Apple has finally entered the smart display race. The company introduced HomeView today at its Welcome Home event in New York, a 7-inch smart home hub built around a rebuilt Siri that Apple calls Siri AI. In the UK it costs £299, pre-orders are open now, and it goes on sale on Friday, November 13.
Britain is in the first wave of launch countries alongside the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and India. The European Union, notably, is not getting it at all for now, because Siri AI remains unavailable in iOS in the EU. Apple says it is working constructively with the EU to find a path forward, but there is no date.
What HomeView actually is
HomeView is a 7-inch Liquid Retina display mounted on a domed speaker base with a stainless steel hinge, so the screen tilts for comfortable viewing on a kitchen counter or nightstand. The tabletop model comes in silver, starlight, rose pink and space grey.
A second wall-mounted version with the same display comes in space grey and silver, and attaches with purpose-built mounts from Schneider Home. It is meant for hallways and entryways, the spots where a countertop device never quite fits.
The headline feature is face recognition. HomeView identifies up to six people in a household and switches from a shared screen to each person’s own Home Screen with their apps and widgets.
Shared photo albums and music stay communal, while personal content stays private. “Apple HomeView is designed to be shared by everyone in the home yet feel completely personal to each user,” said Greg Joswiak, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Marketing, in Apple’s announcement.
Siri AI is the real product here
The hardware is only half the story. Siri AI is what Apple describes as an entirely new version of Siri, more capable and conversational, with broad world knowledge and awareness of what is on screen.
“We’re excited to introduce Siri AI, a dramatically more capable and conversational assistant designed to help users find information and get things done throughout the day,” said Craig Federighi, Apple’s senior vice president of Software Engineering.
When paired with an Apple Intelligence-enabled iPhone or iPad, Siri AI can draw on personal context such as Calendar, Messages and Apple Music playlists, and take action across apps. Conversations that start on HomeView continue in the Siri app and sync privately across iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple Watch and Apple Vision Pro.
Without a paired device, it still answers general questions, holds natural conversations and handles music discovery. But the fine print is worth knowing before pre-ordering. Personal context features require that paired iPhone or iPad, and Siri AI ships in beta on HomeView. At launch it works in English in the UK, US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, India, Singapore and South Africa.
Apple’s privacy pitch for a camera in your kitchen
A display with a camera that recognises faces was always going to need a privacy story, and Apple has a detailed one. HomeView and its A18 chip include what Apple calls Secure Enclaves, isolated runtimes that process camera and microphone data separately from the rest of the system. Apple says data processed there cannot be accessed by the HomeView software, apps, the user or Apple itself.
Personal content from Messages or Calendar only appears when the enrolled user is recognised by face and their paired iPhone or iPad is present and recently unlocked. Camera footage for HomeKit Secure Video is processed locally or in Private Cloud Compute, and Apple says not even it can access the data.
The accessories are coming to Britain too
HomeView arrives with a supporting cast. Apple also announced the Apple Home Collection, a lineup of cameras, a video doorbell, a deadbolt lock, thermostats and sensors built with LG Electronics and Schneider Electric, detailed in a second announcement. The range starts arriving in December.
UK buyers get the most interesting bits. The LG video doorbell, indoor and outdoor cameras and floodlight camera will all be sold in Britain, while the deadbolt lock and both thermostats are US and Canada only at launch.
On the device itself, a Home Camera face can livestream up to nine camera feeds at once, and HomeView can even detect the sound of smoke or carbon monoxide alarms and alert your iPhone.
Why this launch matters in the UK
This is Apple making its biggest smart home push in nearly a decade, and Britain is firmly inside the tent while the EU waits outside. For UK households, HomeView lands directly against the Amazon Echo Show and Google Nest Hub, both long established on British kitchen counters.
Apple’s bet is that face recognition, deep iPhone integration and a genuinely smarter Siri are enough to win the spot, nine years after the HomePod failed to do it.
The honest caveats for UK buyers are that HomeView needs an iPhone or iPad for setup and its best features, some Siri AI capabilities carry daily usage limits on server-side models, and Apple notes that expanded access to those features will carry a fee in future. Alongside HomeView, Apple also opened pre-orders for the HomePod mini 2 and a new Apple TV 4K today.
