So, for years I've been fighting HomeKit stability issues with our 4 Apple TVs.
In the Home APP overview page, they would be listed as "No response". Tapping on the the TV, you would see, "This accessory is not responding".
I could still use them, Screen Mirror to them, and AirPlay to them. However, AirPlay was dicey. Sometimes it would say it was playing to them, but you wouldn't hear any sound and the time to connect to it would be 5 or more seconds, rather than the typical 1-2 seconds that it takes to connect to our HomePods. Also, sometimes trying to disconnect once connected was nearly impossible, and all media AirPlayed from an iPhone would stay stuck on that TV until you basically rebooted the iPhone.
Anyway, I finally figured out what was causing it.
What I have done is set up a HomeKit "Home" container with myself as the Owner, and my partner as Admin. All of our smart fan switches, smart outlets, smart light switches, HomePods, and Apple TVs are in this Home container, or so I thought.
There's a weird bug with Apple TV and/or HomeKit that is somewhat insidious. I just set up 3 new Apple TV 4K 2nd gen devices and all of them had the same issue. The previous 1st gen 4K devices all had the same issue, but I never got around to root-causing and fixing it.
Here's what was happening. On all of our TVs, I want my partner's Music library, subscriptions, app downloads, game profile, etc. Basically I want her to always be the default user and her iCloud to be in effect. When I set up the TVs, I use her phone so that everything is seamlessly linked. During the process, we see "Smith Home", which is the HomeKit home we share together, and its associated rooms. I pick the room I want the TV to be in, such as Theater, Living Room, etc, and carry on through the setup prompts. At the end however, the accessory is shown as in the "Smith Home" on my phone, but "Not responding", and connectivity is glitchy as I described above.
What I finally found out is that the devices were also being placed in corresponding "ghost" rooms on her phone in a new HomeKit home container called "My Home". This is not a shared HomeKit home. In this "Home", the accessories are responding fine. Oddly enough, she was the one having most of the connectivity issues overall.
I found a way to fix this, but it's mind-numbingly counter-intuitive. Now we connect to all the Apple TVs quickly, and there's no more hung connections, or muted audio.
I'm half fearful that Apple will read this post and say, oh, that's an unsupported configuration, the Home Owner must be the Default User, and break our setup in tvOS 16... 😂😃😛😫
Anyway, I just thought I'd share this because it was so aggravating, the fix is non-sensical and not likely to be easily found by other affected users, but so far 100% effective.
In the Home APP overview page, they would be listed as "No response". Tapping on the the TV, you would see, "This accessory is not responding".
I could still use them, Screen Mirror to them, and AirPlay to them. However, AirPlay was dicey. Sometimes it would say it was playing to them, but you wouldn't hear any sound and the time to connect to it would be 5 or more seconds, rather than the typical 1-2 seconds that it takes to connect to our HomePods. Also, sometimes trying to disconnect once connected was nearly impossible, and all media AirPlayed from an iPhone would stay stuck on that TV until you basically rebooted the iPhone.
Anyway, I finally figured out what was causing it.
What I have done is set up a HomeKit "Home" container with myself as the Owner, and my partner as Admin. All of our smart fan switches, smart outlets, smart light switches, HomePods, and Apple TVs are in this Home container, or so I thought.
There's a weird bug with Apple TV and/or HomeKit that is somewhat insidious. I just set up 3 new Apple TV 4K 2nd gen devices and all of them had the same issue. The previous 1st gen 4K devices all had the same issue, but I never got around to root-causing and fixing it.
Here's what was happening. On all of our TVs, I want my partner's Music library, subscriptions, app downloads, game profile, etc. Basically I want her to always be the default user and her iCloud to be in effect. When I set up the TVs, I use her phone so that everything is seamlessly linked. During the process, we see "Smith Home", which is the HomeKit home we share together, and its associated rooms. I pick the room I want the TV to be in, such as Theater, Living Room, etc, and carry on through the setup prompts. At the end however, the accessory is shown as in the "Smith Home" on my phone, but "Not responding", and connectivity is glitchy as I described above.
What I finally found out is that the devices were also being placed in corresponding "ghost" rooms on her phone in a new HomeKit home container called "My Home". This is not a shared HomeKit home. In this "Home", the accessories are responding fine. Oddly enough, she was the one having most of the connectivity issues overall.
I found a way to fix this, but it's mind-numbingly counter-intuitive. Now we connect to all the Apple TVs quickly, and there's no more hung connections, or muted audio.
- Reset the TV (or begin setup if new).
- Add the TV using the phone where I'm the Home Owner (my phone).
- Verify that the accessory is added to "Smith Home", whichever room I want.
- Add my partner as an additional user - and this seems to be important - use the iPhone method of adding, not the manual sign in method.
- Delete myself from the TV - now there's no Default User.
- Delete my partner from the TV - now there are no users.
- Re-add my partner to the TV so she's the Default User.
I'm half fearful that Apple will read this post and say, oh, that's an unsupported configuration, the Home Owner must be the Default User, and break our setup in tvOS 16... 😂😃😛😫
Anyway, I just thought I'd share this because it was so aggravating, the fix is non-sensical and not likely to be easily found by other affected users, but so far 100% effective.
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