2025-08-22 22:34:28
Last month, after an advanced preview at CES back in January, Aqara released an update to its G4 smart video doorbell dubbed the Doorbell Camera Hub G410 Select. I had been keeping my eye out for this release ever since its announcement, and it just so happened to coincide with the passing of my existing smart doorbell from Netatmo. That was more than enough reason to purchase the G410, and over a month of daily usage, I’ve been enjoying several of the camera’s excellent new features while also wishing for some improvements in other areas.
Aqara is a stellar producer of smart home accessories. While they have many products that work with their own app, you can also use them with Apple’s HomeKit framework, either in parallel or exclusively. Another big draw of Aqara products is their affordable price tags. While I wouldn’t call any of their devices cheap, they are all fairly priced for what they offer. This holds true for the G410 doorbell, which goes for a perfectly sensible $129.99 on Amazon.
While the design of the G410 isn’t that different from the G4, it boasts several internal upgrades. Available in black or white, the doorbell hub integrates with HomeKit as well as Google Home, Alexa, and SmartThings. While the camera’s HomeKit integration supports streaming and recording with HomeKit Secure Video, Activity Zones, and a limited ability to refine the notifications you receive, the Aqara app provides much more granular customization and additional features, which I’ll get into shortly.
The G410 doorbell can also be set up as a hub for you to pair child devices from Aqara to. The hub comes in the form of a square speaker, which also serves as a doorbell chime and features a microSD card slot for video storage. (Recording to a NAS is an option, too.) I appreciate that Aqara cameras can double as hubs, preventing you from having to buy a clunky, single-purpose hub that sits in your home taking up space.
Like the G4, the G410 provides on-device facial recognition, and the new mmWave sensor is designed to offer better presence detection when someone approaches your door, rather than relying purely on the video picture it captures. The camera has been upgraded to 2K resolution with an impressive 175° angle lens (up from 162°) and still delivers infrared nighttime images. It should be noted that when used with HomeKit, the camera’s video quality is downgraded to 1200p due to restrictions with Apple’s smart home platform. This is disappointing and something I hope Apple plans to rectify in the near future.
The G4 was the first and, until now, only HomeKit-compatible video doorbell able to run solely on batteries; the G410 is the second. Like the G4, the G410 allows you to combine batteries with a hardwired setup to give you that extra peace of mind.
Finally, the G410 video doorbell hub includes support for Matter, dual-band WiFi, standard WPA3 security, a three-month trial of Aqara’s cloud storage, and even a voice modulator to contort your voice as it’s heard by people through the doorbell’s speaker.
Installing the doorbell was refreshingly quick and easy. After drilling two holes in the wall next to my front door with the template, I screwed in the back plate, attached the optional angle mount, and prepared to mount the doorbell. If you can’t drill outside your front door, you can fix the doorbell to your wall with the provided adhesive pad – ideal for renters. I planned to put the doorbell through its paces with just batteries at first, so I didn’t initially attach the transformer I previously had set up for my Netatmo doorbell.
Installation was quick and the G410 fits nicely next to my door.
Next, I took the square speaker, which doubles as the repeater unit, inside the house and plugged it into a socket on the other side of the wall from the doorbell. Aqara recommends you keep the repeater within five meters of the doorbell, so my thickness-of-a-brick distance more than fulfilled that obligation.
The repeater which doubles as a hub and speaker can also house an microSD card.
The last part of the installation was done via the Aqara app, though you can use the Home app and skip Aqara’s altogether. The app took me through a few steps to connect the repeater to my home network.
Adding the G410 doorbell to the Aqara app and HomeKit is quick and easy.
I must reiterate how quick and easy this was. Once the holes were drilled, the rest of the process took around 20 minutes. The setup itself was straightforward and instructive.
After checking that the video angle was correct and adding the camera to the Home app, it was time to dive into the Aqara app, and oh boy, is that an experience, both good and bad.
Let’s get this out of the way: the Aqara app is not pretty. Despite recent attempts to create a home tab that is reminiscent of Apple’s Home app, interactions are sometimes slow, and simple iOS gestures like swiping to go back are hit or miss in their implementations.
The Aqara app is a disorganised mess of text-based lists. The signal is misplaced in the device settings (middle), and some text hasn’t even been entered properly (right).
Finding settings for accessories is often like looking for a needle in a haystack. For instance, you want to know what the signal strength of the doorbell is? That’s in Device Settings, because Device Information would probably be too obvious, right? Once you get accustomed to the app’s… shall we say, “quirks”… there are lots of ways to customize how the doorbell performs for you.
I have Doorbell Chime enabled on my HomePods via the Home app so I can hear when someone rings the doorbell wherever I am in my house, which makes me appreciate that Aqara offers specific ring settings. You can turn off the chime or adjust the volume, and if you’re feeling particularly adventurous, you can upload an MP3 file to use as a custom chime. This might be helpful if you pop out to the shop or go away for the weekend. You could upload a short piece of audio telling a visitor you will be back in a minute or that they should leave any parcels with your neighbor. You can do this with the two-way audio feature as well, but we live in an age where Amazon drivers drop your package at the door, ring the doorbell, and then run off before you can even get to the door. This might help with that.
Face detection is nothing new, but having not used it with an Aqara product before, I was impressed. It’s not as good as HomeKit Secure Video, but it works well. Whereas HomeKit uses your entire photo library to recognize faces, I didn’t want to give the Aqara app that amount of access. Instead, what you can do is train the on-device system by naming faces it picks up; simply tap on an unknown face and name it. The system does a decent job of guessing who someone is after you’ve named them (especially since it’s only trained on a handful of images), though occasionally, you need to give it another training top-up. This functionality plays well with a feature called lingerer detection.
Until you add the faces of your family and friends to the app (left), you will get a lot of lingerer alerts (right)
Lingerer detection is a feature that will alert you when someone the doorbell doesn’t recognize has been, well, lingering around your front door. You can refine the threshold for this based on the length of time and distance from the door, which is one area where the new mmWave sensor (metaphorically) shines. After my doorbell learned who my family and friends were, it alerted me a couple of times when someone was going through my family’s bins. We’ve had a few Amazon thefts in recent months, so I’m hoping this feature might catch who’s doing it and we can give the video to the police.
My only criticism of lingerer detection is that it has, on occasion, still considered someone a lingerer even after the doorbell is rung. Maybe Aqara could reduce these instances by allowing integration between a smart door sensor and the doorbell so that if your door is opened, the lingerer alert is canceled.
All of these different types of triggers and events have the potential to make for a nightmare when it comes to notifications. Thankfully, you can choose which kinds you would like to receive. I settled on turning all event notifications off except for lingerer alerts, and it’s been relatively peaceful so far.
There are several other features in the Aqara app that I won’t go into, like a tamper detection alarm and something called Integrated Events that you need Aqara’s subscription service for, but suffice it to say, the amount of customization is satisfyingly high.
The main video interface (left), your album of stored clips (middle), and the video timeline (right).
Lastly, it’s worth going over the main video interface. When you open the camera view in the Aqara app, there are quick-action buttons to take a snapshot, start a recording, speak through the doorbell, and pause the streaming video. Below these buttons is a control panel with access to several areas of the app, like a live view of all your Aqara cameras, the albums of your recordings, and an event history timeline for all your Aqara devices. Below that, in the tab bar, there is a button called Playback that switches to a vertical timeline. If you have not set the doorbell to record continuously, which requires it to be hardwired, this looks very much like a HomeKit camera event timeline, only vertical.
If you do have your doorbell hardwired, the events appear as little notches on the timeline, and you can scrub up and down to find any recorded moment you wish. After a couple of weeks of flawless connectivity on battery power, I connected my doorbell to the transformer, leaving the batteries in place as a backup. Since then, I’ve been continuously recording to a 512GB microSD card, and the app has been pretty responsive with pulling footage from the card.
In short, no. It isn’t. There’s always going to be room for improvement, especially while Aqara insists on sticking with its horrendous app design. What I will say is that the technology behind the G410 not only is solid but features several innovative ideas. Features like the mmWave sensor to improve detection and the concept of lingerer detection are both clever pieces of functionality that I haven’t seen elsewhere within the smart home marketplace.
When it comes to HomeKit integration, there’s not a lot to say, in a good way. The G410 does everything that Apple’s HomeKit API allows. It’s responsive when being viewed within the Home app, delivers ringing alerts to your devices quickly, and – thanks to the mmWave sensor – has triggered fewer recorded events in my camera timeline.
The Aqara Doorbell Camera Hub G410 Select is a dependable piece of smart home tech. It’s simple to set up and reasonably priced, it maintains a good connection with your smart home, and it allows for advanced customization if you so wish. It’s hard to ask for more from a video doorbell.
The Aqara Doorbell Camera Hub G410 Select is available to buy now for $129.99.
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Join Now2025-08-22 03:03:57
Enjoy the latest episodes from MacStories’ family of podcasts:
Niléane brings some “classic” headphones, Chris is in possession of The Big Ball, and everyone tries to go a little bit more European.
Sigmund and Devon discuss the latest Apple TV hardware rumors and recap Apple Original drama Smoke.
MacStories launched its first podcast in 2017 with AppStories. Since then, the lineup has expanded to include a family of weekly shows that also includes MacStories Unwind, Magic Rays of Light, Comfort Zone, and NPC: Next Portable Console that collectively, cover a broad range of the modern media world from Apple’s streaming service and videogame hardware to apps for a growing audience that appreciates our thoughtful, in-depth approach to media.
If you’re interested in advertising on our shows, you can learn more here or by contacting our Managing Editor, John Voorhees.
Founded in 2015, Club MacStories has delivered exclusive content every week for nearly a decade.
What started with weekly and monthly email newsletters has blossomed into a family of memberships designed every MacStories fan.
Club MacStories: Weekly and monthly newsletters via email and the web that are brimming with apps, tips, automation workflows, longform writing, early access to the MacStories Unwind podcast, periodic giveaways, and more;
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Join Now2025-08-21 23:14:32
For the past couple of weeks, I’ve been testing a pair of Philips Hue Play wall washer lights along with a Play HDMI sync box 8K that the company sent me to test. The wall washer lights are a new and interesting approach to accent lighting for the Hue Play line that I like a lot, but they also come with a premium price tag, so it’s worth taking a close look at what they offer.
Philips Hue’s Play wall washer lights. Source: Philips Hue.
I’ve been using Philips Hue Play lights for a while. I have two Play gradient light tubes in my office; one sits behind a shelf on my desk, providing a backlight to my work environment, while the other is on the top of a tall bookshelf, illuminating what would otherwise be a dark corner of the room. I typically set them to a natural light color using Adaptive Lighting in Apple’s Home app, but they can do fancy gradient colors, too, which can be a fun way to mix things up.
A more traditional Play wall washer setup than mine. Source: Philips Hue.
But the downside of tube lights is that they take up a lot of horizontal space. That’s where the new wall washer lights come in. They’re cylindrical with a vertical and angled slice taken out of one side, which is where the LEDs are located. Most notably, though, at around six inches tall by a little more than three inches wide, the wall washers work in a much wider variety of places than tube lights. That compact footprint has been perfect for fitting behind my TV, where I’ve already crammed gaming consoles, a Wi-Fi router, and other gear.
Other highlights of the Hue Play wall washers include:
The Play wall washers require a Hue Bridge and are compatible with HomeKit, allowing you to use either the Hue app or the Home app to turn them on and off, dim them, and change their colors.
The Hue Play HDMI sync box 8K. Source: Philips Hue.
By combining the wall washers with the Play HDMI sync box 8K, you can add an additional level of automation control. The sync box is an HDMI 2.1 switcher with support for video at 8K 60Hz and 4K 120Hz. The device has four HDMI 2.1 inputs and one output that runs to your TV, which allowed me to connect a PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X, Nintendo Switch 2, and Apple TV. With the sync box in the middle, communicating with a Hue Bridge, the colors of whatever you watch or play on your TV can be reproduced with the Play wall washer lights and any other compatible Hue lights you own.
Setting up a scene and syncing from the Hue app.
Light syncing is controlled from the Sync tab in the Hue app or by using the app’s extensive Shortcuts support, where you have the ability to adjust the effect’s brightness and intensity based on the type of content you’re watching. At first, I found the shifting lights on the wall behind my TV to be a little distracting, but before long, the novelty wore off in a good way. The lights became an enhancement to the viewing experience that I came to expect and missed when I turned them off.
Adjusting the the sync effect.
As it turns out, my TV setup isn’t ideal for any backlighting because about half of the TV is backed by a window. But that’s where the flexibility of the Play wall washers came in handy. Instead of placing them on the sides of my TV, I took advantage of the corner of the room where my TV sits, pointing one light at the wall behind the TV and the other at the wall next to it, and it has worked out well.
I set up the Play wall washer lights in a corner of my living room behind my TV.
The Play wall washers work in other contexts too. Although the Play sync box doesn’t work with a Mac Studio Display, you can pair the lights with the Hue Sync Mac app, which works like the tab in Hue’s iOS app, allowing you to mirror the colors on your Mac’s screen as you work. The wall washers can also be used as standalone table lamps or as accent lighting in other environments, controlled by either the Hue or Home app like any other smart lights you may own.
Although I’ve only used the Play wall washers for a couple of weeks, another advantage of Hue lighting that I expect they will share over time is durability. I’ve used Hue lights for years and never had one die on me, which is more than I can say for many other smart home gadgets.
You can buy single Play wall washer lights, too. Source: Philips Hue.
That said, Hue’s Play wall washers and the Play sync box 8K aren’t cheap. A single wall washer light costs $219.99, and a pair costs $384.99, the same price as the Play sync box 8K. Whether it’s worth it for you to pay those prices really depends on your use case. I’ve spent a lot on Hue lighting in my office because I spend a lot of time there and appreciate the control Philips Hue lights give me in that environment. If you feel the same way about your surroundings when sitting on your couch to watch a movie or play a game, the Play wall washers and sync box 8K are a great investment that I expect will last a long time and won’t disappoint.
The Hue Play wall washer lights are available in white and black directly from Philips Hue for $219.99 individually and $384.99 as a pair. The Hue Play sync box 8K is likewise available from Philips Hue for $384.99. Singles and pairs of wall washer lights and the sync box 8K are also available from Amazon.
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What started with weekly and monthly email newsletters has blossomed into a family of memberships designed every MacStories fan.
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Join Now2025-08-18 23:44:47
The Iconfactory’s Craig Hockenberry had an interesting post over the weekend on Furbo.org that struck a chord with me. The post explores the ‘why’ surrounding Liquid Glass contrasting the upcoming iOS 26 changes with the transition from iOS 6 to iOS 7. That earlier change was driven by a need to make app design accessible to more people, which, as Hockenberry explains, seems different from the motivation behind Liquid Glass:
I’m unaware of anyone outside of Apple who’s thinking “we really need to have more fluid glass in our designs”. Of particular note during the introduction is how much time they spend showing off glass blocks and talking about the physical effect itself. While not addressing the most important question: “why do we need this?”
And I’m pretty sure the answer is “we don’t”. The answer is “Apple does.”
Hockenberry thinks the switch to Liquid Glass is being driven by unreleased hardware very much like the iOS 11 safe areas that were instituted before the iPhone X’s notch and Home indicator debuted. It’s a great theory that could easily have people facepalming in the not-too-distant future. I hope he’s right.
→ Source: furbo.org
2025-08-18 22:34:16
Source: Apple.
Each fall’s major iOS update and its accompanying set of new features have become a staple of the iPhone user experience. iPhone owners – even those who don’t keep up with all the latest Apple news – expect and anticipate these enhancements every year. However, for those who aren’t on the latest-generation devices, it may not always be clear which of this year’s new features you’ll have access to. Even if a device supports iOS 26, that doesn’t necessarily mean it will be able to run every system feature.
To save you from having to comb through a bunch of footnotes on Apple’s website or, worse, wait until this fall to find out which capabilities your device will support, I’ve compiled a list of all the iOS 26 features that are limited to newer iPhones. Here’s what you can expect based on the model you’re using.
First off, it’s important to know whether or not your device will be able to run iOS 26 at all. These are the iPhones for which the new version will be available:
If you’re using an iPhone XR, iPhone XS, or iPhone XS Max, you won’t be able to update from iOS 18 to iOS 26, as those devices have been dropped from the compatibility list this year.
Liquid Glass is coming to all iPhones that run iOS 26. Source: Apple.
The good news is that if your device does run iOS 26, then you’ll definitely get to experience the most prominent element of the update: the new Liquid Glass design language. The striking new design – with its translucency, light reflection and refraction, dynamic elements, and more – is coming to older iPhones as well as newer ones. (Unfortunately, the same can’t be said for tvOS 26, which is leaving my beloved first-generation Apple TV 4K on the old design.)
Apple Intelligence features are limited to newer iPhone models. Source: Apple.
Next up, keep in mind that Apple Intelligence is still only available on the iPhone 15 Pro, the iPhone 15 Pro Max, and the iPhone 16 line (iPhone 16, iPhone 16 Plus, iPhone 16 Pro, iPhone 16 Pro Max, and iPhone 16e). This means that all the new Apple Intelligence features in iOS 26 will be limited to those devices. They include the following:
That’s a long list of features that older devices won’t have access to. However, there are some new capabilities that sound like they’re powered by Apple Intelligence but aren’t. The new Lyrics Translation feature in Apple Music doesn’t rely on Apple Intelligence and thus will be available on all iPhones running iOS 26. Also available on older devices: excellent new Phone capabilities like Call Screening and Hold Assist.
Finally, there are a couple of new photo-related features that won’t be offered on all devices running iOS 26. Spatial scenes, which add depth to your photos so you can simulate looking at them from different angles as you tilt your phone, will only be available on the iPhone 12 and later. And the new system hint that lets you know your camera lens needs cleaning will only be offered on the iPhone 15 and later.
And those are the iOS 26 features that won’t be coming to older iPhones. Regardless of which iPhone you’re using, there’s still a lot of new functionality packed into the update, like the new Games app and Visited Places in Maps. So stick around for more of our coverage of iOS 26 and Apple’s other OS updates as we get closer to their release this fall.
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What started with weekly and monthly email newsletters has blossomed into a family of memberships designed every MacStories fan.
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Join Now2025-08-18 21:30:25
The folks at Rogue Amoeba are back to sponsor MacStories this week. If you’re not already familiar with them, they’ve been notable makers of powerful audio tools for your Mac since 2002. From professionals to hobbyists to everyday consumers, they’ve got tools to help you with audio.
It’s a cinch to make recordings with the flagship product Audio Hijack, which can now even transcribe audio.
Or, take advantage of SoundSource to gain volume control for each app playing audio on your Mac, as well as the power to apply audio effects and even redirect playback to different devices.
If you want to enhance your microphone’s capabilities, Loopback is the perfect tool. With its virtual audio devices, you can combine app audio and your microphone seamlessly, then bring it into Zoom or any other voice chat app. You can even pair Loopback with the Mac’s best soundboard app, Farrago, to add sound effects or background audio to calls and recordings.
Rogue Amoeba offers free trials for all their apps, and you can set them up in seconds. And if you’re running Apple’s beta OS, you’ll be happy to know Rogue Amoeba’s apps already work on Tahoe.
As a MacStories reader, you can save 20% on any purchase through the end of August by using discount code STORIES2508. Visit their store to get started.
Our thanks to the folks at Rogue Amoeba for sponsoring MacStories this week.
Founded in 2015, Club MacStories has delivered exclusive content every week for nearly a decade.
What started with weekly and monthly email newsletters has blossomed into a family of memberships designed every MacStories fan.
Club MacStories: Weekly and monthly newsletters via email and the web that are brimming with apps, tips, automation workflows, longform writing, early access to the MacStories Unwind podcast, periodic giveaways, and more;
Club MacStories+: Everything that Club MacStories offers, plus an active Discord community, advanced search and custom RSS features for exploring the Club’s entire back catalog, bonus columns, and dozens of app discounts;
Club Premier: All of the above and AppStories+, an extended version of our flagship podcast that’s delivered early, ad-free, and in high-bitrate audio.
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