Apple introduces HomeView, its inaugural smart display for home use.

Apple has finally unveiled its much-anticipated smart display, the Apple HomeView. I had the chance to check it out in New York City this week, and it’s a real stunner. The HomeView features a compact, vibrant screen perched on a speaker base, perfect for video calls, showcasing photos, and providing quick information with the help of Siri, Apple’s AI voice assistant. Its square design makes it feel less bulky compared to larger smart displays like others on the market, making it a great fit for kitchen counters, though it might be a bit too large for a bedside table.

The HomeView is central to Apple’s latest home tech initiative, priced at $299, and it launches alongside a new lineup of cameras, thermostats, and a door lock designed for Apple Home. Acting as a smart home hub, Matter controller, and Thread Border Router, the HomeView can manage various Apple Home and Matter devices. It will be available in eight countries at launch: the US, UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, South Africa, and India. Preorders are currently open, with shipping set for November 13th.

The smart display comes equipped with Siri AI, allowing for natural voice interactions to ask questions, control smart home devices, and access information based on your texts, calendar, and emails. For personal context, it requires facial recognition and your Apple Intelligence-capable iPhone to be on the same network, ensuring privacy during family meals.

The HomeView can display neatly formatted recipes for cooking, keep you engaged during FaceTime calls with its Center Stage feature, and show live feeds from HomeKit Secure Video cameras.

Its 7-inch square screen is mounted on a surprisingly compact aluminum speaker base, connected by an adjustable stainless steel arm. There are no physical volume or power buttons, and the 12-megapixel FaceTime camera is solely for video calls and facial recognition.

The display offers a range of customizable “faces” that resemble a large Apple Watch more than a small iPad. When idle, it can show photo faces, clock faces, or even themed faces, and you can opt for a modular face to display widgets from your favorite apps, like to-do lists and world clocks. A home widget face provides controls for lights, climate, cameras, and other devices.

While I haven’t had the chance to test it myself, I witnessed a demo where swiping up from the bottom of the screen reveals a familiar app grid featuring Apple’s core apps, including Messages and Apple Music.

In a video demo, Apple illustrated a family of five using the HomeView in the kitchen during their morning routine. From pulling up a French toast recipe to checking the day’s calendar, receiving FaceTime calls, and even locating lost keys, the HomeView is designed to assist with everyday household challenges.

The HomeView is available in four colors: silver, starlight, rose pink, and space gray. It features two speaker drivers in the display, along with a woofer and two passive radiators in the base for enhanced bass. Initial sound tests suggest it performs better than the HomePod Mini but doesn’t quite match the HomePod.

There’s also a wall-mountable version available for the same price, which comes with three mounting options: plug-in, in-wall power, and in-wall PoE. Apple claims the audio is optimized for wall placement, though I didn’t get to hear it in action.

The screen is encased in aluminum and lacks physical buttons, with only a speaker grille and microphone holes visible. It boasts a Liquid Retina display, which typically indicates LCD in Apple’s terminology, though specifics weren’t provided. It supports True Tone and ambient light adjustment, reaching a brightness of 500 nits and dimming to 0.3 nits, making it suitable as a bedside clock. The screen is large enough for clear visibility from across the room, and you can interact with it via taps or voice commands.

While the HomeView serves as an Apple Home Hub, enabling local control of compatible devices, scene creation, and support for HomeKit Secure Video, it feels more like a way to reduce reliance on your iPhone while at home.

The device supports various Apple apps, including Calendar, Reminders, Messages, and Music, and it also works with third-party audio apps that support CarPlay architecture. While a few audio apps like Spotify and Audible are available, video apps are not yet supported.

Siri AI on the HomeView mirrors the upgraded version found on the iPhone with iOS 27, lacking smart display-specific features but offering broad knowledge, personal context, and natural language understanding. I saw a demo where it handled chained requests seamlessly, such as adding a calendar event, setting a reminder, and adding a grocery list item. However, chained requests for home devices are limited to specific types, meaning you can control lights in multiple rooms but can’t lock the front door and adjust the thermostat in one command.

Both the tabletop and wall-mounted versions share the same features, with placement likely influencing their use. A HomeView on the kitchen counter is more suited for content consumption and cooking, while a wall-mounted version serves as a smart home control center.

In the demo space, Apple showcased a HomeView mounted near a front door, featuring a smart home widget for controlling locks, the thermostat, and lights. It can display a live feed from a doorbell camera when someone rings the bell and show up to nine live streams from HomeKit Secure Video cameras. Tapping on a widget expands it into a full-screen controller, and the thermostat controls were large and user-friendly. I haven’t yet had the opportunity to explore other widgets or test voice commands.

The HomeView’s standout software feature is its intelligent switching, allowing the screen to transition from a household device to a personal one. It uses facial recognition and the presence of your recently unlocked iPhone on the home Wi-Fi network for authentication. Once it recognizes you, it can display your customized layout and, if you have an AI-capable iPhone, pull up relevant information like a recipe or a song shared by a friend. Without user recognition, Siri AI can still show the live doorbell feed, answer general questions, control some smart devices, display recipes, and play audio and video.

Apple allows for up to six profiles on the device, but each user must have an iPhone or iPad running the latest OS. The microphone and camera data used for profile recognition is processed on a Secure Exclave within the device’s A18 chip, which Apple claims is inaccessible to the OS or apps.

One concern is how smoothly it will switch between profiles and how limited it will be when it doesn’t recognize a user. I’ve had frustrating experiences with Siri on my HomePod when it fails to locate my iPhone until I authenticate on the device I’m asking it to find. Some smart home controls, like viewing recorded footage or managing security devices, require user authentication, which could lead to issues if the process is slow or if you’re trying to get things done quickly.

Based on initial impressions, the HomeView’s success will depend on how much users want a communal device for personal interactions. The demos were engaging, and its integration with the iPhone offers more functionality than similar devices. However, the features demonstrated could also be performed by Siri on your iPhone, making the system feel heavily reliant on that device. Beyond the personal context capabilities, I didn’t see a compelling smart home use case that stands out from competitors’ offerings. In true Apple fashion, the HomeView is visually stunning and intuitive, and if it can help keep phones off the kitchen counter during meals, that might just be its standout feature.