKit.

Wishful thinking: Apple could probably push HomeKit's light features as a push to sell its own smart bulbs.

HomeKit camcorders

iOS 13 introduced support for HomeKit Secure Video, building on existing smart camera support, with built-in security features such as motion recognition from humans, animals and vehicles.

homekit secure video camera

Apple is expanding the features of the HomeKit camera in iOS 14 with a new face classification feature that will include a person identification feature. HomeKit Secure Video will be updated to not only detect people in general, but also provide notifications about detecting certain people in your family.

HomePod Boxes Apple TV

Finally, 9to5Mac tvOS 14 is expected to include a new permanent audio output option for Apple TV streaming boxes. For example, a user could permanently select HomePod stereo pairs as the default audio output, without manually choosing the AirPlay 2 target each time.

homepod apple tv output

This feature would work great with a smaller, cheaper version of HomePod, and existing Apple TV HomePod users will benefit from the more permanent configuration. HomePod support has gradually improved with Apple TV, but Apple TV may still lose its connection to the HomePod when the smart speaker is used for other tasks.

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