Home Kat Bridge

Introduction

The Home Kat Bridge app is a software hub hosting accessories which can be added to HomeKit. Once added, you can then control these accessories via the Home app or by Siri.

Home Kat Bridge can add the following categories of accessories to HomeKit:

Home Kat Bridge will run on any Mac running macOS 15 (Sequoia) or higher either natively or using OCLP. Alternatively, you can dedicate an old iOS device capable of running iOS 18 or higher, including iPhone 11 and iPhone XR, and leave it plugged in at home on the local network.

You can set up Home Kat Bridge on one of your devices, and the settings will be stored in your iCloud account. You can then start the app on another device using the same iCloud account and all your settings will transfer. If run on a second device on the same network and iCloud account at the same time, the app can connect remotely to check status, view the Event Log and history charts, manage purchases, or restart and shut down the server. Category switches are shown read-only in remote settings; enable or disable a category from the server's local settings. Remote monitoring is useful if the server device is in a back room or cupboard.

Preserving your HomeKit organisation

Home Kat Bridge keeps track of the HomeKit rooms and supported scene or automation actions associated with its accessories. If the bridge needs to be unpaired and paired again, restoration begins after the bridge and its accessories have reappeared in HomeKit.

See HomeKit Settings and Assignment Recovery for the manual restore and forget commands, inspection tools, and automation limitations.

History charts and widgets

Home Kat Bridge retains up to 72 hours of network, battery, memory and heap history. Smart ACs in the Buttons & Sensors category record room temperature, optional outside temperature, and heating or cooling activity. The app displays these histories as daily charts and also provides Home Screen widgets. Swipe right over a chart for yesterday and left for today; select a chart to expand it and optionally focus on the most recent four hours.

Choose from Network and Battery History, Memory & Heap History, and Smart Thermostat History widgets. A widget can be configured to show a selected Home Kat Bridge instance or Smart AC, and can show today or today together with yesterday. Thread diagnostics may appear in development builds but are not part of release history.

Subscriptions activate one category, two categories, or every current and future category, with six-month and annual billing options. The Golden Ticket remains a lifetime purchase that activates all categories. Categories may be enabled for discovery and setup without being activated, but only activated categories add accessories to HomeKit. See Plans, Purchases and Activated Categories for plan changes and category selection.

Instructions on getting started are here.

Tips for using the app on iOS are here.

Please note that the app must be running at all times on the same network as the devices in your home. This means:

  • If the app is quit, or the device it is running on sleeps, the accessories will be marked as unavailable in HomeKit until the Home Kat Bridge app is restarted or resumed.
  • If run on an iOS device, that device must be dedicated to running the app 24/7 and the device must remain in your home at all times. This is only useful if you have a spare or second hand iOS device you can leave plugged in and running Home Kat Bridge only. The app does not need much resources so an old iPhone 11 or XR are fine.
  • If run on a mac, the machine must be switched on, logged in, not asleep and the app must be running at all times in the background. It is possible to hide the app behind a menu item to avoid it cluttering screen space.

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App support

If you are having difficulties, you may find some help in the FAQ or in this troubleshooting guide. Contact the developer through this website for technical support. For questions about subscriptions or payments, please contact the Apple App Store.

HomeKit support

For support using Apple's HomeKit, Apple provides many online resources, including:

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