HomeKit Controller not appearing in Integrations

Third party integrations
1

Total noob to Home assistant. Got my Pi 4 running with HA today.

Went to Integrations screen and saw HomeKit Accessory but no HomeKit Controller. Reading through the integration documentation it says this should be here by default.

Any tips on resolving this would be appreciated.

2

This is very confusing!
The ā€˜Integrationsā€™ listed on home-assist.io for HomeKit include:

  • HomeKit - used to forward home-assist devices to Apple HomeKit for access by HomeKit apps and Siri
  • HomeKit Controller - used to allow Home Assistant to control HomeKit compatible devices, but they must be disconnected from Apple HomeKit before they can be connected to Home Assist

It appears that the HomeKit Accessory integration shown in the Home Assist system is the same as the HomeKit Controller. I had not understood that HomeKit devices could only be connected to ONE system. This explains the message I was seeing indicating that ā€˜No unpaired devices could be foundā€™.

This also means I would have to remove all HomeKit devices from Appleā€™s HomeKitā€¦ Which puts a damper on using Home Assistant going forward.

1 Like
3

The fact is that those two integrations are different.

  • HomeKit: exposes to HomeKit all accessories inside HomeAssistant like a bridge/gateway (the same behaviour as a Xiaomi or Ikea gateway)
  • HomeKit Controller: It is used to integrate accessories that are only compatible with HomeKit into HomeAssistant.

If you want all your HomeKit compatible accessories to use HomeAssistant and at the same time use your ā€œhomeā€ app, you should erase them from your ā€œhomeā€ app, integrate them with HomeAssistant using the ā€œHomeKit Controllerā€ integration, and once they are shown in HomeAssistant, expose those accessories using the ā€œHomeKitā€ integration, that will behave the same a your typical bridge/gateway.

In fact, I am doing exactly that; if you want some more details, please ask for them.