At WWDC 2026, Apple announced it’s bringing AI-powered search and notification summaries to Apple Home users. The features, at least some of which require an iCloud+ subscription, will come alongside this fall’s big OS updates, including to iOS 27, macOS 27, and iPadOS 27.
Apple Home users might be familiar with the wall of notifications that the Home app sends on activity-heavy days. The company says that will change with the updates this fall. With the change, these notifications will be lumped together as one summary, similar to the way Apple Intelligence-compatible devices currently summarize text messages and group threads. During its WWDC keynote presentation, Apple highlighted how that could be useful for HomeKit cameras, with a notification both informing that someone arrived and that the garage door was closed.
The company is also bumping the resolution for recorded HomeKit Secure Video (HKSV) camera footage from 1080p to 4K—and making that footage searchable—for those on “most iCloud+ subscription plans.” Which plans that includes isn’t clear, but right now, those with 50GB- and- up subscriptions get 10 days of cloud-stored video event history—for between one and an unlimited number of cameras—depending on plan tier. After the updates come this fall, you’ll be able to search video history using natural language—During its keynote, Apple showed one example of someone searching for “UPS yesterday,” with a result showing a thumbnail of a package being delivered next to the text “A package was delivered by UPS.”
Along with the new AI search update, the company is also redesigning the interface for all of this to look similar to the Apple Photos update, with “Noteworthy” highlights at the top of the screen followed by a list of clips below. For example, the company showed screenshots in which the app surfaced clips of a flower delivery and a Mariachi band.
These are all features we’ve seen with other cameras, and only time will tell how much value they actually add. The HomeKit Secure Video clip view, which has been essentially unchanged since its inception, has been in desperate need of an overhaul, and the changes there seem positive. How the AI summary features come across, at least for me, will depend on whether Apple keeps its iCloud+ plan pricing the same. Google introduced a lot of Google Home AI capabilities last year—including summarized notifications and searchable security camera footage—along with a price hike for its camera plans. I grumbled about that price hike, combined with inaccurate AI summaries, in my reviews for the Google Nest Doorbell and Nest Outdoor Cameras.
Now, I like AI-powered camera footage search, in theory, and I’m not totally offended by inaccurate summaries on their own. But I don’t want to pay extra to be lied to, and hope Apple doesn’t go the route of cranking up its iCloud subscription prices over these new AI features. At the very least, I’d love to see an AI-free version at the old price, if it does raise its rates.
Whether any of this will come to HomeKit-compatible but non-HKSV cameras isn’t clear. For those not in the know, merely HomeKit-compatible cameras don’t save footage to Apple’s servers, and you can only view their live streams in the Apple Home app. I’ve asked Apple and will update here if and when the company responds.
