Reusing an iPad as a HomeKit dashboard

It would be an expensive job to, say, a 12.9-inch iPad Pro so you could have a touchscreen light switch in your den. But if you already have a spare iPad, even one that’s a few years old, you’d better do something with it.

And you can make excellent use of it by turning that iPad into a dashboard. Mount it somewhere handy, and let it always show you useful information ranging from a clock to providing HomeKit tests.

There are many different apps you can use to decide what information or controls to display, but whatever you need, you have the same hardware considerations.

Granted, you could put an old iPad on your desk and it could come in quite handy. But to make a real dashboard, you have to mount that iPad to the wall.

That immediately means three things. You have to decide which wall it is best on, physically attach it to that and then put power on it.

It’s up to you, of course, where you mount the iPad dashboard, but you’re not going to pop it up in a spare room. Hang it by your front door, in your living room or in your kitchen.

Pick a point in your home or office where you can see what it shows you. And pick a point where you can and will tap buttons.

If you have to get up to cross your office to press a button to turn on the lights, don’t. You’re just going to use Siri.

There are countless brackets to hang your iPad on the wall. Purely as a single example, check out the Dockem Koala Tablet Wall Mount that costs about $15 on Amazon.

This consists of two small plastic tabs that you place on the wall and then slide your iPad into it. You have to have the right position so that the iPad fits neatly, but with this kind of holder you can also easily remove the iPad.

So if you suddenly need that iPad for work, that’s no problem.

One problem is the drive. While iPad batteries last a long time, you’re talking about hours instead of days or years.

That’s why you need to power the iPad. The neatest way is to mount the iPad on the wall.

That often makes it harder to remove quickly, but it also definitely requires a trained electrician. Don’t electrocute yourself just to have a HomeKit dashboard.

Alternatively, you can just use a Lightning cable (or a USB-C cable for newer iPads). Get one with a right-angle connector so it fits snugly against the iPad rather than sticking out, and it may look neat enough.

Nine years ago, Panic Software’s Status Board would have been the answer, and there was no point in looking for anything else. But Panic shut down that app, and while there are tons of dashboard apps out there now, perhaps none are as versatile, as compelling, as Sound Board used to be.

The apps are also fragmented. While we look at HomeKit, you can get a more general information view, or you can take a very deep dive into business sales data for your business.

If you just want a clock, calendar, and maybe a Twitter feed, you can Dash Kit for iPad. This requires iOS 14.4 or later and is a free download.

You can have a general purpose dashboard with basic information, here with Dashkit

It’s also a generous download, with most of the features permanently available in the free version. There are some bugs in the calendar, which for some reason doesn’t refresh daily.

But there’s also a pro version that costs $8 a year, and one of the few extras you get when you subscribe is the ability to integrate with the AppFigures enterprise service.

Dashkit for iPad works with this AppFigures service, but Numerics is a more powerful, all-round business dashboard. It’s also a subscription, and costs $99 per year.

That gives you real-time, updated business data, such as how many YouTube subscribers you have, or a breakdown of the sales totals for each of your dedicated sales teams.

Similar information about your company and what your staff has on their plates is also available on Monday.com.

But it’s HomeKit that the iPad dashboard was really made for.

You have many choices for HomeKit dashboard apps, but mostly that choice revolves around functionality or aesthetics. There are some awful looking dashboards available in the App Store.

Since this is something that will hang on your wall all day, it would be best if it looked good.

Home+ 5

First take a look at Home+ 5. This is a $14.99 app for iPad and iPhone that aims to replace Apple’s Home app, and does so by making it noticeably easier and faster to navigate.

You could use Home+5 alone, or you could use iPadOS’s Split View, with it on one side of the screen and Apple’s Home app on the other.

Home+ 5 is good for when you interact a lot with your HomeKit devices, when you’re working on scenes or manually turning lights on. It’s arguably the best at this, and certainly the most convenient, in the iPhone version.

You can use Split View to have, like here, Apple’s Home on one side and Home+ 5 on the other

But have it as a dashboard on your wall and you can quickly see which lights are on, which doors are locked, or you can directly see the view from your cameras.

Home+ 5 is really a set of controls that are large enough and clear enough to act as a dashboard. HomeDash is an iPad app that costs $9.99and who puts the presentation first.

It has tons of controls and options, it can be your all-encompassing HomeKit control device, but it focuses on how well it can present information and controls.

HomeDash doesn’t have the most obvious system for choosing elements like light switches or cameras, and it takes time to learn how to move the elements you want.

HomeDash is a great looking, customizable HomeKit dashboard

But you can glance at the dashboard and see the status of all your HomeKit devices and their batteries. You can get a clock and calendar, and you can integrate views from any or all of your security cameras.

At $25, it’s the most expensive dashboard for a single purchase, but it’s also by far the most customizable.

namely designer is a combined iPad and Mac app. You let the iPad display as many different dashboards as you want — you can have a different one for every room in your house — but you use the Mac to set it up.

On the Mac, Viz Designer resembles an image editor in the way that you can drag, resize, or even overlay different elements.

Viz Designer is a Mac app that lets you design intricate HomeKit dashboards that you can then display on your iPad

If you have a spare iPad, it doesn’t take long to physically mount it to the wall. It also doesn’t take long to find dashboard apps.

It takes a while to find one that’s the right combination of displaying the information you need, the HomeKit controls you want, and one that won’t look bad on your wall.

Even if you have found the perfect combination of these for you, it will take weeks for you to be completely happy. You play with layouts and you keep changing what information is there.

And what’s more, once you’ve had an iPad dashboard on your wall, you start thinking about other things you can do with it — which we’ll talk about later.