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Ikea’s Shortcut Buttons appear in stores as smart blinds gain HomeKit support

Ikea’s Shortcut Buttons appear in stores as smart blinds gain HomeKit support

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Ikea’s smart home continues to evolve

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Ikea Shortcut Button next to Home Smart Gateway.
Ikea Shortcut Button next to Home Smart Gateway.
Image: Ikea

Ikea’s Home Smart product portfolio continues to grow with the first in-store appearance of the Tradfri Shortcut Buttons, and the long-awaited rollout of HomeKit support for Ikea’s smart blinds. Both developments were first spotted on the Tradfri and HomeKit subreddits.

Ikea’s €7.99 ($7.99) Shortcut Buttons previewed last month on The Verge are currently listed on the Dutch Ikea store. The smart buttons can be configured to initiate a single scene when pushed. A scene can be configured in the Ikea Home Smart app to control several Home Smart products like Ikea smart lights, Sonos-compatible Symfonisk speakers, or Fyrtur blinds. You can have as many Shortcut Buttons as you’d like. Place one next to the bed to shut off all the lights, for example, without having to yell at a smart assistant or launch an app. Place another in the kitchen to start your favorite Spotify playlist. 

Ikea’s Shortcut Buttons starting a scene.
Ikea’s Shortcut Buttons starting a scene.

The buttons ship with six stickers that can be inserted behind the transparent faceplate of the button. Three stickers are printed with icons representing night, morning, and lights; and three others are blank for your own custom doodles. 

Although the buttons are listed on the Dutch Ikea store, a quick spot check shows them out of stock throughout The Netherlands. They’d be worthless anyway, as the Home Smart app hasn’t been updated with scene support yet. Home Smart owners will be accustomed to these haphazard rollouts by now. Per tradition, Ikea’s smart home products slowly begin to appear on random European stores before they eventually go on sale in the US.

Ikea’s smart blinds in action.
Ikea’s smart blinds in action.

Breaking that trend, however, is the arrival of HomeKit support for Ikea’s smart blinds, which is first being pushed to US owners of the Ikea Home Smart Gateway. The 1.10.28 update allows Ikea’s blinds to be added to HomeKit, where they can be set up to respond to sunset and sunrise triggers, something the blinds can’t do natively as noted in our review. The blinds shipped with Google Assistant support and Alexa was added a few weeks ago. The $35 Ikea Home Smart Gateway is required for Google, Apple, and Amazon integrations, as well as scene support for the new Shortcut Buttons.

Ikea is reinventing itself as a digital company that understands the role of technology in the home. Let’s hope 2020 is the year that Home Smart stabilizes and begins its rapid expansion.