Smart Home 2026: First Steps With the IKEA KLIPPBOK Water Leak Sensor ⭐

Back in November, IKEA announced an extensive line of affordable, Matter-compatible smart home devices. Scanning through the list of devices, I knew I would buy several of them, and I started thinking about where they might make sense, given that we have an apartment in Mexico City and a condo in Pennsylvania and split our time between the two.

But this was a waiting game. At that time, IKEA said that availability would vary by region–we have IKEA locations near-ish us in both places–and that the first devices would appear by the end of last year. Whether that ever happened is debatable, but I never saw it. The company attended CES in January and showed off the new devices there. But I had to keep waiting.

We came back to PA from Mexico about a week after the original announcement, and we spent the next two months being busy because of the holidays and whatever surrounding drama. We returned to Mexico in early January and then I kept checking on IKEA Mexico to see whether any of the new devices had arrived. But they never did. By the time we came back to PA in mid-May, I had started checking the IKEA U.S. website for availability. It had to happen eventually.

And then it did. While we were up in the Finger Lakes over Memorial Day weekend, I was discussing this with my brother-in-law, and how the device I was most interested in was the water leak detector: A water leak is among the big potential issues that can happen when you’re away from a home for months at a time, maybe one of the worst issues. And so I checked yet again, this time from my phone. And … there they were. They’re available now.

Some quick math ensued. How many water leak sensors would we need?

In PA, we have two bathrooms, both with a toilet and one with two sinks. We have a kitchen sink, of course, but also a refrigerator with a water line for making ice and a dishwasher. We have a laundry room with the main water connection, a clothes washer (that we had previously bought a water collection pan for just in case), and, because this is PA, a water softener through which most of the water going into the home passes. That’s almost a dozen places that need a water leak sensor.

In Mexico City, there are also two bathrooms, each with a sink and a toilet. A kitchen sink. A refrigerator that doesn’t have a water line but did freeze over once, triggering a small water leak on the floor. And a laundry room with the main water connection, a clothes washer, a sink, and a water heater. That’s 10 right there, too.

In the good news department, the IKEA KLIPPBOK water leak detector is just $7.99 per unit. (You gotta love IKEA brand names.) So I started with nine of them, mostly because I miscounted on the first pass, and they arrived the day after we got back from the Finger Lakes. Total cost was a bit under $72, though that doesn’t include the two AAA batteries that each device requires. Yet another thing to keep track of.

My initial reaction to the box full of KLIPPBOKes (KLIPPBOKen?) was how small these things are. The little boxes they come in are two inches by less than one inch in the other dimensions. And the rounded devices themselves are cute, with a round set of speaker holes and a light on the top and then some tiny feet and water sensors on the bottom.

I will need to order some high quality AAA batteries to complete this work, but I started with what I have. I’m sure Wegman-brand batteries are terrific.

After prying off the bottom with a butter knife–this was impossible with my finger–inserting the batteries and then closing it back up, I had to figure out how to configure the thing. The KLIPPBOK, like the other new IKEA smart home devices, is Matter-compatible, so this should be straightforward. And there is a QR code right on each to make this even easier.

The last time I wrote about smart home technology, one of the things I mentioned was that I was trying to keep both Apple Home and Google Home as up-to-date as possible in both places, and that I was having more success with Apple Home, in part, I felt because Google then, as now, was rushing to update its smart home platform with Gemini. Since then, I mostly stuck to the iPhone, but right before we came back to PA, I switched to a Google Pixel. And so when I pulled the first KLIPPBOK device out of the box it shipped in, I decided to try and connect it to Google Home first.

Hilarious.

That did not work. It immediately identified the device with the QR code, jumped into the Google Home app, and tried to make the connection. But it never happened. After a few retries, I gave up for the moment and tried Apple Home on my iPhone. And, go figure, that worked fine on the first try.

Apple Home asked me to choose a home and then a room, and then to name the device. I used a logical name (“Kitchen sink water leak detector”) based on where I was going to put it. And then I had to download a firmware update for the thing because you have to download a software update for literally everything these days.

But it completed and the new leak detector showed up in Apple Home where it belongs.

There was one big question, of course: Does it actually work?

To find out, I poured a little water into a shallow, small plate. And then I lowered the KLIPPBOK onto it.

Immediately, all hell broke loose. The KLIPPBOK flashed a white light and emitted an ear-piercing siren. My iPhone lit up with an Apple Home notification alerting me to the leak.

Of course my Apple Watch fired up similarly too. And then my HomePods triggered another notification because they could hear the alarm. Gotta love the ecosystem. Anyway, it works great. The alarm is a lot louder than what you can hear in this short video.

In Apple Home, there’s a battery life indicator (which reports 100% right now), so I assume I will get a warning if the battery is getting low or the device itself is unreachable. But I still can’t get this thing to connect to Google Home, so I will need to figure that out.

Indeed, there’s a lot to do. Many, many AAA batteries to buy. Several more KLIPPBOK devices, as their small size means flying with them to Mexico will be simple enough. And then I have to actually configure the rest of these things. Hopefully in Google Home, too.

More soon.