HomeKit or Apple Home? What to call it

If you have been at this a while, you set up HomeKit. If you started recently, you set up Apple Home. Same system. The two names are not an old one and a new one so much as two layers of one thing, and Apple still uses both, on different pages, today.

That matters to a shopper for one practical reason: boxes, listings and reviews use the names interchangeably, and none of it signals a compatibility difference. Here is what each name actually means, and how to read the older one when you meet it.

Two names, two layers

HomeKit is the accessory technology: the protocol a manufacturer builds into a device so your Apple devices can talk to it directly, and the developer framework behind it. Apple still calls these exactly that, in current developer documentation: the HomeKit Accessory Protocol, HomeKit accessories, the HomeKit framework.

Apple Home is the consumer platform: your home, its rooms, scenes and automations, presented in the Home app on iPhone, iPad, Mac and Apple Watch. When Apple writes about the thing you use day to day, it now says Apple Home.

So a sentence like 'this HomeKit sensor works in Apple Home' is not a contradiction. It is the normal case: an accessory built on the HomeKit protocol, running in the Apple Home platform. Matter accessories reach the same platform by a second route, which is why you will also see accessories that work with Apple Home and never mention HomeKit at all.

There was no rename

Apple never announced 'HomeKit is now Apple Home', and no cutover date exists. The shift happened gradually across several years: the certification badge changed from 'Works with Apple HomeKit' to 'Works with Apple Home' around 2022, settings menus and support pages have been relabelled release by release, and the platform name on Apple's consumer pages is now Apple Home.

But HomeKit was never retired. It is still a registered Apple trademark, still a current technology in Apple's MFi licensing programme, and still the name on Apple's own developer pages. Apple's Australian accessory directory still labels listings 'Works with Apple HomeKit' today. Both names are current Apple usage at the same time, on different Apple properties, which is exactly why shoppers keep meeting both.

The practical consequence: do not read either name as a version. A 'HomeKit' accessory is not an old accessory, and an 'Apple Home' accessory is not a new generation of anything.

The naming map

The last two rows earn their place. iCloud+ is often written as if it were just iCloud with storage, and it is not: the paid tier is what gates camera recording. And HomeKit Secure Video keeping its name is the clearest sign that HomeKit, the technology, is alive and load-bearing inside the current platform.

What we call it on this site

Our own rule, stated so you can hold us to it: we write Apple Home when we mean the platform you join, and HomeKit only when the protocol layer is the point, when quoting a box or a manufacturer, or in the intact name HomeKit Secure Video. We do not mix the two in one sentence as if they were rivals, and we never treat the old name on packaging as a defect.

There is one more honest thing to say about the word. Australians still type HomeKit into search about a thousand times a month, which is why this page exists under the name it does: we use the word people actually search when answering their question. What we do not do is write our own product copy in it, because the platform's current name is Apple Home and our copy should say so.

If a box in front of you says 'Works with Apple HomeKit', read it as the older name for the same compatibility. What that badge does and does not promise is its own subject.