Apple Home App - Backup & Restore settings

[pixelrogue]

Anyone know how to backup and/or restore settings? Three L2 apple support agents, hours of calls and Apple does not appear to know. Yale points to Apple while Apple looks at Yale.

SITUATION

• Lost 70+ device home network
• Unable to restore network

ENVIRONMENT

• Desktop mac, backed up to Time Machine Daily and monthly drive backups. iCloud on only for HomeKit and Keychain (and FindMy.)
• HomePod, which was the hub for many months.
• iPad as most recent hub: keychain and home app are iCloud enabled.

BACKGROUND

• Needed to re-add a Yale lock to the network. From only working from within the Yale Secure app the lock and home were removed to start fresh.
• Removing the home from Yale Secure app resulted in wiping the home and all of its devices and automations from the home app across every apple device and shared
  guest.

Wonder if anyone else hit this lovely undocumented feature? How do you backup yoi Home app settings?

 

[MacInWin]

The mistake was removing the HOME from the Yale App. The various apps sync with Homekit, as you would want, normally, so when you deleted the HOME, it synced and deleted it from Homekit as well. I have apps from some of the vendors for some of my homekit devices and I have been very careful NOT to mess with the Home, just the device.

As for backups, I don't know of any. My hub is on an AppleTV, which AFAIK has no backup. There are some third-party apps that claim to make backups. Here is one: Controller for HomeKit . It's not free and it has limitations.

I don't know if that really works as I don't want to pay their price for the software or service.

 

[pixelrogue]

I can see what i expect are the configuration/data files located under user/library/HomeKit.

That said not a single file from that directory will enable the Restore button.

 

[MacInWin]

I presume you mean /Users/<<your account>>/Library/HomeKit as the location. What I see there are various items that contain the configuration data, but in an SQLite database that got zeroed out when you deleted the HOME that held all of the items. There are lots of bits and pieces there.

What "Restore button" are you talking about? The one in TM? It's only active if you go back in time to an earlier backup than the most recent one.

I'm not sure what would happen if you tried to restore the HomeKit folder from before the problem. It might work, but there is a lot of interaction between the devices, your router, your internal network and the software. I suppose at this point it's worth a try, if you have a good TM (or other) backup of the drive from before the issue arose. But don't be disappointed if it fails--there are a lot of moving parts.

 

[pixelrogue]

I presume you mean /Users/<<your account>>/Library/HomeKit as the location. What I see there are various items that contain the configuration data, but in an SQLite database that got zeroed out when you deleted the HOME that held all of the items. There are lots of bits and pieces there.

What "Restore button" are you talking about? The one in TM? It's only active if you go back in time to an earlier backup than the most recent one.

I'm not sure what would happen if you tried to restore the HomeKit folder from before the problem. It might work, but there is a lot of interaction between the devices, your router, your internal network and the software. I suppose at this point it's worth a try, if you have a good TM (or other) backup of the drive from before the issue arose. But don't be disappointed if it fails--there are a lot of moving parts.

Apologize if this is a repeat response as i a am not seeing my response…

Not an expert by any stretch…when i restore from time machine files related to HomeKit that i can see (/Users/<<your account>>/Library/HomeKit) and reboot (wifi/icloud off) Home app appear to be as before… all devices, able to move devices around…app functions normally (except access to devices.) The moment wifi/icloud is turned back on, home app on the mac is overwritten and all devices are again missing.

In an interesting development i tried to just start over fresh and rebuilt from scratch, but can not. When i try to add any device, I select add by code (some devices have an 8 digit code and no home or qr code) and I am presented with a list of all the devices that used to be part of the network. This was encouraging as it would speed up the rebuild! Nope, can not add a single existing device AND the screen does not offer a way to add devices not listed. Spend 2 hours with Leviton support, over three with Apple yesterday, nope can not add devices. ZERO way to add a device via code now.

ATM it appears I would need to create a brand nee Apple ID to get the network rebuilt.

——-
Side Note: Decided years ago not to ise my primary AppleID for home network and SO GLAD for that decision.

 

[ferrarr]

Did you see this thread?

HomeKit iCloud Data Syncing… - Apple Community

discussions.apple.com

 

[pixelrogue]

Thank you as this offers another angle for troubleshooting.