Smart Home-ish in 2026 ⭐

When we moved to Pennsylvania in 2017, we bought a large house and spent an unfathomable amount of money upgrading the electrical system and making other updates. I used that move as an excuse to test different smart home solutions, but eventually found that the cost and complexity were daunting. And after numerous forays down various rabbit holes, I mostly scaled it back to smart lighting and whole house audio. And then we sold the house in early 2023 and have been slightly nomadic since then, living in an apartment for about 9 months that year before moving into the condo we’re still in now.

For various reasons—we didn’t own either of those places, most obviously, but we were also unsure where, if anywhere, we might end up at least semi-permanently—smart home technology wasn’t a priority for the past two years. Our whole house audio, based on Sonos, came with us, of course. And some subset of the Philips Hue smart lights that we typically use around the TV. But I can’t say that I cared one way or the other about anything smart home related.

This was also true for our place in Mexico City, which we bought in mid-2022. It’s a tiny 750 square foot apartment that has 24/7 security, so that was never a concern, and thanks to the temperate climate, the place doesn’t even have heat or air conditioning. There’s just not a lot going on there, and we don’t have much in the way of smart home devices. There’s a Google Pixel Tablet we’re using as a smart display in the kitchen and an Apple TV with a pair of HomePod Mini speakers. That’s about it.

But this past September, we bought the condo we’d been in for the previous two years. And that kicked off some thinking and planning about whatever updates we might want to do and in what order, complicated by us splitting our time between Pennsylvania and Mexico. When we came back to Pennsylvania in mid-November for the holidays, my wife kicked things off with curtains and various window treatments. And, having already started some informal research into the state of this market, I’ve been experimenting a bit with some smart home technologies for the first time in years. Starting with what we have—Sonos speakers, Hue smart lights–and the two main smart home ecosystems from Apple and Google.

I’m a little bit rusty, of course, but it’s also like riding a bike, and I’ve been trying to keep both sides of the house, so to speak, updated in tandem. Meaning, I am keeping the Apple Home and Google Home front ends aligned with whatever smart devices they can see and manage. It’s not perfect: Google Home can’t see or control Sonos devices thanks to their ongoing legal battle. And Google is slowly rolling out a Gemini-powered Home update that I have yet to receive that looks interesting. (That said, I did just see the waited-for notification that it is finally coming.)

The goal is to balance simplicity, utility, and cost. I learned several years ago that we’re never going to go all-in on smart home tech, the biggest reason being a sort of “it just doesn’t work” issue. I may or may not be interested in building out routines that do things by voice or through whichever Home app. But my wife, reasonably, wants to walk into a room, turn lights on or off, watch TV, listen to music, or whatever else, and do so without any drama or uncertainty.

So here’s what I’ve done so far. And what I’m thinking about for down the road.

?Something old

The Apple Home and Google Home apps are both aware of both of our homes. I don’t recall when or even why I configured that, but I have Macungie (PA) and Roma Norte/Mexico City home locations in each. Until recently, both were pretty empty though. Apple Home displayed the Apple TV and HomePod/HomePod Mini speakers we have (we have full-sized HomePods in PA). And Google Home displayed the smart display(s) we have in each (two in PA and the Pixel Tablet in Mexico). And that was about it.

Now that we’re in PA and I’m working on this again, I decided to start by seeing whether I could get my Hue lights into each system. And that was surprisingly easy: You just go into the Hue app settings, find the Smart home menu, and link Hue to each. (It had been connected to Google Home previously, but I disconnected that and started over.)

Both apps offer similar room-based organization and management capabilities, but we didn’t have too many smart lights to start with. And all but one, a smart light in a lamp in my home office, are in the living room. There, I have a light strip behind the TV, two Hue Blooms on the floor (below speakers on either side of the TV), and a single smart light in a lamp. And a Hue bridge that’s wired into a Wi-Fi access point. (A newer version of this bridge can finally use Wi-Fi.)

There’s not much to control here: The lights around the TV are set to whatever scene, which I don’t change too much. (I did just change it to a holiday-colored theme, given the season.) And the two lamps we just switch on and off normally as needed.

Next up, I looked up whether I could control the Sonos speakers from the Apple Home app, knowing that I cannot with Google Home. And of course you can, it was as simple as tapping Add (“+”) > Add Accessory and then choosing “More options” instead of scanning a (non-existent, in this case) QR code. When I did this, every Sonos speaker showed up in a grid, so I added them one by one. As with the Hue lights, I configured each for the appropriate room.

But here, too, there’s not much to do per se, which is why I never bothered with this before. I try to avoid the Sonos app as much as possible, and that’s easy with the Apple ecosystem because Sonos speakers are AirPlay-compatible. This means they can be easily added and removed from just about any app on my iPhone, iPad, or Apple TV on the fly.

I do have several of these things. And the way Sonos configuration works is odd in that it names each speaker by room. So if I wanted to play something over the two Play 5 speakers that are linked to a Sonos Sub over Apple Play, that setup was named “Living Room.” After a bit of back and forth on this, I decided to just rename the “rooms” in Sonos as the speaker names so they would make more sense to me. So “Living Room” is now “Play 5s and Sub.”

Aside from those three speakers, we also have a Sonos Beam soundbar, a Sonos Move portable speaker, a Sonos Roam (smaller) portable speaker, a Sonos One, and two IKEA Symfonisk bookshelf speakers. And then an older Sonos One that’s not plugged in or being used at the moment. Christ, ten of these things.

Apple Home automatically picked up all the naming changes I made in the Sonos app, which is nice. Google Home is blissfully unaware that these speakers exist, which stinks. But that was that. It was time to add some new devices.

?Something new

I meant to do this when we were in Mexico though there is much less of a need there, but I finally ordered some new smart devices for here in PA. I started with four Matter-compatible mini smart plugs, the “mini” bit meaning that they hopefully won’t block the other power receptacle in a pair when plugged in. This is the set I ordered, in part because of its broad support and in part because it was on sale at the time.

To add each to Apple Home and Google Home, I had to scan the QR code found on each plug one-by-one in both apps. This was mostly for testing purposes, in the sense that I don’t really need to remotely control things this way, but I wanted to at least see how well it worked, manually and as part of a routine. Each is tied to a “dumb” lamp, three in the living room and one in the kitchen. And each works normally.

Next up, I bought a pair of Philips Hue Essential smart LED A19 bulbs with color and white lighting support for outside: We have a single light on the porch over the front door and a single light over the garage, and both are controlled via a single dumb switch on a three-switch panel next to the front door. Replacing the old bulbs was straightforward, and both registered immediately with Hue and passed through to Apple Home and Google Home.

When we were in the house, we had three or four colored lights over the garage door and two on the front porch, but we left them for the new owners, and that was a more impressive display. But the two lights work as well here, and I can apply colors as desired, so I configured both for a holiday color scene for now as well.

The issue, of course, is that dumb switch. My goal for these lights is to configure a routine by which they come on automatically at sunset when we’re away and then turn off at some reasonable time (10 pm or whatever), to give the appearance that someone is home. But if that light switch is off (down), Hue can’t see or control them, so neither can Apple or Google Home.

?Something soon

I haven’t yet solved that problem, but I did open up the three-way switch panel to see whether there is a neutral wire in there. And there is, so I won’t be limited when it comes to swapping that all out with three smart switches and a new (screwless) panel. I’m leaning toward a Lutron Diva setup, which will require a Lutron smart hub in addition to three smart dimmers. But it’s a little expensive, so I’ll research this before going all-in. But this should be complete by the end of the year either way.

Those outdoor lights plus one or two lamps plugged into smart plugs inside should go a long way towards preventing our place from looking abandoned when we’re not here. I’ll have time to test that before we head back to Mexico in mid-January.

?Something else

Before we got back to Pennsylvania, I had ordered a Google TV Streamer from Amazon Mexico because it was on sale and I was actively reviewing the new Pixel 10 series phones. I set that up and used it a bit there, but I brought it to the U.S. when we came back so I could check out the Gemini update to Google Home (which, again, I’ve not yet seen). And we have an Apple TV 4K in both places already, though Apple curiously doesn’t offer a Home app on that platform, which seems like an obvious feature. (You do get a Home tab in the Apple TV Control Center if you connect a compatible smart camera or doorbell, or configure one or more scenes; more on that below.)

The Google TV interface to Google Home is exactly the kind of smart home dashboard you’d expect, which makes it even more curious that Apple doesn’t do this on Apple TV (and doesn’t even have its own smart display yet, though that should change in 2026). Or, at least I think it is: Because I had set this thing up in Mexico, it was configured for the “Roma Norte” home in Google Home, and there’s no way to change that in the UI, oddly. I tried a few different things to fix that, including removing the device from the Google Home app on a phone, but then I was signed out and couldn’t successfully sign back in. So I factory reset it and will work through this again soon. I guess this thing isn’t particularly portable between locations.

Also for the future is accessing Google Home from Apple TV. As noted above, you’re supposed to see an Apple Home icon in Control Center if you have a compatible security camera/doorbell or have created a scene. I did create a basic scene, but that icon hasn’t appeared yet. So this, too, will have to wait for the near future, I guess.

Finally, I had mentioned in the most recent Ask Paul that I’d be writing about the smart home soon. This is the start of that. I should have at least one more update before we head back to Mexico next month. And then we’ll see what happens there as well.