ELI5: Accessory Mode and why I need it for locks, media_player, etc

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So for a few years now, I have been using HomeKit with HA, I set up one bridge, exposed all of the entities I wanted to have show up. It all worked fine, including my 3 Kwikset 914C locks. So then I start seeing this in my logs

The bridge Home Assistant Bridge has entity lock.front_door. For best performance, and to prevent unexpected unavailability, create and pair a separate HomeKit instance in accessory mode for this entity

So then I removed the locks from my original bridge, added a separate accessory mode for each lock, paired the new bridges, etc. And what I appear to have now is exactly what I had before: A lock in HomeKit that I can press to lock/unlock my door.

So can anyone ELI5 why this warning is there, and what the advantages of having a separate accessory-mode instance of the homekit integration is? For locks as well as the other stuff (media_player, camera)

Thanks.

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I was also quite surprised by these warnings. I have not seen it well explained in release blogs earlier. And the weird thing is, now that I created accessory mode instances for each TV media player and camera. I do not see them anymore in the Apple Home app. No clue where to look for now.

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Chalk another confused user here — I’ve got a Yale Conexis exposed over Z-Wave.

Been working without fail for years, HA quite speedily reports the locked/unlock state via HomeKit, even when unlocking/locking physically at the door. Attempting to configure via “Accessory Mode” to see the same performance.

I’m assuming this is just to prevent being locked out, if a bad accessory takes out the entire Bridge? :man_shrugging: