How To Add Chamberlain myQ To Apple Homekit Garage Door
Chamberlain is a great smart home and garage company with a little problem: its MyQ lineup of devices doesn’t support Apple HomeKit natively. Naturally, that’s not a big problem, but if all your devices are in the Apple ecosystem, downloading separate apps to control your smart devices can be discomforting.
If you’re willing to do some DIY tinkering, however, there might be a way to get Chamberlain MyQ to work with Apple HomeKit on your iPhone and iPad. Connecting MyQ to HomeKit is advantageous, as it allows you to control all MyQ-connected devices with your iPhone, iPad, or Apple Watch. But how do you add Chamberlain MyQ to Apple HomeKit?
In this article, you’ll learn all you need to know about integrating the MyQ platform with Apple HomeKit. I’ll also show you alternative ways to connect HomeKit to your garage door opener if MyQ integration doesn’t seem to work well.
Table of Contents
Is Chamberlain MyQ Compatible with Apple HomeKit?
Chamberlain markets its lineup of garage door openers as HomeKit-compatible, but they don’t have the most seamless connections in the world. Rather than simply allowing you to scan a QR code and start using the devices, you must go through the arduous process of setting up a Homebridge.
For the uninitiated, Homebridge is a workaround for third-party smart home devices to work on the Apple HomeKit platform. You can buy an out-of-the-box Homebridge solution like HOOBS or build one using a Raspberry Pi. While the latter is usually cheaper, it’s a more technical solution with a high chance of failing, especially if you’re not into hardware hacking.
MyQ used to sell the MyQ Home Bridge, a hardware hub compatible with all Chamberlain and Liftmaster products. However, it has since discontinued the lineup, but you can still get your smart garage door opener to work with the more popular HOOBS instead.
Summarily, Chamberlain MyQ is incompatible with HomeKit by default, but that’s not as bad as it sounds. With a Raspberry Pi, you can create a Homebridge hub that makes the company’s garage door openers compatible with HomeKit. If you’d rather not tinker with a Raspberry Pi, buying an out-of-the-box solution like HOOBS is the next best option.
How to Set Up Chamberlain MyQ with Apple HomeKit
If you’ve read up to this point, you should understand how devices that support MyQ work with Apple HomeKit. However, you likely still don’t know how to set up your Chamberlain garage opener to work with HomeKit via Homebridge, especially now that Chamberlain no longer sells the MyQ Home Bridge.
Before jumping into the tutorial, consider checking if you need it. Newer Chamberlain garage door openers officially support HomeKit and feature the Apple Home badge, explaining why the company no longer sells the MyQ Home Bridge. If you have an older device, you won’t have out-of-the-box Homebridge support, making the guide necessary.
To check if your device supports Apple HomeKit by default, look for a badge that reads “Works with Apple Home.” If you can find it, congratulations, as this guide is unnecessary for your case. Otherwise, here is how to set up Chamberlain MyQ with Apple HomeKit using Homebridge:
- Get Homebridge: Since Chamberlain no longer sells the MyQ Home Bridge device, your only options for getting Homebridge include a custom install on a Raspberry Pi and through HOOBS. While the former is a bit complex and technical, the latter is basically “Homebridge out of the box,” making it the layperson’s approach. Since HOOBS is almost always out of stock, you may need to learn how to create a custom install of Homebridge on a Raspberry Pi. The procedure involves several easy steps: get a Raspberry Pi, obtain the Homebridge image, and flash it on the tiny computer.
- Install the “homebridge-myq” plugin: After setting up Homebridge, head to the dashboard and search for the “homebridge-myq” plugin. It’s a first-party solution allowing MyQ-supported devices to connect to Apple HomeKit successfully. If you’re lucky enough to get your hands on the MyQ Home Bridge device, it should come with the plugin preinstalled.
Follow the setup procedure: After installing the plugin, you should see a list of steps to connect your Govee device to the Homebridge hub. Follow the steps carefully, and your smart garage door opener should automatically appear in the Apple Home app on iPhone and iPad. Another benefit of going out of your way to set up Homebridge for your Chamberlain garage door opener is that the same hub can work with other non-HomeKit-certified devices to give you a more immersive ecosystem of Apple-supported accessories.
Does Chamberlain MyQ Work with Siri?
Siri works with any smart device that supports Apple Home via HomeKit. If you have a MyQ-compatible smart garage door opener, the question isn’t if it works with Siri; instead, it’s if it’s HomeKit-compatible.
To answer that, Chamberlain recently acquired a HomeKit certification badge, making all the recent smart garage door openers from the company compatible with HomeKit. If your Chamberlain gadget is one of the HomeKit-compatible models, it should work with Siri by default after setup.
On the other hand, older Chamberlain garage door openers do not come with HomeKit support out of the box. Instead, you control them using MyQ, a proprietary smart home technology from Chamberlain available to devices from Liftmaster and Chamberlain.
However, there’s a workaround for the older devices to support HomeKit, and of course, work with Siri, and Chamberlain actively supported the workaround before getting an Apple Home certification. The workaround involves building or buying a hub; you can learn how to go about it in the preceding section
How Do I Connect My HomeKit to My Garage Door Opener?
There are different ways to connect HomeKit with your garage door opener, and each method has its pros and cons. This article discusses a particular technique; buying a MyQ-compatible garage door opener, setting it up with MyQ, and connecting the latter to Apple HomeKit.
While that works, it’s not always necessary, depending on the make and model of your garage door opener. Here are your options if you’re after more practical alternatives for connecting HomeKit to a garage door opener.
- Buy a HomeKit-compatible garage door opener: The easiest way to open your garage door with your Apple devices is to buy a door opener with HomeKit support out of the box. However, there are two issues with this approach; firstly, HomeKit-certified devices are crazy expensive, and there are only a few devices with Apple HomeKit support (three, after excluding Chamberlain and other devices with Homebridge).
- If you live somewhere outside the United States, you should expect some extra costs when procuring and shipping a HomeKit-compatible garage door opener. For most people, it’s simply not a worthwhile investment. The fact that you can find a cheaper and arguably better alternative makes this solution not worth the effort.
- If your garage door opener already supports HomeKit by default, adding them to your iPhone’s Home App is a pretty straightforward process. Before trying to make the link work, you want to ensure you don’t need extra hardware to connect it, as that would require you to check other sections of this article. If you don’t need a dedicated hub, you can open the Home app on your smartphone and tap the “+” icon to add a new device.
- The app will fire up a camera interface; use your camera to scan the eight-digit HomeKit code or the QR code on the accessory you’re trying to add, and you should see it appear.
- Tap on the device after showing up and select the Allow option when prompted to add the accessory to your HomeKit network. After approving the device, you can give it a name for identification and assign it to a room. Tap “Done” when you’re all done with the setup process. If the process didn’t go as described, you’re likely on an outdated version of iOS. You can head over to the Update option within your iPhone’s General settings to update your device and get your smartphone to the latest version of the iOS operating system.
- Use a Homebridge with Chamberlain or Liftmaster Doors: If your smart garage door opener doesn’t feature Apple HomeKit support by default, you can add the functionality using a third-party workaround called Homebridge. Homebridge uses a separate hub to connect unsupported devices to the Apple smart home standard, making them controllable from your iPhone’s Home app. Since I’ve explained how to set up Homebridge earlier in this article, this section won’t repeat that information. Simply scroll up if you missed it; warning: you may encounter some technical instructions and hardware tinkering along the way.
Conclusion
Since Chamberlain acquired Matter certification, it has become compatible with Apple HomeKit, but that event only happened in 2023. If you buy anything from the company after 2023, you won’t benefit from the HomeKit compatibility unless you set it up manually. This article explains how to set up a hub that makes any MyQ-compatible accessory usable with HomeKit.
