First look: Apple’s HomeKit Secure Video gets the update it needs

Apple’s HomeKit Secure Video service is tapping into the Apple Intelligence suite to bring more information descriptive information from your connected cameras and allow you to search images using natural language. The Apple Home app is also getting better AI-powered notifications and eventually adding support for power reporting.

The update was announced at WWDC last week and will be publicly available this fall. I’ve been playing with some of the features in the iOS 27 and tvOS 27 beta program for a few days, and based on my first impressions, Video Security for Apple HomeKit it’s well organized – enough to put it back in contention for me as a home security.

I test many home security cameras and have stopped using them Video Security for Apple HomeKit because it was sometimes unreliable (with cameras breaking and recordings missing) and sending a lot of information.

Although I like that it uses local video and is encrypted end-to-end, the service has been leapfrogged by competitors such as Ring and Google Nest and theirs. high quality cameras and intelligent AI-driven insights. This includes recording audio descriptions, giving you visual information about what’s going on in your home, so you don’t have to wait to record a video to see for yourself – helping to reduce information fatigue. It is a real necessity for AI in the smart home.

With Apple Intelligence bringing this to Apple Home, Apple’s smart home platform is on par with what its competitors offer. It will also support up to 4K video, and when you consider that the service works with cameras from several manufacturers, it’s pretty compelling – as long as you’re using an iPhone.

Apple Intelligence-powered text descriptions

To activate the new Apple Intelligence, I had to download the iOS 27 software to my iPhone 17 Pro Max and the tvOS 27 beta to my Apple TV 4K, which serves as my Home. Then I had the new Apple Intelligence feature in Home preferences. Here, I changed the new options for “video summarization” and “reduce information” and select the cameras that receive the summary.

Short Videos uses AI to process video from my HomeKit Secure Video cameras and send detailed information about what’s going on. So, instead of warning that “an animal has been found,” I have been finding “a dog in the yard,” and instead of saying “a person has been found,” I have seen them “mowing the lawn.” I also received one notification that summarizes several events from one camera: “Someone entered the yard and returned to the dog. Aqara G5 changed the view.”

In the app, each photo also has a short AI-generated description, such as “Someone caught a cat in the kitchen” or “Chickens are eating in the yard.” Sometimes, it recognizes the person (I have Face Recognition), but not always.

The description is very brief, especially compared to the ones I get from Ring’s and Google’s AI, but it offers a lot of additional information. I am also receiving regular notifications, such as an animal or a person being found, so my notifications are not limited. However, this is the first developer beta, so I hope to see more updates before this goes live.

Searching my camera feeds with natural language worked well – I typed “Show me my cat” and got tons of cat videos. But it couldn’t tell the difference between my gray cat and my black cat. If I was using a HomeKit doorbell, this would be useful to check things like when my child came home or when the UPS delivery person came.

I haven’t seen any reduced notifications for other Home appliances yet. According to Apple, this will use Apple Intelligence to know that several things from connected devices, such as a person arriving at home and the door being opened, are related to what is happening and send a single message to change it.

Of course, I encountered several bugs, and the program crashed frequently, but again – the first beta developer. Overall, this looks like a great start, and Apple Intelligence has already supported my HomeKit-connected cameras.

Good interface and fast response time

One change to HomeKit Secure Video that I noticed right away is that watching recorded videos and live streams loads faster. I can also watch more than two streams when I’m away from home, which is a welcome change and, something that competitors have had for a while.

I’m a big fan of the new camera view in the Home app, where I can view a timeline or view the feed of all cameras at once. The videos are arranged by time, not by camera, so the animation shows the real-time activity in the house. When I click on a clip, the camera switcher provides footage from other cameras at the same time on both sides – which is very useful. I’ve used many different camera interfaces, and this is one of the easiest and most visually appealing.

Apple also said that Apple Intelligence will be able to understand what is connected to the cameras and show videos from different cameras in one part of the app, but I did not see this in my testing.

Other changes include an overhaul of the HomeKit Secure Video development process, including how videos are received, stored, and edited. As mentioned, I’ve found the cameras to pack quickly, and they’re also stable. The normally offline Eve outdoor camera has remained online since its update. Whether these changes have resolved it missing clip story will try more.

Apple also announced support for 2K and 4K HomeKit Secure Video streams, but that feature is not available in the current beta. It looks like it will be up to the camera manufacturers involved – including Aqara, Eve, and Eufy – to implement the new features. HomeKit Secure Video spec it was announced at WWDC, which means it may be a while until we see it in our homes.

Electronic monitoring arrives

Another long-awaited change is that the Home app now supports it energy management through Matter. There’s a new energy icon in the Energy tab, along with a tile for each connected device that monitors energy. I have Matter-over-Thread Ikea Grillplats plug which now shows your current, average, and daily usage in kWh. Clicking on that card took me to a detailed report, where I could see its usage over the year, six months, month, week, and day.

However, there is no way to use dynamic reports to trigger automation, and you can’t use different events recorded by cameras to trigger automation, such as “turn on the porch lights if a package is found.” That’s what you can do in Google Home, and the platform just got more creative Create automation based on your actions.

Smart cameras and dynamic reporting are great additions to Apple Home, and so far the HomeKit Secure Video upgrade has impressed me. But Apple is still playing with things like automation and intelligence. This is what takes a smart home platform from a command and control system to a fully self-driving product.

Photo by Jennifer Pattison Tuohy/The Verge