I have 2 white switches. Along with 2 Eve outlets and a single Eve motion they are my only matter accessories in my Apple HomeKit setup. Yesterday when I upgraded my latest gen Apple TV to TVOS 26 the 2 Inovelli matter switches and the 3 Eve matter outlets/motion all became unavailable. They are the only devices that are affected and also the only matter communicating devices I have. I’ve also upgraded my other Apple TV, 2 Homepods (most recent gen) and 1 HomePod mini to OS 26. If I reboot the Apple TV hub the matter devices remain unavailable although the count of how long they have been unavailable starts counting over. I’ve tried power cycling all 5 of these matter devices as well. It appears TVOS 26.0 in my case has completely broken my matter network.
Yikes. Having broken a matter network and home assistant instance I feel your pain. I have been mostly stable for 6 months using Apple home as the backbone and sharing devices to home assistant with multi admin pairing. The few times I’ve had a device drop off without coming back on (2 inovelli white fan canopy modules) I have been able to remove them, reset them and re-add them. I don’t want to have to start all over again, thanks for the heads up. I have reported an issue to Apple before (probably 6 months at this point) and heard that the iOS 26 update may have fixed it. They may be able to help you with tvos26 issues
Same here. My switches were ok but my fan modules had to be removed from homekit and factory reset
VTM36 seems to have problems with thread network that don’t impact the VTM31
See here VTM36 - White/Matter Fan/Canopy Module becomes unresponsize
For those that are having issues, had you already upgraded the Apple Home? The new architecture was a requirement at this point, so if you had create the Home a few years ago but not upgraded it, maybe it’s related to that.
I may have a similar issue. Never considered it would be related to a tvOS update, but it does seem to have started at about the right time. I have both Apple TV and Home Assistant Yellow as border routers, and I’ve had to put a smart plug on the Apple TV and kill it after I finish watching just to be sure my Thread network won’t collapse overnight and break my wakeup automations!
I have 12 white dimmer switches, multiple Aquara security devices, three matter AC thermostats with border routers built in, too many small matter devices to count, and two home pod minis controlling the home alongside an M2 Aquara hub for my border routers. Whew… thats a lot.
After I upgraded to iOS and OSX 26 I found some of the switches to be non-responsive - similar to the OP’s problem albeit at a bigger scale and no Apple TV. My solution:
- Reset the faulty switches, and remove from Apple Home
- Reset home pod mini #1 and remove from Apple Home
- Re-add home pod mini #1
- Reset home pod mini #2 and remove from Apple Home
- Re-add home pod mini #2
- Re-add the errant switches, and restore to any necessary automations
This solved the problem for me, everything is working great now.
PS: I noticed big improvements to how buttons and the LED Bar are displayed in the UX. I like the lights to be displayed in the Home View only, hiding all other features. I found that I had to reset all of the switches and re-add them to simplify setup, a minor inconvenience to maximize how I want lights to appear.
I finally just bit the bullet and deleted my Inovelli and Eve matter devices. Each then added back to HomeKit without issue. It was just a pain to go back and create all the Inovelli white switch button assignments and then edit/correct all automations that referenced these matter devices as deleting them left holes in the automations. Everything has been rock solid again for 2 weeks since doing that.