Apple Home Key is supported by more and more locks. However, in Europe, there is currently only one lock with Apple Home Key support: the Aqara U200. Two interesting exceptions are Nuki and SwitchBot. While Nuki already announced support for Aliro, the new standard to open your smart lock similar to Apple HomeKey, we have no clear indication SwitchBot will also support either Apple Home Key or Aliro soon. However, Smart Home Centre discovered they sort of already do support this way to unlock your door. This is possible with their new SwitchBot Keypad Vision, which unlocks your SwitchBot Lock with facial recognition. This keypad also supports NFC cards, specifically the SwitchBot Card, SwitchBot Wallet Finder Card but also IC cards from Suica and PASMO. These IC cards are interesting, as this unlocks an Apple Home Key like experience with SwitchBot locks and the Keypad Vision.
How it works
The Apple Wallet supports debit- and creditcards, but also transit cards for public transport in specific areas. You can top-up these cards within the Wallet app and also set up Express mode. This way, you can tap your iPhone or Apple Watch to the reader without the need for additional verification to check in for your trip. In this specific case, SwitchBot supports the use of the Suica and PASMO transit cards to unlock your SwitchBot Lock. Here’s a quick how-to:
- Go to the Wallet app on your iPhone
- Press the + button to add a new card
- Choose Transit Card
- Choose either PASMO or Suica in the Japan section
- Walk through the steps to top up the lowest amount of money to the card ( ¥ 1.000, about 7 dollars)
- Within the settings of the Wallet app, choose your created card in the Express Transit Card settings
- Add a NFC card in the SwitchBot app by following the regular process. When you need to scan the NFC card, just tap your iPhone to the Keypad Vision and it will register it as a new NFC card.
And that’s it. This way, it’s possible to unlock a SwitchBot Lock in a manner very similar to using Apple Home Key. You even get the Dynamic Island notification, although it displays the transit card, not a Home Key card. It also confirms that the card was read, but no charge was made. You do specifically need the Keypad Vision for this to work, the regular Keypad does not support this method. While official Apple Home Key support would be great, this way of unlocking a SwitchBot Lock is already quite close to the experience of Home Key. It also indicates that the hardware of the SwitchBot Keypad is already capable of working with Apple Home Key. Hopefully, SwitchBot will add this functionality later with a software update.
Apple Home Key with the Keypad Vision
The Keypad Vision from SwitchBot was released earlier this week, together with the SwitchBot Lock Ultra and their new Hub 3. With the Keypad Vision you can unlock the Lock Pro or Ultra with facial recognition. After an initial face scan, it will automatically open the SwitchBot lock when you approach the door. In our experience, this works very well. It takes 1-3 seconds to scan and verify your face, after which it will open the connected lock. Next to facial recognition, you can also use the fingerprint scanner, a pincode or NFC cards to unlock your Smart Lock.
While the lock is usually already unlocked by the facial recognition before I could use the transit card to open our door, I did find the experience to use a transit card to open a SwitchBot lock very similar to actually using Apple Home Key. However, there are of course also some differences. First, you will need to top-up a transit card, which costs about 7 dollars. You can still use this to actually travel with public transport, but this does require you to be in Japan, which is probably not the case for most of you. Second, it shows different notifications compared to Home Key. Personally I’m fine with that, it’s not something I really care about. As it’s not actually Home Key, you are also not able to share the card with a guest. Other than this, the experience and convenience is very similar. There were a few occasions where the processing did seem to take a bit longer compared to Home Key, which might have something to do with the transaction part of the process. While actual Apple Home Key support is of course the preffered solution, this is a perfectly fine way to open your lock with your iPhone or Apple Watch until SwitchBot supports either Apple Home Key or Aliro.
The SwitchBot Keypad Vision is currently available for $99,99/€149,99/£149,99 on the official SwitchBot website. Here, you can also opt for a combo with a SwitchBot Lock Ultra and either a Hub Mini or Hub 3. Until June 5th, you can use code 15OFFBW522 (US/CA/UK) or 15OFFYQ522 (EU) for 15% off.
