Learn how to create rooms, zones, and add a new house to the Apple Home app so you can seamlessly control your smart accessories.
If you’re just using the Home app for the first time on your iOS device or Mac, we have some great tips and how-tos for using it. One place you should definitely start is by setting up the rooms and zones you’re going to use. Once you do this, you can easily move on to grouping your accessories using those areas.
It only takes a few minutes, depending on how many you plan to set up. But remember, you can add rooms and zones to the Home app anytime.
Create rooms in the Home app
You can add rooms to your Home app to better manage your smart accessories. It also helps to know where your particular lights, thermostats, locks, and other HomeKit accessories are.
On iPhone or iPad
- Open the Home app and make sure you’re in the Home tab.
- Tap the plus button from the top and choose Add Room.
- Enter the desired name for your room.
- Pick a wallpaper, and tap Save.
On Mac
- Open the Home app and click the plus button from the top.
- Select Add Room.
- Give a name and hit Save.
Create zones in the Home app
Zones are a collection of rooms. You can create a zone like the First Floor, Downstairs, or Outside and then control accessories of the entire zone (i.e., multiple rooms) at once. For instance, you can say, “Siri, turn off the Downstairs lights,” and all lights in all your rooms on the ground floor will be turned off.
Note: You cannot rename a zone, but you can delete it by swiping left on its name and then create a new zone.
On iPhone or iPad
- Tap the three-dot menu icon from the top right of the Home app and select a room.
- Tap the three-dot menu icon again from room view and select Room Settings.
- Select Zone.
- Pick a suggested name like Basement, Main Level, or tap Create New to use a custom name.
- Tap Done to finish adding this room to this zone.
- Repeat the above steps to add two or more rooms to the same zome or other zones as needed.
On Mac
- Select a room from the left sidebar of the Home app.
- Click the menu icon and choose Room Settings. You can also click Edit > Edit Room from the top menu bar.
- Click Zone to create a zone.
Add a new Home
If you own more than one house, you can add them to the Home app so it’s easy to control their lights.
- Open the Home app and tap the plus button from the top.
- Select Add New Home.
- Give it a name like Vacation Home and hit Save.
I could not find an option to create a new home in the Home app on Mac.
After you add more than one Home, your iPhone will automatically use your location and show that home depending on where you are. You can also choose a home manually by tapping the three dots menu icon.
What to do if you cannot create a room or zone
The room or zone creation process may fail, showing an error message like “Could not add room. Timed out communicating with the accessory. Make sure you’re connected to the internet and try again” or “Could not complete operation.” If you encounter this, follow these troubleshooting tips:
- Try again a couple of times.
- Make sure your accessories and Home hubs like HomePod or Apple TV are switched on.
- Ensure a stable Wi-Fi connection.
- Force Quit the Home app on iPhone or Mac and reopen it.
- Turn off the VPN if you’re using one.
- Restart your iPhone, Mac, Apple TV, and HomePod.
- Try creating the room or zone using one of your other devices, like your Mac or iPad.
- Check Apple’s System Status and retry after a while.
- Make sure your iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple TV, and HomePod are updated.
- Reset network settings and retry. If that doesn’t help, reset all settings.
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