Discovery: If you have Hue lights and want a single Hue dimmer switch button to *toggle* lights on/off, this is really slow in Apple Home (you need to run an actual Shortcut). In Home Assistant there's just a toggle command that is literally 10x faster. 2.5 seconds -> ~200ms 🥳
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@christianselig Are you aware, that you can bind Zigbee switches directly to lights? Usually it's quicker and the server / bridge that is causing delays is no longer required to be online for switches to work
@sn0opy interesting, have any more details on this? Most of the stuff I’ve seen in the past on this requires using the vendor’s own apps
@christianselig I might've been a bit vague since this requires you to use alternative software and probably even a Zigbee dongle connected to the computer / server in order to tell your Zigbee switch to bind to a bulb directly.
I know that direct binding can be triggered via zigbee2mqtt or Homeasistant's ZHA.
Just leaving these two articles that explain how it works with Z2M or ZHA. Maybe those gives enough details.
https://www.zigbee2mqtt.io/guide/usage/binding.html
https://www.lukefaccin.com/increasing-availability-with-zigbee-bindings/
@christianselig you can then expose said switch to HomeKit and then you're golden
@christianselig HomeKit has always not understood the idea of having a toggle button and I don’t know why
@trevorkay Toggling a light, such a futuristic/nebulous concept!
@christianselig @trevorkay in many ways HomeKit feels like it’s barely moved on from like 5 years ago, at least from the user facing perspective.
@christianselig all my lights are Huw lights, by definition
(Maybe I'm weird, but having a separate button for "on" and "off" seems like the opposite of smart versus having a single button just be a toggle)
@christianselig Also, have you tried Home+? It has options that aren’t exposed in the Home app but still work after being created in Home+.
It looks like you've been struggling today with the conundrum of smart bulbs and smart switches working together (correct me if I'm wrong).
The obvious answer is to use a shelly relay behind your switch in "detached mode" which sends commands to the bulbs through your favorite home automation platform while continuously powering the bulbs so they are awake to receive the commands.
@christianselig Eve smart light switches are one button for both
@stephenrobles Unless I'm misunderstanding you I mean natively through Apple Home, no vendor apps installed. I assume Eve supports that through their app? I don't see any way in the Home app to just purely toggle but would love to be wrong
@christianselig wait maybe I don’t know what you mean. You’re wanting to toggle lights off in the home app, a physical switch, or an automation?
I run into a toggle quite frequently on my iPhone. In this case, you cannot tell the state of the toggle nor any evidence of what it did. I’m not sure what sort of feedback I find to verify the act was done. I reckon I do verify ‘button pushed’
But it is disconcerting each time, and not the way the interaction used to happen.
@christianselig I get this but also you can have the on button cycle through scenes as well so a separate off button is useful in those scenarios 😄
@keir Oh totally I just want *options* lol
@christianselig options are never a bad thing!
Like how in 2026 is this the best way to toggle a light in Apple Home
@christianselig you said you have HA, right? I have all of my smart home devices linked to HA and do all automation there. It’s my backend. Then I use the HomeKit bridge to bridge my devices into HomeKit for my front end Siri use. But all automations happen only in Home Assistant
@eierund yeah I do this now (see parent post) but had some leftover Apple Home ones
@christianselig copy that. And you don’t want to bring those into HA?
@christianselig why not do it in Home Assistant did you have it?
@spitfire I had some leftover ones in Apple Home that I never migrated over, you really shouldn’t need HA just to toggle a light properly via a button haha
@christianselig Apple Home is probably never going to be a good platform for automations
@christianselig
Another approach is to set up 2 Home Automations to conditionally turn on/off the device on button presses. Here's how it looks in the Eve app (which is just acting as a more advanced interface for HomeKit). It's even uglier than having a single shortcut, but button presses almost instantly toggle my light.
@faden yeah my main thing though is I don’t want to install a bunch of vendor specific apps for every accessory I just want to do everything through one app (Apple Home)
@webjac that’s in the shortcuts app, you can’t assign that to an action in the actual Apple Home app
@christianselig that’s actually true. From the Home app what I do is 2 automations, one to turn in, one to turn off. Sucks 🙁
@christianselig The 2x2 and 2x4 Home widgets are okay too. But are more space than a single homescreen con.
@Jackson to be clear I’m just trying to program a real life button in Apple Home haha
@christianselig Is it not possible to do something like this? I have a shortcut that sets the state on specific accessories. One version turns them on, and another turns them off.
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@christianselig because the product team for Home doesn’t use it would be my bet… 😂
@christianselig if you make a shortcut there’s a built in toggle action now
@stephenrobles how do you pair the shortcut to the dimmer button though?
@christianselig @stephenrobles Wondering this as well. That action is only visible in the Shortcuts app and not in the Home app. I’m having to do the same if statements for my wall switches in Apple Home
@christianselig this is the action, you choose the accessory here
@stephenrobles Sorry I’m still not getting it. Are you setting this up in the Shortcuts app or the Home app?
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@christianselig @stephenrobles If the dimmer button is an accessory in the Apple Home, then perhaps a Home Automation that runs the toggle shortcuts action?
@christianselig I just use scenes in Apple Home for sets of lights, and Lutron add-on dimmer switch (no wiring!) that I’ve got set in Hue to toggle to off or last state for sets of lights (effectively on/off).
@christianselig must be a Hue thing. My IKEA smart bulbs are one button toggle on/off without shortcuts.
@JTostitos In Apple Home? You can do this in Hue too if you want to use a bunch of vendor specific apps, I'm talking about doing everything in Apple Home
@christianselig i think I understand what you mean now. You want a physical switch to do both. The IKEA physical button switch has two separate buttons but it routes through their hub.
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@christianselig The latest model has a toggle power button… https://www.philips-hue.com/en-us/p/hue-dimmer-switch-latest-model/046677562779
(I refuse to use it. Old ones were better.)
@dmd Yeah that's the one I have, but it doesn't toggle if you use Apple Home, you can only assign it to either on or off
@christianselig I use that one and have no problem with it toggling on/off. However, I have it set up just in the Hue app. The light is in Apple Home.
@hooliews Yeah I don't have the Hue app installed (I don't want a bunch of vendor specific apps for my home, I just one one place)
@christianselig @stephenrobles Yeah toggle action in shortcuts, I misunderstood what you were after. I can’t see any way to toggle from a button directly in the home app.
@vanitalo @stephenrobles that’s in the shortcuts app explicitly right? I don’t believe you can do it through Apple Home