Use the Apple Watch as a Smart Home Remote

Ever unintentionally flummox a houseguest because of the smart lights and devices in your home? You can’t blame them for not knowing which lights are smart bulbs and which are connected to smart plugs. And no one wants to be that person, plaintively calling out to Siri or Alexa in an empty room, hoping the robots are listening.

If you’re still holding onto an old Apple Watch, though, you have a great compact controller for your smart lights and devices. (As a bonus, you can locate the watch using Find My.)

Since the Apple Watch is designed primarily as an accessory for a single iPhone, you’ll need to take a few steps to make it usable by anyone in the house. Read on to learn how. For more, here’s what we think of the Apple Watch Series 9 and the best Apple Watch deals we’ve found.

Set up the Apple Watch as a home remote

To set up the old watch, if it is not currently connected to your iPhone, pair it as a second watch for you or as a Family Sharing watch for someone else. That can be a new Family Sharing member that you create for just this use (up to six family members can be in a group).

1. Erase the watch by unpairing it from its current iPhone.
2. Hold the watch near your iPhone and tap Set Up for a Family Member on the phone’s setup screen.
3. Follow the setup steps and assign it to a family member.

To make sure the watch doesn’t need to be unlocked whenever it’s picked up, you’ll want to disable the passcode and make sure the screen doesn’t shut off too quickly:

1. On the watch, go to Settings > Passcode and tap Turn Passcode Off.
2. Go to Settings > General > Return to Clock and set that to After 1 hour so you aren’t presented with the clock each time you use it.

For simplicity’s sake, choose a watch layout such as Modular that includes spots to add the Home and Remote apps as complications. You might also consider uninstalling any apps you don’t need; unfortunately you cannot remove Apple’s built-in apps.

If you set up the watch as a second watch under your Apple ID, keep in mind that text messages, mail and notifications will be accessible on it. In the Watch app on your iPhone, consider going to Settings > Notifications and turning off Mirror my iPhone and then choosing Notifications Off for apps other than the Home and Remote apps.

Control your Home devices from the Apple Watch

On the Apple Watch, open the Home app to reveal the controls you’ve set up for your household devices.

On a shared watch, you will need to grant access to the Home app’s controls:

1. On an iPhone that’s already part of the household (presumably yours), open the Home app.
2. Tap the + button and choose Add People.
3. Choose the family member the watch is assigned to and tap Send Invite.
4. On the watch, open the Home app and accept the invitation.

The Home app presents a truncated view to accommodate the small screen; tap an icon for specific categories, such as lighting, to view both accessories and scenes you’ve created.

To toggle a device off or on, tap its tile. If it has other controls, such as a light that can be dimmed, tap the three-dots button and drag or use the Digital Crown to adjust it.

(Another option, not specific to the Apple Watch, is to invite someone outside your house to be a Resident in the Home app while they’re visiting. That allows them to control most of your smart devices using their own Apple devices. However, if you forget to remove them after they’ve left, they can still control your house over the internet, which I can tell you from experience feels like sharing space with a mischievous poltergeist.)