Alright, so I’ve been messing around trying to get my Ring stuff to show up in Apple’s Home app. You know, HomeKit. It’s just annoying having to jump between apps all the time. My Ring doorbell and cameras are fine, but they live in their own world, separate from my lights and locks which are all in HomeKit.
Finding a Way
First off, Ring doesn’t natively support HomeKit. Knew that going in. Bit of a bummer, really. So I started digging around. People kept talking about this thing called Homebridge. Sounded like a software bridge, something that could translate Ring’s language into something HomeKit understands. Seemed like the most common way folks were doing it.
The Setup Grind
I decided to give it a shot. Had an old Raspberry Pi gathering dust, perfect for running something like Homebridge 24/7 without using my main computer.
- Got the Pi set up with its operating system. That took a bit, flashing the SD card and all that basic stuff.
- Then installed *, which Homebridge needs to run. Followed some online guides for that.
- Next, installed Homebridge itself using the command line. Pretty straightforward, just typed in the commands they showed.
- Ran Homebridge, got it up as a basic bridge in my Home app. Okay, progress.
Now the tricky part: getting Ring involved. I needed a specific plugin for Homebridge that knew how to talk to Ring devices. Found one called something like homebridge-ring. Installed that using the Homebridge interface, which was easier than command line stuff.
Configuring the Ring plugin, though… that was a pain. It needs to log into your Ring account. But you don’t just put your password in the config file. You have to get this special code, a refresh token. The plugin instructions walked me through it – basically, you run a command, log into Ring through a terminal prompt, get the token, then copy and paste that long string of characters into the plugin’s settings page in Homebridge. Felt a bit hacky, but okay.
Getting it configured looked something like this:
I opened the Homebridge web page, went to Plugins, found the Ring plugin settings. There was a spot for the refresh token. Pasted it in. Had to make sure my camera names matched what I wanted to see in HomeKit. Saved it.
Restarted Homebridge to make sure it picked up the new settings.
Did it Work?
Checked my Home app on my iPhone. And there they were! My Ring Doorbell and my Floodlight Cam showed up like regular HomeKit accessories. Success! Mostly.
The doorbell press now sends a notification through the Home app, which is exactly what I wanted. I get the little snapshot pop up on my Apple TV and phone. Tapping the notification opens the video feed.
Motion detection also works, shows up as a sensor in HomeKit. I can use that to trigger other HomeKit stuff, which is kinda neat. Live view works too, though sometimes it feels a little slower to load compared to the native Ring app. Can’t complain too much, it’s doing something Ring didn’t build it for.
So yeah, it took some tinkering. Definitely not for someone who just wants things to work out of the box. You gotta be willing to mess with config files and maybe troubleshoot a bit if things go wrong, like when Ring updates something and maybe breaks the plugin temporarily (happened once, had to update the plugin). But for me, having everything integrated into one app? Worth the effort. Much cleaner now.