Can Home Assistant on Apple Watch (LTE) work without iPhone?

Mobile Apps Home Assistant Companion for Apple
1

I just got a Apple Watch (LTE).
I’ve added some actions in the Home Assistant app on the watch - and wonder if they will still work if I go for a walk and leave my iPhone at home?
Eg. I want to be able to open the gate to my house from my watch without the dependency of bringing the iPhone.

Any experience?

Thakns

1 Like
2

Hello,
I’m in your same situation, but for me it does’t work without the phone via LTE connection.
I’m hope it can change in the future, meanwhile I guess I’ll need to use HomeKit

3

Works for me (coincidentally, also to open my gate).

4

Tim,

can you please confirm what model of Apple Watch are you using?
Also, are you able to see your watch in the MAP in HA?

Thanks!

5

Sorry for the late response!

Model is A2724 “Apple Watch SE (2nd generation) (GPS + Cellular)”.

Not sure what is meant by “MAP” - happy to look if you can direct me there.

6

Here’s my experience with using Home Assistant on an LTE-enabled Apple Watch when it’s outside of your Local Network and your phone is disconnected. Essentially, the HA on the Apple Watch can still operate if the HA companion app on your phone was connected to a HA instance with a URL that’s accessible outside your LAN before you disconnected your watch.

However, if you leave your phone at home and the HA companion app was connected using a local URL, your Apple Watch won’t be able to connect to the HA instance.

You can however set the Internal URL in the HA companion app on your phone to an externally accessible URL. This allows you to leave your phone at home without losing functionality on your Apple Watch.

It would be great if the HA app on watch could automatically switch to an external URL when outside the local network, without depending on our phones.

7

i’m waiting for my celular connectivity and will test. On my phone i’m using only the external URL field - using Nabu Casa URL.

8

Hi,

Thanks!

I’m using the iCloud integration. It looks the watch is identified in iCloud but doesn’t update its location automatically, or it is very slow … if you restart the automation the location changes. Also the iphone is defined as tracker for the person, but it looks if i add also the apple watch, things gets to be mixed … if the 2 devices are in different places. Still checking

9

what is the process to install HA on a LTE watch?

Use Case: Kids each have a LTE apple watch.
Would like to enable tracking on their watches and setup a geofence around their school to help alert on pickups/dropoffs…etc.

The watches are both controllable from a parent’s iphone (apple watch app)

10

Hi @fireheadman, did you have any luck figuring this out?

I have the exact same use case.

11

nothing at all… this thread has been dead for a while