What you get in Home

Each appliance becomes one accessory in the Home app. An accessory is one device in Home, such as your fridge. A tile is one control or reading inside it, such as the fridge door.

The accessory is called “Fridge”, “Freezer” or “Fridge Freezer”, depending on the kind of appliance. You can rename it. See Rooms and names.

Your appliance only gets the tiles it supports

Each appliance’s profile lists the features it has. The plugin makes a tile only for a feature in that list. Two appliances of the same brand can therefore get different tiles.

For example, the two appliances the plugin was tested on got these tiles:

• The Bosch KSN36VICG fridge: the “Fridge” thermostat, “Fridge Door”, “Fridge Door Alarm”, “Fridge Fault”, “Super Cool”, “Eco Mode”, “Vacation Mode”, “Fresh Mode”, “Sabbath Mode”, “Theater Mode” and “Interior Light”.
• The Bosch GSN36VICG freezer: the “Freezer” thermostat, “Freezer Door”, “Freezer Door Alarm”, “Freezer Temperature Alarm”, “Freezer Fault”, “Super Freeze”, “Eco Mode”, “Sabbath Mode”, “Theater Mode” and “Interior Light”.

If a tile you expected is missing, see If a tile is missing.

The tiles

Thermostat: “Fridge” and “Freezer”

There is one thermostat for each compartment. It shows the temperature the compartment is set to, and you can change it from the Home app.

• The lowest and highest temperature, and the size of each step, come from your appliance. On the tested fridge it is 2 to 8 °C in steps of 1 °C. On the tested freezer it is -24 to -16 °C.
• The mode is always Cool. A fridge cannot heat, so there is nothing else to choose.
• The tile shows the temperature you set, not the temperature inside. Why the thermostat shows the target explains this.

Door sensors: “Fridge Door”, “Freezer Door” and “Door”

These show whether a door is open or closed. You cannot change them from the Home app.

• Most appliances report each door on its own, so you get “Fridge Door” and “Freezer Door”.
• An appliance that does not report each door gets one sensor called “Door” instead. The plugin uses “Door” only then, because the appliance’s general door status has been seen stuck on open while the compartment doors were reported correctly.

Alarm sensors

These show your appliance’s own alarms. You cannot change them from the Home app. Open means the alarm is active. Why alarms are contact sensors explains why they look like door sensors.

• “Fridge Door Alarm” and “Freezer Door Alarm”: the appliance’s alarm for that door.
• “Freezer Temperature Alarm”: the freezer’s temperature alarm.
• “Fridge Fault”, or your appliance’s name followed by “Fault”: the appliance reports an error. While the error lasts, the plugin also tells Home that the accessory has a fault.
• “Low Voltage Warning”: the appliance’s low-voltage warning.

Switches for modes

You can turn these on and off from the Home app. Each one turns that mode on or off on the appliance. Your appliance’s manual explains what each mode does.

• “Super Cool” is the fridge’s Super mode, and “Super Freeze” is the freezer’s. The appliance turns them off by itself after a while, and the switch follows.
• “Eco Mode”, “Vacation Mode”, “Fresh Mode” and “Sabbath Mode” are the modes of the same names.

The modes affect each other on the appliance. Vacation Mode raises the fridge to about 14 °C. Sabbath Mode turns off Super Cool and Super Freeze. The switches always show what the appliance reports, so a switch can change by itself when you turn on another mode.

Other switches: “Child Lock”, “Theater Mode” and “Logo Light”

You can turn these on and off from the Home app.

• “Child Lock” turns the appliance’s child lock on and off. It is a plain switch, not a lock. It has nothing to do with locking a door.
• “Theater Mode” and “Logo Light” turn those light settings on and off.

Lights: “Interior Light” and “Exterior Light”

You can turn these lights on and off from the Home app. If your appliance lets you dim a light, the tile also has a brightness slider.

Home treats these tiles like any other light. If you tell Home to turn off all the lights in a room, these turn off too.

Temperature sensor: “Room Temperature”

This shows the temperature of the room around the appliance, as the appliance measures it. You cannot change it. Few fridges and freezers have this sensor.

When a change does not go through

• The appliance refuses the change. For example, it may not let you change the temperature while Vacation Mode is on. The tile goes back to the real value, and the Homebridge log says why. The line starts with the appliance’s name, such as Fridge: setpoint not changed:, and names the modes that are on.
• The appliance is not connected. The change fails straight away. The plugin does not save it to try again later.

Celsius and Fahrenheit

The appliance always works in Celsius. If you switch the Home app to Fahrenheit, only the display changes.

Why the thermostat shows the target

This is the part most likely to look like a bug.

Your appliance never sends the temperature inside the cabinet. It only sends its setpoint, the temperature it is aiming for. The Home app needs a current temperature on every thermostat tile, so the plugin shows the setpoint there too.

So if your fridge is set to 4 °C, the tile reads 4 °C. It reads 4 °C when the fridge is at 4 °C. It still reads 4 °C when the door was left open and the inside warmed up to 9 °C. The tile is not a thermometer. The plugin cannot make it one, because the appliance does not send the number.

Vacation Mode shows this clearly. It raises the fridge setpoint to about 14 °C, which is outside the range the appliance gave the Home app. The tile then shows 14 °C as the current temperature. The target stays at the last value inside the range, because the Home app does not accept a target outside it. Super Freeze does the same on the tested freezer. The tile shows -26 °C as the current temperature, and the target stays at -18 °C.

If you would rather not have the thermostat tiles, you have two choices:

• Move them to their own accessory. In the plugin’s settings, set Setpoint to separate for that appliance. The thermostats move to a second accessory, named after your appliance followed by “Temperature”, for example “Fridge Temperature”. You can put it in a room of its own. The door sensors and alarms stay where they are.
• Remove them. Set Setpoint to none. The thermostats disappear. You can no longer change the temperature from the Home app.

To change Setpoint, see Change a setting for one appliance.

Why alarms are contact sensors

A contact sensor is the kind of tile a door or window sensor uses. It has two states: open and closed. The plugin uses it for alarms because an alarm is also either on or off, and because you can use contact sensors in Home automations.

• Open means the alarm is active.
• Closed means it is not.

If you silence an alarm on the appliance’s own panel, the tile stays open for as long as the cause is still there.

The Home app groups contact sensors with door and window sensors. These tiles may therefore appear under Security rather than next to your appliance. That is how the Home app sorts them, and the plugin cannot change it.

Rooms and names

Put the accessory in the room your appliance is in. The door sensors and alarms then make sense in that room.

The thermostats are the awkward part. Their current temperature is the setpoint, not a real reading, and the Home app counts it in the room’s temperature summary. If that bothers you, set Setpoint to separate or none, as described in Why the thermostat shows the target.

To rename the accessory or a tile, rename it in the Home app. The plugin keeps your names when Homebridge restarts.

The Accessory name setting (name in config.json) names the accessory when the plugin first adds the appliance to Home. The plugin also puts that name at the start of its log lines for that appliance. Changing it later does not rename an accessory that is already in Home.

Change a setting for one appliance

Setpoint and Accessory name are settings for one appliance. You set them on the plugin’s settings page.

1. Open the Homebridge UI, as in Step 1.
2. In the side menu, click Plugins.
3. On the Home Connect Local card, click the three dots, then click Plugin Config.
4. Under “Imported appliances”, find your appliance and note its appliance ID. It is on the line under the brand and model, before the ·, for example BOSCH-KSN36VICG-000000000000.
5. Further down the page, find Appliance overrides and add an entry.
6. In Appliance ID (haId), type the appliance ID from step 4.
7. Change the setting you want, such as Setpoint.
8. Click Save.
9. Restart the plugin. If you followed Step 1, the plugin runs in a child bridge: click the three dots on the Home Connect Local card, then click Restart Child Bridge. If you turned the child bridge off, in the side menu click Power Options, then click Restart Homebridge.

Reference lists every setting.

If a tile is missing

Your appliance may name the feature in a way the plugin does not know yet. Turn on debug logging and restart, as described in Debug logging. The plugin then writes one line for each feature it did not turn into a tile, with the reason. Each line contains unmapped:, for example:

[Home Connect Local] Fridge: unmapped: Refrigeration.Common.Status.Compartment1.TemperatureCelsius (no HomeKit equivalent in v1)

The list shows only what the plugin left out, not everything your appliance can do. Some features are left out on purpose, and Reference lists them. If the feature you are missing is not on that list, open an issue on GitHub and paste the unmapped: lines. Before you post them, remove anything that identifies your appliance, as described in Debug logging.

How you know it worked

• If you set Setpoint to separate, the Home app shows a second accessory whose name ends in “Temperature”, with the thermostats in it.
• If you set Setpoint to none, the thermostat tiles are gone from the Home app.
• If you renamed a tile in the Home app, it keeps its new name after you restart Homebridge.