HomeKit Oh no, upgraded to new 16.4 HomeKit architecture and my wife is locked out due to one old device!

[loopy123]

My wife has multiple devices running the last iOS and MacOS but one old MacBook running 11.5.7 that is signed onto her iCloud account.

After the HK upgrade I expected that the old MacBook would be locked out of HomeKit ( not a problem) but it appears due this one old device on my wife's iCloud account ALL her devices are now locked out of our "Home".

When I invite her, I get the invitation on the iPad running 16.4 but after clicking "Accept" nothing happens.
This is absurd, she should be able to use her iOS devices running 16.4 to see the Home.

What can I do? She needs to use iCloud on her MacBook for other services. Apart from buy her a new MacBook.

 

[StumpyBloke]

Sign out of her MacBook and make sure the device is removed from her iCloud account. And try again. Then if it works, sign back into the MacBook.

 

[coredev]

I have the same situation here (MacBook running old OS), but no problems accessing HomeKit from devices running latest OS. 🤔

 

[loopy123]

Yeah, I signed her out of iCloud on that machine and removed the MacBook from iCloud - still having the same problem.

She gets the invitation, accepts, but the Home app just shows her the default home. Signed her out of iCloud and back in again. No difference. HK upgrade hell!

 

[loopy123]

Clearly this problem has nothing to do with my original assumption of old devices.

Invites I send to her appear 50% of the time but accepting does nothing but create an empty Home. I have tried the "Home reset" profile, and although it appears to do what it says , it did not help. Tried signing her out of iCloud.

At one point, I got to a state where after the invitation appeared on her iPad, the Home app said "Joining Home". I was pretty hopeful, then after minutes of the spinning wheel - then "Could not accept invitation" and an empty Home

 

[loopy123]

OK, so even after redoing the whole "scorched earth" policy of deleting "Home" and reseting with the "Reset Home" profiles on both accounts, I was still not able to successfully invite my wife. The invitation would appear, she would accept , and just get a single empty Home and her invitation would show as "pending" in my Home.

The only solution was to "scorch" everything again ( including removing all accounts from our Apple TV Hub), and then make her the "Owner" of the Home and have her invite me. Go figure. 8 hours of my life I will never get back

 

[profets]

I’ve been running into similar issue too. My wife can no longer access the home (3 devices — iPad, iPhone, watch, all updated).

Why did I bother to do the upgrade lol. Even on my devices everything feels slower to load. Damn.

 

[sparky672]

I believe accepting the "new architecture" for HomeKit is part of the individual user's iCloud account, not the devices. In other words, did your wife get an option through her own Home app to upgrade her account to the new architecture as well?

While logged into my iCloud account, I accepted the new architecture, so my iPhone and Apple TV are working with it, but my older Macs are not, as expected.

It's like when they "upgraded" notes and reminders a couple OS's ago... you could no longer share those things with anyone who did not also accept those framework upgrades.

 

[DaveN]

I upgraded my phone and iPad to 16.4 last night but my Mini Mac is running and old OS. HomeKit works on my phone and iPad except that for some reason I can’t get it to connect to the home hub so all the automations are broken. My potential home hubs include old OG HomePods and two AppleTVs one 4K and one the version just before the 4k. I tried signing in via the web to iCloud that didn’t work. I also went through the settings on the phone and iPad. Neither worked. Also tried via the settings on the 4k Apple TV. Frustrating. I didn’t think a .x Upgrade would be such an issue.

Update: Working now. It turned out that the home hubs needed their operating systems updated. So my phone and iPad work but when my sister comes to visit, her devices won’t because they aren’t updated. Anyway, here are the steps that fixed my problem.

Update HomePod - Apple Support

Use the Home app to update the software on your HomePod or HomePod mini.

support.apple.com

 

[loopy123]

I believe accepting the "new architecture" for HomeKit is part of the individual user's iCloud account, not the devices. In other words, did your wife get an option through her own Home app to upgrade her account to the new architecture as well?

While logged into my iCloud account, I accepted the new architecture, so my iPhone and Apple TV are working with it, but my older Macs are not, as expected.

It's like when they "upgraded" notes and reminders a couple OS's ago... you could no longer share those things with anyone who did not also accept those framework upgrades.

I don't believe this to be the case - I could be wrong, of course. But I can't check anymore. My understanding is that the new HK architecture upgrade applies to the "Home" that is owned by the Home owner ( that was me). Once you upgrade the "Home" the HK for that Home is at the new architecture. I never saw an option for my Wife to "upgrade" to the new HK architecture.
The new HK architecture works great now everything is settled, much faster to respond.

 

[sparky672]

I don't believe this to be the case - I could be wrong, of course. But I can't check anymore. My understanding is that the new HK architecture upgrade applies to the "Home" that is owned by the Home owner ( that was me). Once you upgrade the "Home" the HK for that Home is at the new architecture. I never saw an option for my Wife to "upgrade" to the new HK architecture.
The new HK architecture works great now everything is settled, much faster to respond.

I also do not know with 100% certainty. This is all conjecture...

The "new" architecture is a one-way upgrade - no going back. If this was somehow only tied to the user's Home, one could simply delete their Home, start over, and then get the option again; but yet they don't. Also, some users have multiple "Homes" in their HomeKit (Home app), so if the new architecture was tied to each Home, then conceivably one user with two Homes could have one Home upgraded and another Home not upgraded. Then which architecture would that user's HomeKit (Home app) employ? I do not believe any of this to be the case. Therefore I think the HomeKit architecture is tied to the user's iCloud account, which might explain why certain people (still on old architecture) are not getting invitations to be added to a Home. (When I say "Home" in the above, I am not talking about the HomeKit Home app. "Home" is referring to the place or places that you add to the HomeKit Home app.)

It's all been such a mess, buggy as hell, and I could be totally wrong.

EDIT:

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208709#help

The second bullet point reads:

• If Home has been upgraded to the new Home architecture, you must set up a home hub to share control of your home.

This grammar, "if Home", seems to refer to the Home app itself, and since that is installed on a device under a user's account, it's tied to the user. Again... some assumptions on my part.

 

[DaveN]

I also do not know with 100% certainty. This is all conjecture...

The "new" architecture is a one-way upgrade - no going back. If this was somehow only tied to the user's Home, one could simply delete their Home, start over, and then get the option again; but yet they don't. Also, some users have multiple "Homes" in their HomeKit (Home app), so if the new architecture was tied to each Home, then conceivably one user with two Homes could have one Home upgraded and another Home not upgraded. Then which architecture would that user's HomeKit (Home app) employ? I do not believe any of this to be the case. Therefore I think the HomeKit architecture is tied to the user's iCloud account, which might explain why certain people (still on old architecture) are not getting invitations to be added to a Home. (When I say "Home" in the above, I am not talking about the HomeKit Home app. "Home" is referring to the place or places that you add to the HomeKit Home app.)

It's all been such a mess, buggy as hell, and I could be totally wrong.

EDIT:

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208709#help

The second bullet point reads:

• If Home has been upgraded to the new Home architecture, you must set up a home hub to share control of your home.

This grammar, "if Home", seems to refer to the Home app itself, and since that is installed on a device under a user's account, it's tied to the user. Again... some assumptions on my part.

I think you are right that “Home” refers to the Home app as that was exactly my case. When I updated my iPhone and iPad to the latest operating system, my Home app was also updated and I lost access to all my automations. The fix was to update my AppleTVs and HomePods which then updated them to have the new HomeKits in my home hubs.