Wallflower for HomeKit Reviews

by TheRealDappen

Wallflower is very minimal and sleek and offers a simple way to control a single room.

I purchased with the hope that 2.0 would be released with features to control a whole home (or at least multiple rooms) and it is nowhere to be found.

Last update was over a year ago.

Their website points to a Medium article from 2019.

I think Wallflower may be dead in the development cycle.

For what it currently is - a large clock with toggles for the HomeKit devices placed in the room you designate - it works.

For a wall mounted solution - it’s so so.

by Stray Legs

I searched for just such an app which I would gladly pay $10, a subscription not so much.

A clock yep for a nightstand and preferably a clock that gives way when touched to larger buttons to control scenes or other HomeKit features instead of tiny icons or letters that are a bit hard to locate half asleep or at an angle.

Good concept, maybe somebody will complete it.

by Commander Cody

I luv the interface and the big clock. I would like to use this on my nightstand to be able to quickly control my homekit devices; however it currently does not support my Lutron fan’s, although they appear in Wallflower .
Also, the homepods do not appear so I am unable to control their statuses as well.

These would be my prerequisites for a subscription, so let me know if these are doable.

by Siobhan Ellis

A good start. I wanted it for my living room but it doesn’t support TV’s yet.

Shame I had 2 waste a 2 week trial just to find that out😞

Still has promise and I’ll look again when it supports TV’s

by Sarah J. Connor

Says Homekit accessory cannot be reached on my iPad mini iOS 9, but it does list all my devices. Please help!

Update: Developer response was helpful. Thank you!

by ORoBoTo

It’s been well over a year since you updated. Your monthly subscription and or 65 dollar purchase does not hold value. At best it’s a $10 one time payment app. Please either update or change your price structure.

by Jredash0216

...But I’ve been asking for help via email and constantly getting bouncebacks saying they’ve been classified as junk. Can someone please contact me?

by Cloudkucooland

Yes, my old iPad is slow, but there is no reason an app like this should stop drawing the clock and become totally unresponsive for minutes at a time. It crashes frequently. At free it is worth uninstalling. I feel sorry for anyone who paid for it.

by Gball And Club

I love the concept for Wallflower, but theres a few issues I have.

1) the visual design isn’t very “apple” and doesn’t gel with my mostly modern house aesthetic

2) the clock takes up so much space

3) dev could draw some inspiration from other apps like Fuse and Homedash here

by Ansuz07

The Good:

Wallflower is aesthetically very pleasing. Most of the HomeKit “skin” apps focus on cramming as much functionality as they can onto the main page at the cost of how good Wallflower looks. These developers realize that an always-on wall controller needs to look good in your home; they put only relevant information on the screen and do it in such a way that you don’t mind having Wallflower as a part of your decor.

I also really like that you can customize what is available on the screens, allowing you to sort by “floor” rather than just rooms. For people with more open-concept homes, where there is little delineation between rooms, it is great to be able to control multiple rooms from a single screen. In my case, having the living, dining and kitchen all in one place makes Wallflower much more usable than the standard HomeKit interface.

The Bad:

To get this out of the way - yes, Wallflower charges a subscription for use. While I certainly would have preferred that this be a one time purchase, I get why they need to have a recurring revenue model to make updates.

That said, the update cadence is not commensurate with the subscription model. Two minor functionality updates in five months is not what I expect when I pay a subscription; I expect Wallflower to have new things added on at least a monthly basis - new functionality, new skins, new icons, etc. I’m happy to pay $4/mo for Wallflower , but it just doesn’t feel like I’m getting $4/mo worth of value .

There are also some major functionality gaps right now. I can’t control my alarm system from Wallflower at all, nor can I see any of the video feeds from my HomeKit cameras. While I like the clock and time graph features, I feel that an app like this should allow me to quickly reference other relevant HomeKit information - like my camera feeds.

All in all, I think Wallflower has great potential, but it is still a few upgrades away from really feeling like a $50 app, much less an app that warrants the (relatively) high subscription costs. A much faster update cadence, along with a focus on other key functions of a robust HomeKit enabled home, would push this review up.

by Cwavig

Forcing someone to pay 48$ for an app that comparable to others for far less is ridiculous. It's a little better then himekit and runs 24hr.

by Wolfsbane19

This is an app that I would have given a one-time payment for, but they’re demanding you pay a subscription.

by Zac Schellhardt

From a design perspective, Wallflower is wonderful (even if I may have tweaked some of their decisions). I understand the reasoning for making the screen default to a single room, but really appreciate that they allowed zones to also be used as default — in an open concept home it’s essential to see the kitchen alongside dining, etc.

Beyond being “just a skin” on HomeKit (which is a ridiculous statement— I’ve been keeping the default Home app open on an iPad for the last year, and this app blows it away), there are a couple additional features I like, the coolest of which is how Wallflower uses the camera to detect light and faces, in order to brighten or change colors. It’s also convenient that Wallflower itself forces the screen to stay on (so people don’t have to fiddle with any auto sleep settings), and I realize it’s silly, but having a clock there is actually useful. I also like the subtle error indication that shows if devices can’t be updated.

People moaning about the price is to be expected. If you want to see what happens to apps with a one time fee, just take a look at Status Board by Panic (a very well respected and award-winning app maker) — Wallflower cost $15 or $20, was beautiful, and was nonexistent a year or two after launch, because there wasn’t enough incoming cash. Seems to me that if you’re spending half a grand on an iPad and a nice wall mount (not to mention thousands on hubs, bulbs, etc), then $48/year is a steal. Even the previously-free tile board apps for SmartThings now charge a monthly fee. Leaving a 1-star review because you [incorrectly] disagree with a business model is the epitome of bad karma.

In summary, Wallflower is beautiful, the first version is already great for my use case (a wall mounted iPad using HomeKit as a front-end for Home Assistant), and I’m looking forward to seeing what the developers add to it.

To the developers: consider split screen support on iPads in lieu of some modularity. I’d hate for you to invest in, say, Sonos support when I could just as easily run the Sonos app side by side with yours! Keep up the good work!

by Jimbosoaurus

I use this on an old iPad in my office as a ‘mission control’ for the house. The UI is beautiful and it gives me a good high level view of my HomeKit system. My fav feature is the QR code for the WiFi. I send all my guests over to the tablet if they want to use the WiFi instead of spelling out my complex password.

Great app, I hope you guys keep supporting really old iPads and keep putting out updates!