Hmm how come they can’t add a local configuration to not expose the indicator to HomeKit? Clearly, there may be technical challenges that exist, but in theory could it not be done over firmware?
Valid point, didn’t think of it like that, but i believe because It’s classified as a matter endpoint it can’t be toggled like that. Would probably have to be removed completely, set, and re-adopted. Will cause a lot of complications. This switch is already a huge complain point from so many nontechnical people who expect the small company to make accommodations because the big company won’t fix their trash.
1 Like
You ain’t wrong… 
I don’t like being “that guy” as my primary setup is apple home with deficiencies made up with home assistant but Apple is very lackluster with the HomeKit platform. It’s the best of the “major 3” just due to the offline availability aspect but it’s absolutely trash how handicapped they leave you.
Consider the fact that they’re part of the Matter standard decisions yet 1.4 is out but they still haven’t implemented 1.2 fully. It’s a disgrace how buggy of a mess iOS has become all in rush to catch up with AI which they’re still failing at.
For these reasons, I am 100% against inovelli needing to do any additional work to accommodate a trillion dollar company.
People that are not satisfied with apples decisions should share feedback with Apple to get it fixed or set up home assistant and only export the light to Apple home and not all the endpoints.
Only thing inovelli needs to do is continue innovating and making the best switches on the market.
1 Like
I have to say I disagree with you. I’ve seen multiple smaller tech companies over the years take the view that they have a better product (features the “big guy” has not thought about etc), comply with standards and so the “big guy” in the sandbox needs to change their stuff to match them and the “smaller guys” customers will have to wait wait for the functionality that they want until the “big guy” fixes their “stuff”. In all of those cases (that I’m aware of) those small companies have suffered at a result.
One of the issues that the “big guy” faces in any segment is the huge number of calls on their development resources all pulling in differing directions. As a result they typically do not have much more “free” resources to change their existing products than the “smaller guy”. I’ve worked for both massive industry leaders in their field and startups and the net abilities to fix an issue of this type are rather similar. As an example it took Apple two years to add the ability to define a primary “Home Hub” even though they were “beaten” by a much wider selection of users than I believe they will see pressure from in our case). This wasn’t because they didn’t “get it” they just have massive calls on their resources (like the regulatory authorities in the EC wanting a different feature set on one of their major products than the ROW).
IMHO its the role of the smaller guy in a segment to give their customers what they ask for if it is reasonable and doable (even if as a result they have to work around the “big guys” limitations). That way, customers do not wander off and buy a simpler (cheaper) product due to frustration with the complexities of the smaller guys (much better) product and never come back to that supplier even if if the issues that drove them away get fixed.
Getting (finally) to (my view of) a potential solution that meets the goals of not hobbling the product for the users who want all of the features (or are willing like you and I to use another product (Home Assistant) to make things work the way they want) but give the users who just want to use Apple Home or Alexa to control simple lights/switches/fans what they want also.
I agree with you that based on my limited reading of the Matter spec that there is no way that I can see to change an option in a white switch and make (say) the light bar disappear from Matter (and hence Apple Home) once the device has been commissioned.
However, I don’t see any reason why an option could not be added to the firmware that needs to be set in the switch PRIOR to commissioning (ie prior to adding the device to Apple Home) that would result in the switch not commissioning the light bar element (or the programmable switch element for that matter) at all when the device is added to Apple Home. This would mean that if a user forgets to do this step and adds the switch to Apple Home before they configure the light bar off they would need to remove the switch from Apple Home, factory reset it and start again. I really do not see that as a problem if the documentation is clear enough and it is better than the alternative (where we are today).
@CroVlado I understand your point of principle here, however I think that it is counter productive in this case. I don’t think Inovelli wants the frustrated customers from this thread (and others on this site) to simply “go away” and find another vendor (since if they want to grow to their potential they need all of them). I also think that the number of customers who will use HA to “fix” the issues in the short term (which could maybe be as long as waiting for iOS 25 as you said above) are limited and hence if Inovelli wants to grow as fast as I think them capable of they will need to be innovative in how they handle the current disparity between expectation and reality.
I hope that the above makes some sense to you.
3 Likes
Not attempting to insult you but that is a boot-licking point of view regardless of who you’ve worked for. Apple cares more about constant profits than it does to it innovate because they are betting on the fact that 95% of their user base will not switch away no matter what they do. People will cry and moan as they all do behind a keyboard but nobody is about action.
No matter what their current focus is, when there is pressure to do something they have a lot more resources than a small guy in terms of cash flow to hire more devs even if temporary to focus on one thing. You brought it up yourself, two years to implement a choice for a main hub, like what? How many years have people been crying about limited “icons” to allow customization of entities in the home app. What about better automation so you don’t have to pay for 3rd party HomeKit apps?
Quite literally half of making HomeKit work is using workarounds with 3rd party apps and utilities such as homebridge, but we draw the line at home assistant and inovelli? Give me a break.
I don’t care who it is. You don’t want to fix your garbage, nobody should be fixing it for you. It’s not just Apple, this is any huge industry who believes it’s too big to fail. It’s the same people that cry and moan that continue you speak with their wallet encouraging the behavior. You don’t see Lutron or Philips changing their devices because people cry about hubs and proprietary this and that, and prices. Why? Because they’re leaders in their market.
So 10 years of HomeKit and 10 years of Apple telling you to shove it, we’ll do it when we want to, and you dealing with it, yet here we are with pitchforks for the small company to change their firmware and products to make due.
Delusional.
Inovelli has been around before the white series and will continue to exist regardless of the impatient few that refuse to check out reviews or read about the product first and then complain that it doesn’t work exactly the way they want it to. Inovelli neck deep in development on new switches and IF they have time to implement this into the firmware at some point, cool, but that absolutely should NOT be a priority.
Again for the impatient, there is home assistant. It has come a long way, implementing it has become quite trivial. Otherwise just wait. I welcome anybody on here to show me the same amount of attention you’re giving Apple in their “feedback” or Apple support forums for the lackluster effort they put into HomeKit.
I mean no offense to anyone, just seems several people need a reality check.
Nobody’s here with pitchforks for Inovelli - it’s just a simple suggestion for something they could do to make a bad situation better. Inovelli can choose whether they want to take it or not. From what I’ve seen so far, they seem to appreciate the feedback.
Persistently arguing that the suggestion should not even be made seems unconstructive and contrary to the spirit of community feedback that Inovelli has tried to cultivate. And adding insults to the conversation is definitely not helping.
3 Likes
Unfortunately, this is very annoying with multiple switches and persists with iOS 18.2 It took me a while to realize what was going on as I was trying to streamline my multiple switches configuration.
Opened this case 16208510 because I cannot see case 13566249 to add a comment there.
Here’s the feedback I submitted to Apple for the issue of Siri control, if anyone else wants to submit something similar: https://feedbackassistant.apple.com/
Title: Siri should ignore devices set to “Exclude from Summaries”
This device includes 2 light endpoints - one of which is a “status/notification” light. If I tell Siri to “turn on/off the lights” I want the status light to be ignored.
The “Exclude from Summaries” option would be perfect for this use case. Siri should only control lights which are shown in the “Lights Summary.”
1 Like
Chiming in to say that I’d really, really like to see Inovelli offer an option to turn off the light bar for Homekit environments. I have 15 white switches and this situation forced me to install Home Assistant. I enjoy HA, but am not loving that it just entirely forgot my entire network of switches, and I now have to reconfigure them through two platforms (HA, then bridging to HK). I’d love for this to be resolved in a future firmware update.
I went all-in with White Series switches in my Apple Home a few months ago. Overall I’ve been happy with the switches, and the LED bars do not hinder control of my home… I do use the LED bars to indicate open doors and such, so they’re handy for me. By choosing to Show as Separate Tiles I keep the LED bar as a separate control in the room view and it’s mostly out of my way.
But I’ve experienced a new problem lately, wondering if you guys are seeing it too: The Programmable Switch tiles have recently populated in my Home View and I can’t hide them. They really clutter up the view. Has anybody figured out a work-around for this?
I have an older iPad running iOS 16.7.10 which doesn’t exhibit this behavior, so I’m thinking is a recent change on the Apple side.
hi Von! I have the exact same ‘problem’ with the ‘programable switch tile’ showing up on my Apple Home Screen. It only started happening as soon as iOS 18.2 released so it seems like an Apple issue. I even went to iOS 18.3 dev betas and the problem still exists there. I am waiting for it to get resolved by Apple. Thanks!
I really wanted to love these switches. I had high hopes. I thought, finally, a smart switch that actually works with Matter + Thread. But… I feel like they just over-engineered the hell out of these things. I don’t need a light bar that does a little dance every time I turn the lights on. I just want Siri to turn the lights on without fuss.
Honestly, I’d happily let go of the whole LED light bar thing if it meant these would just work like… you know, switches. That’s all I need—simple, reliable switches that turn off the lights when I say “Siri, turn off the lights”. Instead, I’m over here trying to explain to my family why our lights are either stuck in disco mode or completely ignoring us. It’s becoming this weird relationship where I’m begging my own house to cooperate.
I replaced almost all the switches in my house with these, and now I’m sitting here wondering if I should just cut my losses and return them before I lose my mind. It’s like I signed up for an easy smart home upgrade, and instead, I got a part-time job troubleshooting light bars.
@VonSquid – same thing here. I joined up on the Community today for this very reason. I’d been holding off on macOS and iOS upgrades. I’ve done one macOS upgrade to 15.2 and the same clutter appears. I have 10 Whites deployed, with about 5 more to do once I have the budget, in a house that was rewired for copper (old house, previously aluminum) with these switches in mind and the Apple side of the equation has been a headache for all the reasons cited in this thread. I’m in the IT space for “a lot of years” and within the Apple ecosystem since the Apple IIe I had as a kid and this experience has been… disheartening. If you haven’t done it already, file some feedback with Apple. Hopefully they can deal with the shortcomings long before iOS 42. Until then… it’s probably HomeAssistant.
The reality is that Apple iOS Home does a poor job at home device management and Apple has not progressed it much for years. There is an inexpensive solution which is to use Home Assistant, pair the devices to Home Assistant, and use Home Assistant’s Homekit bridge to export just the light devices back to Apple. Basically, you can bridge back just the load control, or the RGB bar, or both, but by bridging them using HomeAssistant, Apple iOS then lets you separate the load control from the RGB bar and place them in separate rooms, which solves the Siri problem since “turn on lights in room X” will no longer affect the RGB bar since it can be in a different room. Its all local and speed is quite fast (no notable difference from direct pairing). or don’t even bridge back the RGB bar (I control them exclusively from HomeAssistant since the HomeAssistant automations are much more powerful)
Its much easier than it sounds and works really well. Sure, we shouldn’t have to do this if Apple would fix their software (with specific problems that if a device has multiple endpoint, you should not be forced to have them all in the same room, and there should be a way to indicate “Siri should ignore this device” - obvious feature needs, but just not supported in iOS). Plus, solution gives you much more powerful automations than you can get from apple.
Even one of the better known HomeKit advocates Shane Watley, has gotten behind Home Assistant as a better solution for working with Apple. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oLVrV1wtNh4
I’m having trouble with double-tap on my switch. I set it up using HomeKit and was working fine until a few weeks ago. I also connected the switch to Google. Single tap should turn on/off the hardwired set of lights, and double tap should turn on/off the hardwired lights plus two other sets of lights on Kasa Matter/Wifi switches. Now, the double-tap on button one (on) doesn’t work and the double-tap on button two (off) turns ON all three lights. Everything looks normal in Apple Home.
I’ve factory reset the switch twice. I’ve rebooted the Apple TV that is the border router.
Not sure if this is related, but note that there is a bug in Apple Home where it does not map the buttons in a consistent manner. It seems random. So, for example, the Up paddle may show up in iOS Home as button 1 for one switch, but button 2 for another. I opened up an issue about this on Apple Feedback a long time ago - the response was that there would be a fix in a future iOS update, but how far into the future (iOS 30 maybe?) is anybody’s guess - i.e., Apple’s response is so vague as to be useless. Because of this (and several other iOS issues), I pair all my switches to Home Assistant (which does correctly map the buttons) and run all automations there, and just bridge the switches back to iOS). You can get Home Assistant on a RPI for less than $100 - well worth doing if you are going to have more than just a few switches.
1 Like
I’m wanting to know if there’s any way to turn off the brightness slider in homekit? I hate it because my switch is set to on/off and when you slide the brightness it’s delayed if you don’t slide to 100% and so if you slide only 1/2 way sometimes it takes a long while for it to determine the load? At least that’s what I think is happening. It would be nice to see in Apple just the on/off toggle.
1 Like
That’s not normal behavior to have delay. That’s a network problem.
So currently there is not a way to make it a simple on/off switch. Likely won’t be possible until it’s implemented within some type of firmware update which would require removing and re-adding the switch or until matter standard allows for this being a switchable parameter
Also the way the switch does function, you can just slide it to whatever percentage, the device immediately turns on as it would as with a regular switch. If you leave it at whatever percentage the device will automatically update itself to 100 within a short time. This is how my switches function. There is no delay.
Things that can cause issues. Your WiFi area having a lot of interference on channel 11 on 2.4ghz, iOS 18 in general is buggy, your main hub being wireless vs hard wired, you just need to restart the hub. Apple has become messy this year.
If you are willing to use Home Assistant (HA) you can get what you want. You can add the Inovelli dimmers to Home Assistant (instead of direct to Home) and then use a HA template to create a switch from the dimmable light. That switch can then be published to Homekit from HA and will appear as a switch there. There is a significant learning curve with Home Assistant however I have all my dimmers which I do not want dimmer functionality done that way (which is most of them) I really like the end result. This also completely avoids the issue (posted on the forum multiple times of having the LED bars in a room turn on then you ask Siri to turn on all the lights in a room.
There are a lot of posts around the forum on that subject. I was initially resistant to going down that route, but I am glad that I did.
Hardware cost of Home Assistant is < $100 (software is “free”).
I’m not sure what is causing your delay however a good place to start is to lock the channel you are using for 2.4GHz WiFi to either 1 or 6 which will avoid channel overlap with Thread channel 25 (which is the default channel used by the AppleTV and is very close to overlap with channel WiFi 11 (the Wifi and Thread Channel numbers do not line up exactly). Connecting your primary AppleTV to your router via Ethernet rather than WiFi is also a step in the correct direction (if that is practicable for you).
Another tip with Apple Home is that if you train yourself to tap the left side of an icon (right on the light icon, rather than in the center) the device will just toggle on and off rather than opening the pane with the dimmer displayed.
1 Like