Apple has reportedly partnered with LG Electronics to co-develop a range of smart home accessories, with regulatory filings revealing seven upcoming products bearing the LG brand that are expected to work with Apple’s long-rumored Siri-powered smart home hub, which is set to be unveiled on October 13 alongside new versions of the HomePod mini and Apple TV. According to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, Apple and LG worked together on the design, features, and engineering of the accessories, but the devices will carry the LG brand with LG handling manufacturing and product support, a strategy Apple has previously used with companies including Belkin and Logitech to expand its ecosystem without directly manufacturing accessories itself.
The seven products revealed through regulatory filings are the LG Video Doorbell Wired, LG Floodlight Cam, LG Outdoor Cam Plug-In, LG Indoor Cam Plug-In, LG Smart Deadbolt Lock, LG Smart Thermostat, and LG Temperature Sensor. LG requested that product photographs and detailed specifications remain confidential until early next year, and the filings do not mention Apple’s involvement. A leaker known as pdfu on X subsequently shared images claiming to show the smart deadbolt lock, thermostat, and temperature sensor ahead of any official announcement. According to the leaker, the smart lock uses a rotating keypad with a swivel pin that can limit rotation to prevent it from hitting a wall, and includes controls for the touchpad light ring, a door-left-open audio alarm, and lock sound volume, with support for automatic unlocking, tap-to-unlock, emergency power, and master codes. The temperature sensor reportedly measures both temperature and humidity, features a magnetic rear surface for attachment to metal, and includes an adhesive-backed metal plate for mounting elsewhere.
Most of the devices are expected to support Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, Thread, and Matter, the cross-platform smart home interoperability standards that Apple already supports on several existing products and that are designed to allow accessories to work across different ecosystems including those from Amazon and Google. Thread-enabled Matter accessories require a compatible Thread border router, such as certain HomePod mini and Apple TV models or supported third-party hardware, and Apple’s upcoming smart home hub is expected to serve this role within the expanded ecosystem. The LG Smart Deadbolt Lock is additionally expected to support ultra-wideband technology, which would allow the lock to detect the proximity of a compatible device carried in a pocket or worn on a wrist and unlock automatically as the user approaches, building on the ultra-wideband capability Apple already includes in recent iPhone, Apple Watch, HomePod, and AirTag products.
The LG accessories themselves are not expected to become available for several months following the hub’s October 13 debut, but their co-development represents Apple’s most significant attempt to expand its smart home hardware footprint since the introduction of HomeKit in 2014. HomeKit adoption remained limited relative to rival platforms from Amazon and Google partly due to the initial requirement for devices to include a proprietary chip, a restriction Apple removed in favor of a software-based approach in 2018. The combination of a new dedicated hub, updated HomePod mini and Apple TV hardware, and a curated set of co-developed LG accessories supporting Matter and Thread signals that Apple is now making a more concerted push to establish itself as a serious participant in the smart home market on both the hardware and platform levels simultaneously.
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