HomeKit Confirmed For New Yeelight Lamps

Back at the start of July, we reported on the discovery of a raft of new Smart bulbs and lamps from Yeelight, the lighting-centric company that’s a part of the Xiaomi Smart Home Ecosystem. Since then, the bulbs we mentioned in the article have all now been added to the list of devices you’re able to add to the Xiaomi Home app (formerly Mi Home), as long as your app is set to the Mainland China server of course.

As regards the lamps we originally mentioned, which consisted of two different desk lamps, a bedside lamp and a floor lamp, we now have pretty solid information on some of these being HomeKit compatible. Originally, the internal log files that our inside source was able to access, listed references to HomeKit in all four products. He has now discovered specific hidden FAQ pages for three of the four aforementioned products, namely the ‘Vision’ Desk Lamp (now called the Yeelight Light Sensor Desk Lamp V1), the ‘Doris’ Bedside Lamp (Yeelight Star Table Lamp), and the ‘Doris F’ Floor Lamp (Yeelight Star Floor Lamp).

In the FAQs for both the Bedside and Floor lamps, under the question “Which app can I use to control this floor lamp?”, the answer is “Yeelight APP, Mi Home APP, Apple HomeKit”. So, this, combined with the log files previously uncovered, all strongly point to these being yet more “HomeKit-out-of-the-box” products from Yeelight, who have previously released the Mi Desk Lamp Pro, Mi Bedside Lamp 2 and the Mi Desk Lamp 1S, all of which are HomeKit-ready (even though they were released under the Mi brand, they are in fact Yeelight products).

As regards the FAQs for the Vision Desk Lamp, there’s no reference to HomeKit unfortunately, with the same question regarding app control merely referring to the Mi Home app and the Yeelight app. There is another question in the same FAQs for the desk lamp, which asks “Which voice platform can I use to control this desk lamp?”, with the answer being “1. Xiaomi AI speaker; 2. Yeelight voice assistant; 3. Google Home; 4. Amazon Alexa; 5. Siri” which is intriguing, however. The reference to Siri could just be related to the fact that you can create Siri Shortcuts to control a device like this in both the Yeelight app and the Xiaomi Home app, so that wouldn’t be out of the ordinary, although you’d think they might put Siri Shortcuts in order to clarify this. Finally, whilst it’s not within our remit to go into any details about compatibility with Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant, this does more than suggest that these lamps are made with international markets in mind, considering neither of these platforms is permitted in Mainland China.

Thanks to Sebastian G for the update.