house-control

Both apps are a small native Swift shell (AppKit on the Mac, SwiftUI on the iPhone) around one Three.js web UI, and share their device clients and sync as a Swift package. No frameworks, no Electron, no server, no account of its own.

Download

1. Get HouseControl-.dmg from Releases. It runs on macOS 13 or newer, Apple silicon and Intel.
2. Open it and drag House Control into Applications.
3. Open House Control from Applications. The first time, macOS stops it with “Apple could not verify…”, because the app is not signed with a paid Apple Developer ID (see why). Allow it once:
   • macOS 15 Sequoia and newer: click Done, open System Settings → Privacy & Security, scroll down to “House Control was blocked…”, click Open Anyway and confirm with your password.
   • macOS 13–14: Control-click the app in Applications, choose Open, then Open again.
   • Or, in Terminal: xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine "/Applications/House Control.app"
4. Look for the house in the menu bar — there is no Dock icon and no window. Click it.

What is new in each release: CHANGELOG.md.

It starts with a bundled demo plan, so you can try everything before connecting anything. Then: make it your home and connect real devices. To start it with your Mac, add it under System Settings → General → Login Items.

Check what you downloaded

Every release image is built by GitHub Actions from the tagged commit — not on anyone's Mac — and comes with its SHA-256 and a signed build provenance attestation:

shasum -a 256 -c HouseControl-<version>.dmg.sha256
gh attestation verify HouseControl-<version>.dmg --repo 0xProbabillity/house-control

The second command proves the image was built by this repository's workflow, and shows from which commit. Images from 1.0.0 on carry an attestation; 0.1.0 was built while the repository was still private, when GitHub does not store attestations for free accounts, so for it only the SHA-256 can be checked.

Why the app is not notarized

Notarizing needs an Apple Developer ID, and that certificate carries a person's legal name inside every copy of the app. House Control ships signed ad hoc instead, and earns trust the open-source way: the code is all here, the release is built in public, and you can build it yourself in a couple of minutes.

Remove it

Quit it (right-click the menu bar icon → Quit), delete House Control from Applications and, to remove your plan and connections too, ~/Library/Application Support/HouseControl/.

Requirements

Build and run

git clone https://github.com/0xProbabillity/house-control.git
cd house-control
./scripts/build-app.sh
open build/HouseControl.app

The script builds the web UI with Vite, the native shell with SwiftPM, and assembles an ad-hoc signed build/HouseControl.app. The first build downloads the npm packages; later builds take a few seconds.

The app is signed ad hoc. If you rebuild often and use iPhone sync, sign it with your own certificate instead, so macOS does not ask for the Local Network permission after every build: CODESIGN_IDENTITY="Apple Development: [email protected] (ABCDE12345)" ./scripts/build-app.sh.

To keep it, drag build/HouseControl.app into /Applications. To start it with your Mac, turn on Open at Login in the menu bar icon's right-click menu (or in the panel's gear menu); it shows up under System Settings → General → Login Items, where it can be switched off too.

There is no Dock icon and no main window: look for the house in the menu bar.

Using it

The menu bar icon shows how many lights are on and the target of the running AC, for example 6 · 23°.

The gear button in the panel switches between your home and the two bundled demo plans, Apartment and Studio.

The island

A black tab grows out of the MacBook's notch. On a display without a notch it is drawn in the middle of the menu bar.

When something changes elsewhere — a scene picked in the panel, a lamp switched from the phone — the island peeks out for a moment to say what happened. It never takes the keyboard from the app you are working in. Show Island in the menu bar icon's right-click menu turns it off.

AI Access

Right-click the menu bar icon → AI Access… → Start AI Access, and hand the private link to an assistant:

• Any chat: paste it into ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini or Perplexity with your request — "dim the living room to 30%". The link opens a guide written for AI assistants, with an action link for everything it can do.
• Connectors: add the MCP address as a custom connector in Claude or ChatGPT (or claude mcp add in Claude Code) and the assistant can also change the home itself: "here are photos of my living room — rebuild it in 3D".
• Your own agents: the same tools as plain HTTP + JSON, with an OpenAPI description.

The Mac serves it all: House Control listens on 127.0.0.1 only and is reached through a Cloudflare quick tunnel that exists while AI Access is on (or not at all, with This Mac only). The link carries a 128-bit key, you choose what an assistant may do, every request shows up live in the window, plan edits can be undone, and Stop — or the auto-stop timer — makes the address disappear. Device IDs and sign-ins never leave the Mac.

Details, every tool, and the privacy model: docs/ai-access.md.

iPhone app

The iPhone app is the panel made for a thumb: tap a lamp in the 3D view or its tile, drag across a tile to dim, touch and hold a light for brightness and colour, pinch the model to zoom, swipe in from the left edge to go back.

It needs no Mac. Everything is set up on the phone, under Settings (the sliders button):

• New home starts your own plan — one room, or the Studio or Apartment layout to adapt — and opens the editor.
• Edit floor plan is the Mac's editor laid out for a finger: tap a room, lamp or AC to select it, drag what is selected, drag anywhere else to pan, pinch to zoom. Its details come up in a sheet from the bottom; Add, Items, 3D and Home sit along the bottom edge. Save keeps the plan on the phone (and sends it to a paired Mac).
• Devices lists every lamp and AC of the plan by room; tap one and pick its real device from everything your connected platforms have, or Add devices to a room to put several in at once, already linked.
• Smart Life, Home Assistant, Philips Hue and Apple Home connect right there. Home Assistant servers and Hue Bridges on the Wi-Fi are found by themselves.

Try it in the simulator:

./scripts/ios-sim.sh

To put it on a phone, write your Apple developer team into ios/Config/Local.xcconfig (DEVELOPMENT_TEAM = ABCDE12345), run cd ios && xcodegen generate --spec project-smartlife.yml, open ios/HouseControl.xcodeproj and run it on your device. ./scripts/build-ios.sh --upload archives it and sends it to TestFlight; the script lists what it needs.

The iPhone app comes in two editions, built from the same code:

Smart Life is reached through the sign-in Home Assistant's Tuya integration uses, not through an API Tuya offers to apps, so it stays out of the App Store edition entirely: its code lives in its own module (core/Sources/HouseSmartLife) that only the Smart Life edition and the Mac app link, and build-ios.sh refuses an App Store archive that contains it. The two editions are separate apps (bundle id and App Group), so both can sit on one phone.

Sync with the Mac

Optional. Pair a Mac and your floor plan — rooms, furniture, lamps, scenes and the links to real devices — plus the Home Assistant and Hue connections stay the same on both, whichever one you set up or edit first.

1. On the Mac: right-click the menu bar icon → Pair iPhone…. A QR code appears. macOS asks once whether House Control may find devices on your local network: allow it.
2. On the iPhone: Settings (the sliders button) → Pair with Mac, and point the camera at the code. Or press Copy Pairing Link on the Mac and paste it on the phone.

From then on, whenever both are on the same Wi-Fi and the app is open, a plan saved on one reaches the other a moment later. A home set up on the phone first goes to the Mac when you pair them. If both changed the plan while apart, the phone asks which one to keep. A Home Assistant or Hue Bridge connected, or disconnected, on either side is the newest one on both.

Nothing goes through a server. The Mac advertises itself with Bonjour and the two talk over TLS with a pre-shared key that only the QR code carries, so a device that never saw the code cannot connect. Reset Pairing… in the pairing window issues a new key.

Real devices on the iPhone

In the Smart Life edition the phone signs in to Smart Life on its own: Settings → Connect Smart Life. The User Code is filled in from the Mac if you are signed in there. The sign-in code has to be scanned by the Smart Life app, which is on the very phone you are holding. So Save code to Photos, then in Smart Life tap + → Scan and open the picture from its photo button. A paired Mac also puts the code on its screen for you, and Share code sends it to any other screen.

The session is kept in the iPhone's Keychain and never leaves the device.

Widgets

Every widget is live: tap a lamp, a scene or an AC and it switches without opening the app.

• Home — your home as a small 3D model, every lamp glowing in its own colour; scenes, the climate strip and tappable lamps in the bigger sizes (extra large on the Mac).
• Scenes, Light (one lamp you pick), Room (its lamps; the large size shows the room alone in 3D) and Climate (an AC's dial with the room temperature, power and − / +).
• Lock Screen: Home Status, Light and Climate as circles, rectangles and an inline line.
• Controls for Control Center, the Lock Screen and the Action button (iOS 18, macOS 26): All Lights, a Light, a Scene, an Air Conditioner.
• Quick actions: press and hold the app icon on the iPhone. Choose which scenes, lamps and ACs it offers in Settings → Quick Actions.

On the Mac they need the app running in the menu bar (it carries out what you tap); on the iPhone the widget talks to Home Assistant, Hue and Smart Life itself, and Apple Home devices switch when the app next opens. How it fits together, and how to build and try it: docs/widgets.md.

Make it your home

Right-click the icon and choose Edit Home…

• Drag rooms to move them and drag a corner to resize; everything snaps to 5 cm.
• Where two rooms touch, the wall between them appears by itself. Walls facing the camera are cut away.
• Add doors, windows, furniture, lamps and air conditioners from the list on the left.
• Save & apply writes the plan and reloads the panel.

The plan is a single JSON file, ~/Library/Application Support/HouseControl/plan.json. You can write it by hand, export it, or import someone else's: see docs/floor-plan.md for every field. The demo plans in web/public/plans are good starting points.

Connect real devices

Right-click the icon → Edit Home… → Connections, and connect what you have:

Then select a lamp or an AC on the plan, choose its device under Real device (lamps take over what the device can do), and press Save & apply. From then on the panel controls the real device. Changes made elsewhere show up at once from Home Assistant and Hue, and within 12 seconds from Smart Life.

Your iPhone receives the Home Assistant and Hue connections from the Mac with the floor plan, and switches Apple Home devices itself. Why there is no Google Home or Alexa yet, and how to get Tuya devices into Apple Home: docs/connections.md. No hardware at hand? tools/lab has pretend versions of Home Assistant, a Hue Bridge and a HomeKit bridge.

Privacy

House Control talks to the platforms you connect — Tuya's servers for Smart Life, your own Home Assistant, your Hue Bridge, Apple Home on the iPhone — and to nothing else. There is no telemetry and no backend of its own. The one exception is yours to switch on: AI Access opens a Cloudflare tunnel to your Mac while it is on.

Everything personal stays in ~/Library/Application Support/HouseControl/ on your Mac:

None of these are part of this repository, and the build does not embed them in the app. Sign out in the editor deletes smartlife.json. Deleting the folder resets the app to the demo plan.

On the iPhone the floor plan lives in the app's own folder, and the Smart Life session, the pairing key and the Home Assistant and Hue connections the Mac shared in the Keychain.

Development

web/      the UI: Three.js scene, panel, island, editor, AI Access window and the AI tools (Vite, plain ES modules)
core/     what both apps share: plan store, device platforms, Mac ⇄ iPhone sync, the AI gateway, and the Smart Life
          and Tuya clients as a separate module (SwiftPM, with tests)
macos/    the Mac shell: menu bar item, panel, island and editor windows (SwiftPM)
ios/      the iPhone shell: SwiftUI, generated into an Xcode project by XcodeGen
scripts/  build-app.sh, build-ios.sh and ios-sim.sh build the apps, release-mac.sh makes the .dmg,
          make-icon.swift and make-dmg-background.swift draw the icon and the disk image's window
tools/lab pretend Home Assistant, Hue Bridge and HomeKit bridge for testing without hardware
docs/     floor plan reference, connection guides, screenshots

The shared package has unit tests, including the sync over a real TLS connection:

cd core && swift test

Work on the UI in a browser with hot reload — the native bridge is a no-op there and all devices are simulated:

cd web
npm install
npm run dev

Then open http://localhost:5199/. Add ?plan=studio for the second demo plan, ?mode=editor for the editor, ?mode=island for the island, ?mode=agent for the AI Access window (with a simulated link), ?platform=ios for the iPhone layout, or ?device=living.ac to start on a device's sheet. Set PORT to use another port.

Environment variables understood by the app:

The iPhone app understands HOUSE_DATA_DIR, HOUSE_OPEN_DEVICE, HOUSE_SYNC_ENDPOINT=host:port (a Mac test instance without Bonjour) and HOUSE_SCREEN=home|settings|connections|pairing|smartlife|homeassistant|hue|devices|newhome|editor|welcome; scripts/ios-sim.sh passes any HOUSE_* variable on to the simulator.

For example, a throw-away instance on the demo plan, pinned open:

HOUSE_DATA_DIR=/tmp/house-demo HOUSE_PIN=1 HOUSE_OPEN_ON_LAUNCH=1 build/HouseControl.app/Contents/MacOS/HouseControl

The binary has a few offline self-checks and one read-only diagnostic:

Releasing the Mac app

Set MARKETING_VERSION in ios/Config/Base.xcconfig, add a ## — section to CHANGELOG.md (it becomes the release notes), commit, then tag and push:

git tag v1.0.0 && git push origin v1.0.0

release.yml builds the universal app on a GitHub macOS runner (UNSIGNED=1 ./scripts/release-mac.sh), attests its provenance and opens a draft release with the disk image and its SHA-256. Check it, then publish the draft. Running the workflow by hand from the Actions tab builds the same image as a downloadable artifact without a release.

With an Apple Developer ID of your own, ASC_KEY_ID=… ASC_ISSUER_ID=… ./scripts/release-mac.sh --publish builds a signed and notarized image locally instead; the script lists what it needs.

Limitations

• The iPhone app is not on the App Store yet (it is on TestFlight for the author's testers).
• The Mac and the iPhone sync only while both are on the same network; there is no cloud in between.
• Rooms are axis-aligned rectangles. An L-shaped room is two rooms.
• Apple Home devices are switched by the iPhone app only: macOS gives HomeKit to App Store apps only.
• Smart Life devices are reached through Tuya's cloud, not over the local network, so they need an internet connection (Home Assistant and Hue work on your network alone).
• Infrared air conditioners are one-way: the app shows what was last sent, not what the unit is doing.

Support the project

House Control is free and has no ads. If it earned a place in your menu bar, a tip in crypto helps it keep growing: more devices, more platforms, quicker fixes. Thank you! A star, a bug report or a pull request helps just as much.

Scan a code with your wallet, or copy an address with the button in the corner of its box.

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Acknowledgements and disclaimer

The Smart Life sign-in is a Swift port of Tuya's open-source tuya-device-sharing-sdk, the library behind the Tuya integration in Home Assistant, and identifies itself to Tuya the same way. The 3D view is built with Three.js; the icons are from Lucide, the network logos under Support the project from Web3 Icons (MIT).

This project is not affiliated with or endorsed by Tuya, Smart Life or Home Assistant. It relies on an interface Tuya can change at any time. Use it at your own risk.

License

MIT

内容由编辑整理，部分信息来自 GitHub 与项目官网，版权归原作者所有。发现错误？报告问题