Apple wants to beef up HomeKit’s ability to control your home’s lighting accessories

Apple has filed for a patent (number 20210389869) for “lighting user interfaces.” It involves enhancing HomeKit’s ability to control lighting accessories in your home or office.

HomeKit is a software framework by Apple that lets users configure, communicate with, and control smart-home appliances using Apple devices. It provides users with a way to automatically discover such devices and configure them.

About the patent filing

In the patent filing, Apple notes that users have the ability to control lighting accessories that are included in their home via electronic devices. For example, users can control the lighting accessories to turn on and/or off, control the lighting accessories to change color, and/or set schedules for turning on and/or off the lighting accessories. 

Apple wants the Mac, iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch — using HomeKit — to provide faster, more efficient methods and interfaces for managing light accessories. Such methods and interfaces would optionally complement or replace other methods for managing light accessories. 

For battery-operated computing devices, such methods and interfaces could conserve power and increase the time between battery charges. Additionally, Apple says such methods and interfaces reduce the number of unnecessary or extraneous inputs required by the user. 

Summary of the patent filing

Here’s Apple’s abstract of the patent filing: “The present disclosure generally relates to lighting user interfaces. The lighting user interfaces include an option for selecting an automated lighting feature for a light accessory. The automated lighting feature changes settings of the light accessory, such as a color temperature setting of the light accessory based on one or more environmental characteristics and without further user input.”