Apple Home
Tasmota in Apple Home
Tasmota devices can show up in the Home app on your iPhone, be switched by Siri and take part in scenes, with no Home Assistant, no Homebridge and no MQTT broker in between. What it takes is Matter, which Tasmota has spoken since version 13, and something to start the pairing.
Can I put a Tasmota device into Apple Home without a server?
Yes, if the device has an ESP32 chip and runs Tasmota 13.0 or newer. Matter is part of the standard tasmota32 firmware. You switch it on once on the device's own web page, and from then on the device offers itself to Apple Home like any other Matter accessory. TasmoShelf starts the pairing and shows the setup code, so nobody has to go hunting for it at 192.168.x.x. Devices with an ESP8266 chip cannot speak Matter at all — there is not enough memory for it — and reach Apple Home through one ESP32 device running as a bridge. During setup Apple warns that the accessory is not certified; you confirm that once.
What you need
- A Tasmota device with an ESP32 chip. TasmoShelf reads the chip out of the device and tells you which one is in there.
- Tasmota 13.0 or newer, built with Matter. The standard tasmota32 build has it; if the menu entry is missing, the firmware was built without it.
- An iPhone or iPad on the same Wi-Fi as the device.
- A HomePod or Apple TV only for automations and for switching from outside the house. Pairing and switching at home work without one.
How the pairing goes
- Turn Matter on once, on the device's own web page: Configuration → Configure Matter → tick Enable Matter → Save. The device restarts and keeps the setting.
- Open the device in TasmoShelf and tap Connect to Apple Home. The app checks chip and firmware first and says plainly if one of them is in the way.
- The device now accepts pairing for ten minutes. In the Home app, tap +, add an accessory, choose the manual option and type in the setup code TasmoShelf shows. From a second device you can scan the QR code instead.
- Apple asks about the uncertified accessory. Confirm it, and the device behaves like every other one in Home: Siri, scenes, automations.
Older devices with an ESP8266
An ESP8266 will never speak Matter, and no firmware update changes that: the chip has too little memory for it. Those devices get into Apple Home through a single ESP32 device that runs as a Matter bridge, set up on that ESP32's own web page. The ESP8266 devices then appear in the Home app without knowing anything about Matter themselves.
Why Apple calls it uncertified
Certification is something a manufacturer pays for, and community firmware has no manufacturer. So no Tasmota device is certified, whichever way it gets into Apple Home. The warning shows up once, during setup, and never again.
What stays in the app
Apple Home switches things. It does not write the timers that run inside the device, it does not read the energy counters, it does not back up a configuration, and it does not find a device that has just joined the network. That is what TasmoShelf is for, and both work on the same devices side by side.