How to make an old iPad as close to a HomeView as possible

What HomeView does, it does very well, yet there are compromises and so many use cases where an old iPad would do much better. Here's what you can do to get most of the HomeView experience.

Apple got it exactly right when it determined that a device that would control your smart home could also be a simple focal point in the kitchen or the den. But Apple is wrong thinking that a static 6-inch square screen is enough for this.

That's especially obvious to me since I already cook using my 13-inch iPad Pro to display recipes. It's true that this is far too powerful an iPad to just have sitting there on the counter, but it is exceptionally good at the job.

For one thing, the screen size means I can check ingredients lists even when I'm at our fridge across the room. Plus its speakers are great so even with pots and kettles boiling, even with an extractor fan running, my iPad Pro almost makes me enjoy cooking.

I have to suspect that the HomeView would have better speakers, at least if you buy the version with a base. But still, I can watch TV on my iPad while my oven pre-heats, and you can only do that on HomeView if you AirPlay video from your iPad or iPhone.

So if you're standing there with your iPad playing back TV, you might as well use it for everything and forget the HomeView.

Using iPad instead of HomeView

You do have to have a spare iPad, but I've now arranged mine so that I can slot it in and out of a mount. That means I can still use it away from my kitchen.

But the cost of this is that I bought a very cheap pair of plastic mounts that grip the corners of the iPad, and I haven't hardwired anything into my wall.

Then those cheap mounts are affixed to my wall with adhesive strips that came with the mount and I know from past experience that these are a mixed bag. On the one hand, they've never yet dropped an iPad, but on the other, I still have a torn section of wallpaper from where I first did this.

It's a little tricky making certain the two separate struts are placed evenly. And as I say, I've lost wallpaper when moving my wall-mounted iPad to another spot.

So it's not as if it's absolutely straightforward setting up a iPad instead of a HomeView, it's not as if there aren't things to consider. Plus your smart home needs an Apple home hub and since iPadOS 16, that can't be an iPad.

What you need to consider is:

• Setting up a home hub
• Repurposing a spare iPad
• The right mounting system
• Power
• Choosing apps

Setting up a home hub

That last is important because of a major change Apple made with iPadOS 16 back in 2022. As of then, iPads could no longer be used as home hubs, as the central device in your smart home.

Instead, you have to use an Apple TV 4K, a HomePod, or any HomePod mini.

Or, unsurprisingly, a HomeView.

Repurposing an old iPad

HomeView does cost less than any current iPad, retailing for $299 as against the $429 of the base iPad. Plus if you're to have any chance of decent room-filling sound quality, you need an iPad Pro, and those start at $1199.

So if you were starting from scratch, setting up an iPad would be much more costly than buying a HomeView. Except that you'd have an iPad which is much more portable and much more versatile.

You'd have it for a long time, too, as iPads are robust. They're so hard-wearing that the operating system is going to date faster than the hardware.

Which is why I originally did this with an original 2015 iPad Pro and today we have a 2013 iPad Air that is still going strong. Neither of them can be updated to the latest iPadOS, but they are both functioning well.

The right mounting system

I'm just using a pair of plastic struts with an adhesive strip to fasten them to the wall, which cost under $10. I was happier mounting the 2015 iPad Pro with these plastic holders because that was a lighter device, though.

Nonetheless, I've now gone with my 2021 M1 iPad Pro. I needed to buy the mounts again as the first set are pretty permanently affixed to my office wall and at the right position for the wider 2025 iPad Pro.

Using this M1 device is definitely overkill in most respects, but it's not my daily iPad. So in fact I'm making more use of a device that might otherwise just lie around.

There is the issue that this M1 device is quite heavy and I am more concerned about it falling than I was with the older iPad. If it weren't for the convenience of being able to grab it off the wall as I'm hurrying out, I'd get proper wall mounts and probably have someone else fit them.

On the good side, there is already a well-established and plentiful ecosystem of iPad mounts. On the bad side, that ecosystem has lot to dig through.

Power

Originally I had my iPad mounted in my office and almost in my direct line of sight above my monitor, and that was handy for so many reasons. But I couldn't easily clamber over the desk to remove it in a hurry.

In comparison, the new mounted iPad is where I can both see it at a glance, and easily take it out of the mount.

What I could do in my office, though, was run a charging cable to the iPad and keep it plugged in all the time. This is not good for your battery and as it happens, my 2015 iPad Pro developed some fault in the socket so it wouldn't stay charged.

Now I don't have power running to it, I just charge the iPad Pro up overnight like I always used to, and drop it into the mount in the morning.

This does mean that depending on what I do with it, I might not get a full day's use. But after the new-toy period was done, it's been fine.

More significantly, my running it off its battery and my charging it up makes a big difference to how closely you can match the HomeView experience.

In short, you're fine and you've got everything the HomeView has, for you as an individual. But my iPad being tucked away in my office or even in my kitchen showing only my music and recipes, is enough to make it useless for my family.

It's a fundamental difference between the iPad and the HomeView in that the iPad has to be set up for one person. There's nothing like the HomeView's ability to recognize six different people and adjust to suit them.

If you're happy to have just your own personal HomeView equivalent, though, all you've got left to sort out is the software. And your choice there is practically infinite, because your device will run any iPad app.

Before I had to loan my original 2015 iPad Pro to a relative, I used two clock apps to show me the time in the UK and AppleInsider standard time, for instance. I also had it displaying various charts to do with projects I was working on, ways to kid myself I was making progress.

That was more fiddly and involved manually editing Numbers spreadsheets.

And I tried at times to have my OmniFocus To Do list on there but I tended to forget to look at it. This may relate to how behind I got with those projects.

Choosing apps

All of this was done by having the iPad showing apps, such as Numbers and Fantastical. But there are also dashboard apps, single apps built to display a range of information that you choose from.

Looking through my App Store purchases, I can see I tried seven of them. While none were perfect for me, the one I liked the most was Dashkit - Personal Dashboards.

For an annual subscription of $8.49, Dashkit fills your iPad screen and lets you set sections of it for different elements such as clocks and calendars.

That was what I wanted when I was trying to get an always-on display of various details, rather than specifically about controlling your home the way HomeView does.

For that kind of smart home app, there is Controller for HomeKit. The developer won't list prices on the app's official site, and instead directs users to the App Store where there's just a confusingly long list of different prices.

The app is good and worth trying the free trial, but once again the App Store prices don't even match what the app itself says when it nags you to pay. Prices do definitely start at $39.99/year, though.

Setting up family accounts

Controller for HomeKit supports family sharing, while Dashkit does not. Family Sharing is when, with developers' agreement, the App Store lets multiple people in your family download the same app.

That can just mean that they all get a copy even though you're the only one who's paid the one-off fee. It's the same when it's a subscription, but home apps have a difference.

With a home app, each user is attempting to control the same home. So you need to think about whether you want that or whether this is going to become open temperature warfare.

That is what can happen if each person uses the app on their own devices. If you're setting up one iPad for them all to enjoy, you won't need family sharing. It is helpful, though, if you have a slot open.

But if you do need it for any reason, you're going to have to set it up and have everyone's Apple Account linked to it. Read AppleInsider's full guide to setting up iCloud Family Sharing.

When iPad wins

Count the ways. An iPad is potentially more powerful than a HomeView, but it is always definitely more versatile.

When it's not controlling your home, you can work from it and the right iPad can even replace your Mac. Or when it is controlling your home, you can also have it run true apps.

So forget having to trust Siri AI with recipe instructions, you can just carry on using the one you've had for years. You can read Apple Books on an iPad instead of only being able to listen to audiobooks.

And not only can you watch TV through your iPad, you can do it at the same time as reading that recipe, or balancing your household budget spreadsheet.

When HomeView wins

You can hopefully ignore the cost of the iPad, since you're preferably repurposing an old and unused one. Plus the mounting isn't a massive investment, even if you spend more than the miserly $10 that I have.

But all dashboard apps, or at least most that I've tried that have been worth using, are subscription ones. So there is an ongoing cost and it can add up.

With the HomeView, you buy it once and since none of the App Store dashboard apps will run on it, you can just stick with Apple's Home app. There are subscriptions to be paid for Apple Music and Apple News+, but not the Home app.

Plus there is this potentially very significant issue that a HomeView can be for everyone in your house, and an iPad can't. More than family sharing of different apps, the HomeView changes depending on who is using it.

So everyone automatically gets their favorite music, everyone gets to see their own calendar. And it happens without any of them having to know how to switch anything.

That's big, especially when you are more into technology and smart homes than your family. They should get the benefits, and they shouldn't have to study how to use apps to do it.

And it has one feature that the iPad no longer has — you can use it as a Home Hub. This is moot, of course, if you have a relatively recent Apple TV on your network.

HomeView and iPad are at heart very different devices. And the Venn Diagram of what they can both do is remarkable.

But for versatility, performance, and just overall usefulness, the iPad wins. At least if you've already got one you can spare.