How to reset Apple HomeKit (and why you might want to)

Smart homes can be complex beasts — an amalgam of many different accessories, and sometimes multiple platforms. That beast can get out of hand, even in the case of Apple HomeKit. Here’s how to reset HomeKit and why you might consider doing it.

How do you reset Apple HomeKit?

There’s usually no “reset” button for HomeKit. But Apple does organize the platform’s data into “homes,” and it’s relatively easy to delete these from the Home app for iPhone or iPad, especially since most people only have one living space at a time.

Follow these steps to delete a HomeKit home:

• Open the Home app, and tap on the triple-dot icon in the top-right corner of the screen.
• Make sure the name of your home is selected in the drop-down menu. Unless you’ve intentionally added a second location, it should be pre-selected.
• In the same drop-down menu, tap Home Settings.
• Scroll down and choose Remove Home.
• Follow prompts.

Be aware that you’ll lose all the information associated with a home if you do this, including accessory pairings. You’ll have to re-pair everything if you want to start fresh, which can be time-consuming even if you’ve saved HomeKit codes for scanning. It’s good to gather those codes in one place for future reference.

If the Home app gets stuck at a Loading Accessories and Scenes screen, tap Reset Home Configuration. Once confirmed, your data will be scrapped just as if you’d followed the steps above.

Why would you reset Apple HomeKit?

There are a couple of reasons. The first, as we hinted, is if the Home app gets stuck at Loading Accessories and Scenes. This is an unlikely problem, and there are other measures you can try before a HomeKit reset. These include rebooting any Home Hubs (Apple TVs or HomePods), and/or signing out of iCloud then back in. You can even try resetting an affected iPhone or iPad and restoring a backup from before things went wrong, but that option is time-consuming in its own right without a guarantee of success. You might also lose data saved post-backup.

The other reason is that your HomeKit configuration has become unwieldy. Over time, it’s entirely possible to accumulate a collection of unused accessories, scenes, and automations. A reset can be a shortcut to a sleeker configuration, so long as you have all the codes gathered to re-pair accessories.