Home Hubs

A home hub is the Apple device that stays at home and keeps Apple Home running while your iPhone is out with you. Without one, accessories only answer when you are in the house with your phone. With one, you get remote control, automations that run on their own, shared access for the rest of the household, HomeKit Secure Video recording and Adaptive Lighting.

Only Apple makes them. A home hub is a HomePod, a HomePod mini, an Apple TV or, new this year, Apple HomeView. You need one, not one of each: if you own two, the Home app picks the active hub and keeps the other as a spare.

A hub is not a bridge

A bridge brings accessories that speak Zigbee, Z-Wave or a manufacturer’s own radio into the Home app. It adds devices. A hub makes them do things by themselves. A Hue Bridge will not give you remote access, and a HomePod will not make a Zigbee bulb appear. Most homes with a bridge need a hub as well.

The four Apple sells now

• HomePod mini 2, £149, available from 30 October. The cheapest hub, with Thread networking technology and a temperature and humidity sensor. The right answer for most homes.
• Apple HomeView, £299, available from 13 November. A 7-inch touchscreen for running the house by hand, with cameras on the screen.
• Apple TV 4K (4th generation), £299, available from 13 November. The hub to choose if a box was going under the television anyway. It has Gigabit Ethernet, so the hub can be on a cable.
• HomePod (2nd generation), £349. The same hub job as the mini, with a much larger speaker.

All four have Thread networking technology, so all four work with Thread accessories. The hub comparison puts them side by side, and Which Apple home hub do you need? walks through the choice.

If you already own one

An older hub may already do the job. Check it before you buy:

• HomePod mini (1st generation) is still a home hub with Thread. There is little reason to replace it for the hub alone — see HomePod mini 2 vs HomePod mini.
• Apple TV 4K (3rd generation) came in two models. Apple lists Thread for the Wi-Fi + Ethernet model only, so the Wi-Fi model is the one to check if you have Thread accessories.
• Apple TV 4K (2nd generation) is a home hub and lists Thread.
• Apple TV 4K (1st generation) and Apple TV HD stop at tvOS 26.6. Apple’s newest Home update asks for the latest software on every device, so these are the two to replace first.
• HomePod (1st generation) is not on Apple’s lists of Thread-enabled hubs, so do not rely on it for Thread accessories.
• iPad is no longer a home hub. Apple ended support for the previous version of Apple Home, the last one where an iPad could be a hub, on 10 February 2026.

What a hub does not do

A hub does not make an AirPlay 2 speaker into a HomeKit accessory. AirPlay 2 plays music; it does not run automations, and a speaker from another brand stays a speaker. Apple’s own Home Collection cameras, made by LG, need a hub for their camera features — see cameras.