Phone as Presence Sensor w/o Access to SmartThings App

[JDRoberts]

@rcbjr2

I guess I should have mentioned what type of phone he has. And whether or not I have a hub. Sorry. Anyway, I have a v2 SmartThings Hub. He has an iPhone 13. Will the Edge WiFi driver work? Presumably, I install that on my phone and not his. I could possibly put IFTTT on his phone, but it would be easier if I could avoid that. Thanks.

With an iPhone, if you also have HomeKit ( you need an Apple TV or a HomePod mini to act as a hub) you could set up a HomeKit home that has only one device in it: an inexpensive Meross smart plug.

Then you use Apple’s built-in presence to turn on the smart plug, and smartthings will recognize the Meross plug turning on. He will not have any access to smartthings.

How to Use a Meross or Matter Plug to Use HomeKit Presence to Trigger ST Routines

THE PROBLEM Beginning in mid 2020, some users reported that presence on iOS phones and tablets no longer worked reliably to trigger smartthings routines because the smartthings app wasn’t always open in the background. Typically as soon as they opened the smartthings app it would work again. At the same time, if they were just using the phone’s presence in native Apple features, including HomeKit, presence worked fine. and sometimes ST presence would work fine for one person in a household but not another, even if they had the same model iPhone. Hopefully eventually the two companies will get this straightened out and iOS presence will work universally in smartthings again, but in the meantime, if you want to, you can use a physical device which is visible to both HomeKit a…

Or again, you can use Ifttt.

Location's triggers, queries, and actions

You can even combine these two and use IFTTT to turn on a Meross smartplug, and again, then he won’t have any access to any of your SmartThings information.

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