Get the most from Theatrium with Apple Home

Check you have an Apple Home

Open the Home app on your iPhone or iPad. If you see rooms and accessories, you have a home set up — that is all Theatrium needs. If it is empty, add one accessory (a HomeKit-compatible bulb or smart plug is the easiest) and it will appear here.

Make sure your Apple TV is signed into the same iCloud account as your home — Settings › Users & Accounts on the Apple TV. This is what lets the TV see your home at all.

Make this Apple TV a Home Hub

A Home Hub is the piece that keeps your home running when your phone isn't around — it is what makes cameras stream reliably, scenes and automations fire, and alerts arrive. An Apple TV or HomePod signed into your iCloud account becomes a hub automatically.

Confirm it in the Home app: Home Settings › Home Hubs & Bridges. You want this Apple TV listed as Connected. If you have a HomePod, it can be the hub instead — either works.

Switch Theatrium to Apple Home

On first launch, choose Apple Home on the “Choose your backend” screen. Already past setup? Open Settings › Connections in Theatrium and switch the data source to Apple Home.

Tap Continue. tvOS asks for permission once — accept it. The prompt reads:

“Theatrium uses your Apple Home to show and control your lights, sensors, and rooms.”

The first load takes ten to twenty seconds while Apple Home streams your accessories in — a Loading your Apple Home screen shows the count as it goes. After that, your dashboard is ready. There’s no account to create and no Theatrium server involved — the connection happens on your Apple TV.

What shows up on the dashboard

Theatrium turns your Apple Home accessories into cards you can see and control from the sofa:

• Lights — on/off, brightness, and color or warm-to-cool white.
• Switches, outlets and fans — on/off control.
• Thermostats — current and target temperature, heat/cool/auto.
• Locks, garage doors, blinds and shades — open, close and position.
• Scenes — run any Apple Home scene from the TV.
• Sensors — temperature, humidity, motion, contact (doors and windows), occupancy, leak, smoke, CO and CO₂, light level, air quality and battery.
• Cameras and doorbells — stream live on the big screen.

Your Apple Home rooms become the dashboard's areas. Apple Home has no weather of its own, so Theatrium adds local weather and rain radar from the open web, and it shows your sensors’ live readings as they change.

Cameras, doorbells and alerts

HomeKit cameras and doorbells stream natively inside Theatrium. One thing worth knowing: when this Apple TV is a Home Hub, tvOS itself pops up camera and doorbell activity as a picture-in-picture — that is Apple, not Theatrium, and it appears even when the app is closed.

Theatrium's own on-screen alerts are a Home Assistant feature today; alert support for Apple Home is coming in a future update. For always-on alerts right now, turn on notifications for the camera or doorbell in the Apple Home app and keep this Apple TV as a Home Hub — Apple then shows its own alert over whatever is on screen.

Sync your room lights to the screen

Theatrium's Light Sync works with your Apple Home lights — the room glows to match what's on the TV. Apple Home lights don't fade smoothly on their own, so Theatrium eases the color itself, and it groups your lights for you, so there is nothing to set up in the Home app first. Basic sync is free; the richer Natural and Party modes are part of Theatrium Pro; basic sync with both zones and Vivid mode is free.