Around my city, Halloween almost brings out as many “all in” people as Christmas when it comes to decorations. In fact, one house near me starts setting up in August and then keeps it going through Christmas, just dressing the Halloween-themed skeletons in Santa hats to carry them into the next holiday. If you’re still turning on all of your Halloween decorations manually, it’s time to automate that using HomeKit.
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HomeKit Weekly is a series focused on smart home accessories, automation tips and tricks, and everything to do with Apple’s smart home framework.
Required HomeKit gear
To get started, you’ll need a HomeKit hub (Apple TV or HomePod). While you can control devices without one at home, having a HomeKit hub lets you run automations and control everything remotely. Standard HomeKit smart plugs are the easiest way to go for indoor gear like light-up pumpkins or window lights. Once connected, you can turn decorations on or off with Siri, the Home app, or automations. I like to set mine to turn on right as it gets dark. In your automations for HomeKit, you can choose sunset as when they come on as well. HomeKit uses the location of your home to determine local sunset and sunrise times.
For outdoor Halloween decorations, you’ll want outdoor-rated smart plugs. These are designed to handle rain, moisture, and colder temps, so they’re safe to use with strobe lights, fog machines, or that giant ghost that you blow up in your front yard to make a statement that your house is the best. Setup is identical to the indoor ones: plug the decoration into the smart plug, then plug the smart plug into the outlet, and add it to HomeKit.
If you have a bunch of outdoor Halloween accessories that you have to go out and manually turn on/plug up every night, just getting a few of these adaptors will be worth its weight in gold. Setup once, build the automations, and then you can use them for Halloween and Christmas.
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Creating automations and scenes
Here is a simple step by step to turn everything on at sunset and then off at 11:00 PM using the Home app.
Create a scene for all decorations
Open the Home app on your iPhone or iPad. Tap the plus button and choose Add Scene. Tap Custom, name it “Halloween Night,” then tap Add Accessories. Select your indoor and outdoor smart plugs and any lights you want included. Set each accessory to On, then tap Done to save the scene. You’ll then have 1-tap access.
Automation 1: turn on at sunset
Go to the Automations section and tap the plus button. Choose the time of day it occurs. Select Sunset, choose Every Day, and tap Next. Choose Scenes and Accessories, select “Halloween Night,” then tap Next and finalize it.
Automation 2: turn off at 11:00 PM
In Automations, tap the plus button and choose Time of Day Occurs. Set the time to 11:00 PM, choose Every Day, then tap Next. Tap Choose Scenes and Accessories. Select the same plugs and lights you used earlier and set each one to Off. Tap Next. Review the summary, then tap Done to save.
Your HomeKit enabled Halloween decorations will come on at sunset and shut down at 11:00 PM without you lifting a finger. If you want a quick manual trigger, you can also run the “Halloween Night” scene from Control Center, the Home app, or with Siri.
Wrap up
If you go through the steps to automate everything once, you’ll avoid having to manually flip everything on and off each night. With a couple of inexpensive HomeKit smart plugs and some simple automations, you can light up your house, inflate your giant ghost, and turn on your indoor pumpkins automatically. It’s a simple way to bring a little smart home magic to one of the most fun nights of the year. Bonus tip: you can keep the same gear for Christmas and just rename the scene!