The IT Nerd

Apple yesterday released a new feature for HomePod users which allows the HomePod to listen for C02 and smoke detector alarms and notify you via a push notification if it hears one or the other. This is a great safety feature as it is available to the masses and doesn’t require any extra hardware. It’s also really easy to set up, so let me walk you through that.

Before we get started, there is two pre-requisites. You HomeKit setup must be on the new home architecture. So if you haven’t done that yet, you might want to visit this page to get an overview and instructions on how to set that up. You’ll also need to be on iOS 16.4 or later as well as HomePod Software version 16.4 or later. But assuming that you’ve done that, you simply need to go into the Home app and you will see this:

You should see this prompt that tells you about this new feature. Simply click continue.

You will then get this prompt where all you have to do is click “Turn On”. A few seconds after you do that, you’re done and your home has an extra level of safety. But there’s some under the hood stuff that we need to talk about as it may be applicable to your specific use case.

In the Home Settings section of the Home app, you’ll see a new section called Safety & Security. My guess is that Apple is going to build this section out with more features in the future.

Here’s where you can turn on and off Sound Recognition which is what powers this feature. We’ll have a closer look at that in a moment. You’ll also see Notifications which we’ll also get to in a moment. Below that is the Check In section where you can give members of your home the ability to check in and listen or see what’s going on if they get a push notification that a C02 or smoke alarm has been triggered.

In the Sound Recognition section, you can turn on and off the ability to listen for smoke and C02 alarms. I suspect that Apple will add other functionality in the future here. But we’ll have to wait and see if they do. You can also give or take away this feature from individual HomePods. Though, if it were me I would leave every HomePod active.

In the notification section, this is where you can choose which HomePod sends notifications. Again, I would just leave all of them on.

Now I haven’t tested this feature as this is one of those features that you don’t ever want to actually use. But according to TechCrunch, they note the following:

If your system is connected to a smart camera, it will also present video of your place, so you can see what’s going on in real time. Apple notes that the feature is end-to-end encrypted, and all of the sound recognition is happening locally on the speaker, instead of the cloud.

I couldn’t find any Apple sources for that information, but the fact that the listening is being done on device should alleviate any privacy concerns. Plus the fact that you can also see a video if you have HomeKit cameras is handy as well.

Finally, this feature should be available on all generations of the HomePod and HomePod mini according to The Verge. That’s a bit of a surprise as I would have assumed that Apple wouldn’t have brought this to the original HomePod as a means to force people to buy a new one. But I guess that Apple has decided to do the right thing for its user base for a change rather than simply try to line their pockets with more cash.

So, are you going to enable this feature? What do you think of it? Please leave a comment below and share your thoughts.

This entry was posted on April 19, 2023 at 9:45 am and is filed under Tips with tags Apple. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.