What’s New for HomeKit in iOS 12 Public Beta 3
Today, Apple has seeded iOS 12 public beta 3, coming in at 12 days since the previous release, and oddly, a day after the macOS Mojave beta 3 release. Of course, this means we have dove in to look for any potential changes that might be had for HomeKit, and while the number is low, we were able to notice a few things related to cameras.
The first thing that we discovered was a bug in how the device tile for a camera is displayed within the Home app. For some reason, one of our cameras had a device tile that was not rounded like the other. At first we thought it was just a bug that would quickly go away once we closed out and re-opened the home app, but the issue persisted. We also noticed that the visual bug also carried over to whatever room the camera was in.
The second thing that we found with regards to cameras was discovered entirely by accident. When taking a screenshot of the aforementioned visual bug, we noticed that the area where the camera feed appears in the Home app within the screenshot was replaced with a blank black screen. We did some further testing to see if this would also happen when we took a screenshot of a live camera feed, and to our surprise, it again was blacked out. For purposes, such as writing a post like this, or a review for a camera, having the image blacked out makes it much easier to manage with regards to privacy, which we found to be a nice touch, but we would like to see an option to disable this “feature” for those wanting to show off their camera images. Of course, this could also just be a bug in this latest beta, only time will tell. Speaking of a potential features or bugs, we are still seeing that the room name on a device tile is not displaying within a specific room in the Home app, which again we speculate may be intended, and AirPort Express routers are still showing as available to add within the Home app.
While there wasn’t a ton of things to be found within beta 3, we will nonetheless keep you updated on any additional findings, and if you have found something that we missed, let us know in the comments below. Stay tuned for our coverage of upcoming betas, as we will be digging through each one as they are released.
