Apple wants to have a much bigger presence in your house. On Tuesday, the company behind Macs and iPhones unveiled a sweeping lineup of new products presenting a range of options for home management, security and entertainment.
The centerpiece is the Apple HomeView smart display, which can sit on a tabletop or be mounted on a wall. In its tabletop version, with its domed base, it echoes the iconic iMac G4 from the early 2000s.
But this is a device for a new era, brimming with Siri AI and personalization features and built for household interactions.
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“Apple HomeView is designed to be shared by everyone in the home yet feel completely personal to each user,” Greg Joswiak, Apple’s senior vice president of worldwide marketing, said in a statement.
The products altogether represent a big new smart home push for Apple, which for years has largely left that field to be dominated by Amazon and Google. One thing that could work in Apple’s favor, said Ben Wood, chief analyst at FDM CCS Insight, is its reputation for making technology easier to use than the alternatives.
“In typical Apple fashion, setting up the new products is simple: you just hold your iPhone near the device and add it as easily as pairing new Apple headphones or Watch,” Wood told CNET via email. “That’s quite a contrast to other smart home products where you have to download a specific app, scan QR codes and more.”
Tuesday’s “Welcome Home” event took place just over a month after Apple’s September introduction of the iPhone 18 Pro and Pro Max and the folding iPhone Duo.
Here’s everything Apple just announced:
The HomeView is designed as the hub for a range of capabilities, including making FaceTime calls, playing music and managing smart home devices.
It has a 7-inch square Liquid Retina display and Apple’s A18 chip. It can also be controlled by touch or voice. Apple sees its new Siri AI as central to the experience of using the HomeView.
It can recognize up to six people by their faces and you can set up a personalized home screen for each. Like on the Apple Watch, display customization options allow for a wide range of screen designs. The Home Camera face can livestream up to nine video feeds simultaneously.
The HomeView works with the new Apple Home Collection devices – more on that below – as well as other Matter and Works with Apple Home accessories
The tabletop version is available in four colors: silver, starlight, rose pink and space gray
The wall mount version comes in either silver or space gray.
Preorders start Tuesday for people in the US, the UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and India, on Thursday for those in Singapore, and on Friday for those in South Africa, with availability in all those countries beginning Nov. 13. The HomeView isn’t available in EU countries because Siri AI is not available in iOS there.
The HomeView is priced at $299 for both the tabletop and wall-mounted versions. There are two dedicated wall mounts, at $60 and $80, that can be preordered starting Tuesday. A third wall mount will be available in early 2027 for $130.
Apple Home Collection
The Home Collection line of products includes smart home cameras for both indoors and outdoors, thermostats, temperature sensors, a video doorbell and a smart lock designed in collaboration with LG Electronics and Schneider Electric. In its press release, Apple described the gear as having a “clean, minimal aesthetic.”
The lineup includes four LG camera devices:
- The $250 Video Doorbell, with dual cameras (for views of visitors and packages), plus a spotlight and a chime that plays through the HomeView, HomePod and HomePod Mini.
- The $400 Floodlight Cam, which has motion sensing and low-light color night vision.
- The simpler $200 Outdoor Cam.
- The $200 Indoor Cam – for privacy: tilts up and down for you to monitor while you’re away, and down to stop monitoring when you’re at home.
Apple emphasized the privacy aspects of the devices. For instance, the Indoor Cam will tilt down when you’re at home. Camera footage, the company said, is processed locally or via Private Cloud Compute. For those with an iCloud Plus subscription, up to 10 days’ worth of video history can be stored in encrypted form.
The collection also includes the $350 LG Smart Deadbolt Lock, which recognizes when known users approach. It can unlock automatically and can work in conjunction with the video doorbell.
Two thermostats are in the mix, one from LG and the other from Schneider. Each costs $200, and separate temperature sensors cost $40 apiece.
Availability for the Home Collection products begins in December, with certain accessories available starting in early 2027.
Apple HomePod Mini 2
Apple is expanding its HomePod line with the new $149 HomePod Mini 2 smart speaker, or as Apple puts it, “conversational assistant.” It’s the first major upgrade to the HomePod lineup in years.
It can sync up with other HomePods or with Apple TV. For first time, the company said, users can create four-speaker surround sound with new Apple TV 4K. Buyers can choose from five colors: pink, green, blue, white and midnight.
“When paired with the new Apple TV 4K, it delivers our most immersive home theater setup yet,” Kaiann Drance, Apple’s vice president of worldwide home product marketing, said in a statement.
Preorders for the HomePod Mini 2 begin Tuesday for people in the US and about two dozen countries and regions, with availability starting Oct. 30. Siri AI access will arrive in a future software update.
Apple TV 4K
The new Apple TV 4K has Apple’s A19 chip, which allows for up to 50% faster CPU performance and up to 2x faster GPU performance, the company said. Besides streaming shows and movies, it can also serve as a home hub – for instance, doorbell notifications will appear on the screen.
It has three built-in far-field microphones so that you can talk to Siri AI.
Preorders start Tuesday, with availability Nov. 13 for customers in the US and 29 other countries and regions. Pricing starts at $299 or $49.83 per month for six months.
CNET Principal Writer Katie Collins contributed to this article.