HomeKit HomeKit Invitation Pending

[Itinj24]

Removed my wife from HomeKit because it was causing severe battery drain issues with her iPhone 14 Pro (using 75%+ daily). Was hoping this along with deleting her Home app, then reinstalling and re-adding her would help.

Now when I try to invite her back in, it’s stuck on “Invitation Pending” and she never actually gets the invitation.

All devices on 16.3 running old architecture. I think this update was rushed out just a bit. All the issues I had with the initial 16.0 release have returned tenfold.

Anyone have any tips or what dance the devil prefers, short of smashing all my Apple products with a hammer? Thanks.

 

[dotme]

If Apple is going to make the interface simple and provide no status detail or logging, it probably needs to work because, when it doesn't, the customer has no clue why or what to do about it.

Someone, somewhere, mentioned that they were able to push an invitation through to a spouse using their phone number. No idea how that would look (It's been years since I had to re-invite anyone) but if you can try that, I would - just for grins.

 

[Itinj24]

If Apple is going to make the interface simple and provide no status detail or logging, it probably needs to work because, when it doesn't, the customer has no clue why or what to do about it.

Someone, somewhere, mentioned that they were able to push an invitation through to a spouse using their phone number. No idea how that would look (It's been years since I had to re-invite anyone) but if you can try that, I would - just for grins.

Appreciate the tip. I assumed it needed to be their AppleID email account to get all the voice recognition and AppleTV stuff, etc into HomeKit.

I’m planning on nuking my whole network and HomeKit once the new architecture is re-released. Don’t want to do it prior to since I have a feeling I’d have to do it twice. If this provides a temporary fix until then, I’ll give it a shot. Thanks again 👍🏻

 

[ncsu86]

I have this same issue. All of my devices are now saying "no response" and will not connect. I have restarted all devices several times but nothing seems to work. I just switched over to Homekit a few weeks ago and not real impressed at this point,

 

[Itinj24]

I have this same issue. All of my devices are now saying "no response" and will not connect. I have restarted all devices several times but nothing seems to work. I just switched over to Homekit a few weeks ago and not real impressed at this point,

HomeKit used to be decent. Not the greatest, but decent. iOS 16 completely destroyed it.

 

[kylew1212]

I’ve had success with the following:

1. Remove user from homekit (even if invitation is pending).
2. Reboot all hubs
3. Reboot device sending invitation.
4. Ensure new users device doesn’t already have a home. If so remove it.
5. Reboot users device.
6. Resend invitation and then accept.

I know it’s a lot of reboots but it works for me. I have numerous HomeKit devices, 6 hubs, and multiple other apple products. After this my HomeKit is back to normal on the new architecture.

 

[Itinj24]

I’ve had success with the following:

1. Remove user from homekit (even if invitation is pending).
2. Reboot all hubs
3. Reboot device sending invitation.
4. Ensure new users device doesn’t already have a home. If so remove it.
5. Reboot users device.
6. Resend invitation and then accept.

I know it’s a lot of reboots but it works for me. I have numerous HomeKit devices, 6 hubs, and multiple other apple products. After this my HomeKit is back to normal on the new architecture.

Appreciate that. I’ve done everything except rebooting all the hubs. I’ll give it a shot. I have 25 hubs in total 😬

I wasn’t expecting this to happen since I’m still on the old architecture but I knew this was an issue with the new architecture. Maybe it’s a 16.2/16.3 issue.

Thank you

 

[kylew1212]

Appreciate that. I’ve done everything except rebooting all the hubs. I’ll give it a shot. I have 25 hubs in total 😬

I wasn’t expecting this to happen since I’m still on the old architecture but I knew this was an issue with the new architecture. Maybe it’s a 16.2/16.3 issue.

Thank you

It took iOS 16.3 and the outlined steps for my sharing and location automations to work correctly.

Good luck!

 

[steve123]

Now when I try to invite her back in, it’s stuck on “Invitation Pending” and she never actually gets the invitation.

I have observed that, in my case, invitations that appeared to not be delivered were actually being delivered. In my case, Homekit stopped working one day. I suspect it was the 16.3 update but it may have been an earlier update (was there a 16.2.x?). Anyway, I had to nuke my entire Homekit set up and start over. I was not a happy camper. Nevertheless I spent at least a couple days troubleshooting and rebuilding.

When I tried to invite my wife to the rebuilt home, the invitation was received but when she accepted the invitation, she was given an error about a conflicting home name. I have wiped the home from my phone entirely several times to try and resolve the issue including using the Apple mobile profile that nukes the Homekit database in iCloud. I have also power cycled my phone, her phone, and my hub several times. Nothing I have done has fixed this issue though nuking the database or changing the name of my home made a slight change during the acceptance phase. My wife no longer receives a message about a conflicting home name. Rather, accepting the invitation shows a "joining home" message with spinning gear that eventually disappears, the screen refreshes and taken back to the no home screen.

Along the way I noticed that the invitation notification on her phone displayed an address from the mac.com domain. I thought that was peculiar because I never use that iCloud account when I set up a new device. The Apple ID associated with the iCloud account that I am signed into on all my devices is different because years ago Apple forced everyone off of their mac.com and icloud.com email by insisting that your Apple ID email address could not be the same as your Apple ID. I looked at my contact info on my wife's phone and she had my mac.com address in the contact info along with my other addresses. So, I removed my mac.com address from her contact info. I deleted the invite from my phone and invited her again. After the change to her contact info for me, the invitation notification did not appear on her phone. I did however notice a slight change to the ellipses in the top right corner of her Home screen. When I clicked on the ellipses and selected the Homekit Settings, the invitation appeared on the Homekit Settings screen. The invitation was described here as coming from an unknown source with a warning about accepting an invitation from someone you do not know. When my wife accepts the invitation, the gear spins and the invitation is never completed.

So, I do not have a solution yet but perhaps my experience might shed some light on where to find your missing invitation. If you do find it, I would be interested to know if you are able to accept and then complete the invitation.

 

[Itinj24]

I have observed that, in my case, invitations that appeared to not be delivered were actually being delivered. In my case, Homekit stopped working one day. I suspect it was the 16.3 update but it may have been an earlier update (was there a 16.2.x?). Anyway, I had to nuke my entire Homekit set up and start over. I was not a happy camper. Nevertheless I spent at least a couple days troubleshooting and rebuilding.

When I tried to invite my wife to the rebuilt home, the invitation was received but when she accepted the invitation, she was given an error about a conflicting home name. I have wiped the home from my phone entirely several times to try and resolve the issue including using the Apple mobile profile that nukes the Homekit database in iCloud. I have also power cycled my phone, her phone, and my hub several times. Nothing I have done has fixed this issue though nuking the database or changing the name of my home made a slight change during the acceptance phase. My wife no longer receives a message about a conflicting home name. Rather, accepting the invitation shows a "joining home" message with spinning gear that eventually disappears, the screen refreshes and taken back to the no home screen.

Along the way I noticed that the invitation notification on her phone displayed an address from the mac.com domain. I thought that was peculiar because I never use that iCloud account when I set up a new device. The Apple ID associated with the iCloud account that I am signed into on all my devices is different because years ago Apple forced everyone off of their mac.com and icloud.com email by insisting that your Apple ID email address could not be the same as your Apple ID. I looked at my contact info on my wife's phone and she had my mac.com address in the contact info along with my other addresses. So, I removed my mac.com address from her contact info. I deleted the invite from my phone and invited her again. After the change to her contact info for me, the invitation notification did not appear on her phone. I did however notice a slight change to the ellipses in the top right corner of her Home screen. When I clicked on the ellipses and selected the Homekit Settings, the invitation appeared on the Homekit Settings screen. The invitation was described here as coming from an unknown source with a warning about accepting an invitation from someone you do not know. When my wife accepts the invitation, the gear spins and the invitation is never completed.

So, I do not have a solution yet but perhaps my experience might shed some light on where to find your missing invitation. If you do find it, I would be interested to know if you are able to accept and then complete the invitation.

Wow! I appreciate you sharing your experience. I was planning on nuking my network and HomeKit set up anyway just to freshen things up but it seems that won’t matter anyway. Looks like going to have to wait for 16.4 and the new architecture to see if that fixes it. I know this issue popped up with 16.2 and the new architecture but it seems this was not a problem with the architecture but with 16.2 in general.

 

[steve123]

I know this issue popped up with 16.2 and the new architecture but it seems this was not a problem with the architecture but with 16.2 in general.

I did not explicitely migrate to the "new architecture" but then again, when I nuked my home settings with the mobile profile Apple may initialized my "new" home using the "new architecture". I am not sure if there is a way to figure this out without a call to Apple support. I read somewhere Apple denied making a change to the OS's. So, the change was likely done at their end in the HomeKit backend where they disabled the migrations.

Which brings us back to 16.2. I think you are correct, 16.2 introduced problems with the invitations and that has not been resolved in 16.3.

 

[Itinj24]

I did not explicitely migrate to the "new architecture" but then again, when I nuked my home settings with the mobile profile Apple may initialized my "new" home using the "new architecture". I am not sure if there is a way to figure this out without a call to Apple support. I read somewhere Apple denied making a change to the OS's. So, the change was likely done at their end in the HomeKit backend where they disabled the migrations.

Which brings us back to 16.2. I think you are correct, 16.2 introduced problems with the invitations and that has not been resolved in 16.3.

I never updated to the new architecture. It was pulled before I could update all my Home hubs so it has to be 16.2. I removed my wife from HomeKit because she was having extremely excessive battery drain from HomeKit. Was hoping to just be able to remove her, uninstall the Home app and then put everything back together for her but no dice. Didn’t think I’d face this issue since I was on old architecture.

 

[steve123]

Was hoping to just be able to remove her, uninstall the Home app and then put everything back together for her but no dice.

Interesting development today. My wife's iPhone was behaving weird all day she said. Due to the frustration the phone was rebooted. I restarted mine as well due to some weird wall paper issues that suddenly occurred. I also noticed this evening that sometime between yesterday evening and this evening my account was logged out of my AppleTV. None of this is due to anything done at our end.

Nevertheless, due to the unusual activity I attempted a new invitation. My wife accepted the invitation and like before, after accepting the invitation the Home Screen jumped back to the "no home" screen. Interesting though, when I looked at the status of the invitation on my phone is showed my wife as a "resident". Moreover, I recall the invitation text on my wife's phone showed my actual Apple ID, not the old mac.com domain account it was using before. I had my wife reopen the Home app and viola, our home appeared before our eyes on her phone.

Might be a good time to try adding your wife again.

 

[steve123]

More weird stuff going on. I had a temporary outage of Face ID starting last night to this morning. It just stopped working and started working again on its own. I think there maybe a lot of stuff going on behind the scene on Apple servers. Not sure if Apple has had a breach or if this is all related to fixing HomeKit.

 

[Itinj24]

More weird stuff going on. I had a temporary outage of Face ID starting last night to this morning. It just stopped working and started working again on its own. I think there maybe a lot of stuff going on behind the scene on Apple servers. Not sure if Apple has had a breach or if this is all related to fixing HomeKit.

Appreciate the updates. I tried sending my wife another invitation but same old stuff. Have a feeling this won’t get fixed until 16.4 or the new architecture is released.

 

[NightFox]

Interesting development today. My wife's iPhone was behaving weird all day she said. Due to the frustration the phone was rebooted. I restarted mine as well due to some weird wall paper issues that suddenly occurred. I also noticed this evening that sometime between yesterday evening and this evening my account was logged out of my AppleTV. None of this is due to anything done at our end.

Nevertheless, due to the unusual activity I attempted a new invitation. My wife accepted the invitation and like before, after accepting the invitation the Home Screen jumped back to the "no home" screen. Interesting though, when I looked at the status of the invitation on my phone is showed my wife as a "resident". Moreover, I recall the invitation text on my wife's phone showed my actual Apple ID, not the old mac.com domain account it was using before. I had my wife reopen the Home app and viola, our home appeared before our eyes on her phone.

Might be a good time to try adding your wife again.

I've also seen a few of the same issues you did:

Home said I needed to re-authenticate on one of my Apple TVs (even though I was still logged in on there, I just logged out of iCloud and back in and Home seemed to be happy with that as the message disappeared).

I'm also in the same situation as you where my Apple ID is an email address, but it's not the email address of the Apple ID. Thanks Apple - sometimes I even confuse myself with this, especially now Apple supports custom domain names. Anyway, when I sent the invite to my wife, she didn't get an email but Home app told her she had a invite from (my Apple ID email address), but as this wasn't in her contacts she should be careful in accepting it. Clicking on accept just hung on a spinning icon. All this despite the fact she's a family member in my iCloud account.

I then added this email address to her contacts and resent the invite. This time she did get an email (as well as the invite within Home, without any warning). Clicking the Accept button on the email took her into Home and the invitation acceptance screen, and this time it didn't hang - but just went back to showing an empty home. My own Home app still showed the invitation as 'pending'.

I don't think any of this brings us any further forward, but interesting that you experienced some of the same issues as me. In the meantime, I'll try restarting both phones again and see what happens.

 

[steve123]

Home said I needed to re-authenticate on one of my Apple TVs (even though I was still logged in on there, I just logged out of iCloud and back in and Home seemed to be happy with that as the message disappeared).

I'm also in the same situation as you where my Apple ID is an email address, but it's not the email address of the Apple ID. Thanks Apple - sometimes I even confuse myself with this, especially now Apple supports custom domain names. Anyway, when I sent the invite to my wife, she didn't get an email but Home app told her she had a invite from (my Apple ID email address), but as this wasn't in her contacts she should be careful in accepting it. Clicking on accept just hung on a spinning icon. All this despite the fact she's a family member in my iCloud account.

I then added this email address to her contacts and resent the invite. This time she did get an email (as well as the invite within Home, without any warning). Clicking the Accept button on the email took her into Home and the invitation acceptance screen, and this time it didn't hang - but just went back to showing an empty home. My own Home app still showed the invitation as 'pending'.

I experienced everything you did. I reset my home several times using the Apple mobile profile that nukes the Home config at the backend. When I nuked the profile and restarted the phones the invitations remained pending though. Thinking a bit more, I recall at some point the next day I also (mistakenly) used the Weiser Premis app to reset my home config. The invitation changed from pending to resident sometime after that reset and the additional phone restarts that day as I recall. Perhaps waiting a day or two after nuking the profile made the difference? Or, maybe the Premis app did something the mobile profile did not do. Clearly, something happened at the backend and the address that appeared in the invitation changed to the Apple ID I am signed into on my iPhone and AppleTV. At that point the invitation worked. I was suspicious about the wrong Apple ID from the moment I noticed it. If I had to choose what fixed the problem, I would say this problem has to do with the Apple ID. I think what those invitations are intending to show is an Apple ID, not an email or iMessage address. So, if your invitation is showing an Apple ID that is different than the Apple ID you are signed into on your phone and hub then I think the invitation being accepted is for a home attached to the Apple ID shown in the invitation. I think what was effectively happening was when my wife accepted the invitation with the wrong Apple ID, it joined an (empty) home from an Apple ID that I was not signed into and was not associated with my home. So, I think there is a problem going on with those old Apple email aliases from the mac.com and me.com domains. Somehow my home config was reset with the correct Apple ID but I do not understand how I accomplished that.

 

[ThisIsMyUserNameHere]

Removed my wife from HomeKit because it was causing severe battery drain issues with her iPhone 14 Pro (using 75%+ daily). Was hoping this along with deleting her Home app, then reinstalling and re-adding her would help.

Now when I try to invite her back in, it’s stuck on “Invitation Pending” and she never actually gets the invitation.

All devices on 16.3 running old architecture. I think this update was rushed out just a bit. All the issues I had with the initial 16.0 release have returned tenfold.

Anyone have any tips or what dance the devil prefers, short of smashing all my Apple products with a hammer? Thanks.

If you don't get a homekit invitation, check that iMessages (Settings > Messages > Send & Receive) can be reached by your phone number and your iCloud e-mail address. I've seen it a few times that an invitation was sent to the users e-mail address but in iMessages only the phone number was checked.

 

[Itinj24]

If you don't get a homekit invitation, check that iMessages (Settings > Messages > Send & Receive) can be reached by your phone number and your iCloud e-mail address. I've seen it a few times that an invitation was sent to the users e-mail address but in iMessages only the phone number was checked.

Good call. I’ll check that next time this issue persists but I’m sure it was an iOS 16.2 issue. It was fixed once I updated the new architecture with 16.4.

 

[poocat]

This is a good tip