About face and voice recognition on Apple HomeView
Face and voice recognition allow you to conveniently access personal content on Apple HomeView, while helping keep that content private to you.
Apple HomeView is designed to be central to the home and personal to everyone in it. With recognition, each member of your home gets a personalized experience on HomeView, including their own Home Screen with apps and widgets. Each member's personal content, such as content in apps like Messages and Calendar, is designed to stay private to each individual — it's stored on their paired iPhone or iPad and appears only when they are using HomeView and it recognizes their face.
Recognition is made possible by Apple silicon and the HomeView software, working together to recognize you while protecting your privacy at every step.
With recognition set up, you can view your personalized Home Screen and widgets, with your accessibility settings and app and content restrictions applied, and find your Apple Music playlists and Podcasts. You can also access personal content from apps like Calendar, Messages, and Reminders from your paired iPhone or iPad, connect over FaceTime, and use Siri for your personal requests.
When HomeView doesn't recognize someone, no personal content is shown. Instead, they see a guest experience with only guest-accessible apps, features, and settings. Guests can still take actions like controlling smart home accessories, checking the weather, setting timers, and playing music.
Personalization technologies
The technology that enables recognition on HomeView brings together the camera, the microphones, and Apple silicon to recognize a member of your home.
To start using recognition, each member of your home pairs their primary iPhone or iPad with HomeView and sets up face and voice recognition. Your primary device is the one that you use for sharing location in Find My settings. Up to six members of your home can have their own profile. Each member needs an Apple Account, a compatible iPhone or iPad, and to be added to your home in the Home app.
During setup, HomeView creates your face and voice profiles. These profiles are end-to-end encrypted and stored in iCloud, so they sync securely across your devices. That way, if you have more than one HomeView, you don't need to set up recognition separately on each one — and if you restore a device, you don't need to set it up again.
For recognition, HomeView uses Secure Exclaves — which are protected and compartmentalized runtimes used to process camera and microphone data separately from the rest of the system. Isolation features added across many core components of the silicon work in tandem to protect Secure Exclaves and keep them segregated from the rest of the system. Data that is processed and analyzed in Secure Exclaves can't be accessed by the HomeView software, apps, the user, or Apple.
To recognize you, HomeView compares what the camera and microphones sense against your stored profiles.
Voice recognition: When you speak to Siri on the device, HomeView uses the microphones to recognize your voice and your profile becomes active. Your personalized experience (like your Apple Music playlists, Podcasts, and widgets) appears. To provide access to your personal content or let Siri respond using your personal context, HomeView also needs to recognize your face.
Face recognition: When you tap an app that contains personal content or speak to Siri, HomeView uses the camera to recognize your face and your profile becomes active. Your personalized experience appears, and you can access personal content like Messages, Calendar, and FaceTime.
Once you've set up your profile, recognition happens automatically when you use the device via touch or Siri. When HomeView recognizes you and your paired iPhone or iPad is on the same Wi-Fi network, your profile becomes active with your personalized experience, and your profile picture appears. When HomeView recognizes your face, your personal content appears too, as long as you've recently unlocked your paired iPhone or iPad.
You can also switch profiles manually, which provides the personalized experience (like Apple Music playlists and Podcasts) for that profile. But you won't have access to personal content until HomeView recognizes your face.
Security safeguards
HomeView is designed to be shared by everyone in your home, while keeping each person's personal content separate. To keep your personal content protected, HomeView relies on the security of your paired iPhone or iPad, where your personal content is stored. Your iPhone or iPad is protected by your passcode, Face ID, or Touch ID.
Your personal content appears only when:
HomeView recognizes your face.
Your paired iPhone or iPad is present in the same location and connected to the same Wi-Fi network as HomeView.
Your paired iPhone or iPad has been recently unlocked.
You don't need to unlock your paired iPhone or iPad every time you use HomeView. For example, HomeView is designed so that after a night's sleep, you can see your personal content first thing in the morning without unlocking your paired iPhone or iPad again.
HomeView stores only limited personal data needed for features like Siri and recognition to work, and protects it with encryption. When your paired device isn't present, this limited data stays encrypted using that device, and can't be accessed. Each member's content is encrypted separately using their own paired device, so one member's paired device can't access another member's personal data.
Your face and voice profiles are also protected by your personal device. They're end-to-end encrypted in iCloud and can be decrypted only on your trusted devices where you're signed in to your Apple Account. Apple doesn't have the encryption keys, so no one else can access your profiles — not even Apple — and they remain secure even in the case of a data breach in the cloud.
Privacy
At Apple, we believe privacy is a fundamental human right, and recognition on HomeView is designed to protect it.
You can access your personal content on HomeView when HomeView recognizes your face and your paired device is present, connected to the same Wi-Fi network, and has been recently unlocked. When you're done, you can swipe back to the HomeView face and your personal content won't be available until HomeView recognizes your face again. When another member of your home is recognized, they see their own content, not yours. If someone isn't recognized, or hasn't set up recognition, HomeView shows only guest-accessible apps, features, and settings.
To recognize you, HomeView uses images from the camera and audio from the microphones. This data is processed in Secure Exclaves, so it can't be accessed by the HomeView software, apps, the user, or Apple. It is never recorded or stored, and HomeView doesn't keep a video or audio feed of your home. There is no recording to share, forward, or produce, because no recording exists. After it's processed, the data is discarded.
When an app is using the camera or microphones on HomeView, HomeView displays an orange privacy indicator dot for microphone use and a green privacy indicator dot if an app is using the camera, or the camera and microphones. However, the privacy indicators don't appear when HomeView uses the camera and microphones for recognition. This is because the images and audio used for recognition are processed in Secure Exclaves and are never accessible to apps, the HomeView software, the user, or Apple.
If you set up recognition, you can control how it's used or turn it off at any time:
Turn Personal Content on or off: By default, Personal Content is turned on when you set up recognition. Go to the Settings app on HomeView, tap your name, then turn Personal Content on or off. If you have more than one HomeView or HomePod, you can set this for each device.
Remove a profile: Go to the Settings app on HomeView, tap People, tap the profile, then tap Remove. That person can no longer access their personal content or make personal requests with Siri on HomeView. Their Apple Account and data aren't affected.
Accessibility
Accessibility is an integral part of Apple products. If you've set up accessibility features on your paired iPhone or iPad, you can copy those settings to HomeView when you set up your profile.
HomeView also has an accessibility feature to support individuals who are nonspeaking, at risk of speech loss, or have a speech disability. If speech issues make it difficult to set up voice recognition, you can skip it when you set up your profile. HomeView still uses face recognition to show your personal content.
You can also go to the Settings app and tap your name, tap Accessibility, then scroll down to the Speech section. There, you can choose Type your requests to Siri. This setting turns off voice recognition and personal requests made to Siri via voice.