You can pimp the Home app a bit by changing the backgrounds. If you click the little home icon on the top and go to ‘Home Settings’, you’ll see some interesting options. Go straight to ‘Home Wallpaper’ and choose a picture of your house. And you can do the same for just the kitchen too.
When in the room, click on ‘Room Settings’ and take or choose an existing photo.
You may also have a simple on/off fan in the bedroom, let’s make it smart by getting a HomeKit switch for that. While adding it to HomeKit you see that you can actually choose a Fan for your switch.
Nice, because it shows up as a Fan now!
This can also be handy for a switch that switches a light. When you choose the type to be a light, it will act as a light for instance when you choose to turn off all lights.
Let’s add a switch for your standing light in the living room, add it as a Light.
One more thing that you can do is choose icons for your lights as shown to the left. The light icon for the bedroom does not resemble the real light and you can change that. Click on the icon in the details page of the light and you will see these choices for lights.
Same goes for window coverings, fans, doors and windows as well.
Remember when you bought the two roller blinds? You could always operate them simultaneously since the windows they cover are identical. you can control them as one by creating a group.
When you open the details of one of the roller blinds you will see the option “Group with Other accessories”, choose both roller blinds and give the group a name. Now you can operate them as one!
The Home app show the accessories in the order that the were added, but that might not be the ideal order. You can change the order by clicking on the home icon, selecting ‘Edit screen’. Now you can drag the accessories in the order you prefer. Click "Done" and you're done.
The Home app show the Rooms in the order that the were added, but that might not be the ideal order. You can change the order by clicking on the home icon, selecting ‘Room settings’, then click on ‘< Rooms’ to get to the rooms overview and then clicking on ‘Edit’. Now you can drag the rooms in the order you prefer. If you want to use zones in your home, the ‘Room settings’ is the place to do so. For every room there is an option ‘Zone’. Click it the select or create one.
Finally your home looks like:
Now would be a good time to add a scene or add an automation.
