Apple announced iOS 12 during WWDC along with a raft of new features that users and developers are keen to see arrive next month, but plenty of people have been trying it out via the developer and public betas for a while now. Part of the developer beta is the ability to download a version of the new Shortcuts app via TestFlight, with the beta receiving an update this past Friday.

The update itself doesn’t add a whole lot, at least not that has been found so far, but there is one interesting addition that might be of note: some users have noticed HomeKit support.

Prior to Friday’s update, Shortcuts did not appear to support HomeKit as such, with this new update altering that slightly. With the current Shortcuts beta 2, it appears HomeKit support is there, although limited to contextual Siri Suggestions via the recently released iOS 12 beta 6.

Anyone running iOS 12 beta 6 and the updated Shortcuts beta can find the newly added HomeKit support under Siri Suggestions or by searching for Home in the action search bar. However, this being an early beta implementation, things are not fully baked and the process of working through the actions required to actually activate anything is cumbersome, to say the least. While the Shortcuts app does work, during our testing, we would have to say that it is the least polished part of iOS 12 we have come across so far although that will hopefully improve in due course, especially ahead of the expected September launch.

If Apple sticks to its usual release cadence, then we would expect iOS 12, with Shortcuts, to ship just before any new iPhone launch, likely in or around the third week in September. That gives Apple a month to get things ironed out.

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