Apple HomeView Launch Apps: The Full Day-One List
Apple is filling in the last remaining blanks on its new smart home display. With HomeView now available to pre-order ahead of its November 13 release, Apple has revealed the full list of apps that will ship on the $299 device at launch: 19 Apple apps in total, almost all of them preinstalled, with four requiring an iPhone on the same Wi-Fi network to work.
The day-one app lineup, reported by 9to5Mac on October 16, is the clearest look yet at what the HomeView experience will actually be like beyond the Siri AI voice interactions that have dominated Apple’s marketing so far. While Apple has pitched the device primarily as a voice-first household hub, the new software platform — which Apple describes as a brand-new product category — also includes a classic Home Screen with a grid of apps.
The full day-one app list
These are the Apple apps that will be available on HomeView from day one:
- Alarms
- Audiobooks*
- Calendar
- Classical Music*
- FaceTime
- Find My
- Home
- Intercom
- Messages
- Music
- News*
- Podcasts
- Reminders
- Safari
- Settings
- Timers
- TV*
- Weather
- World Clock
Per Apple’s website, the four marked apps — Audiobooks, Classical Music, News, and TV — rely on a connection to the user’s iPhone rather than running fully on the display itself. In theory they should work seamlessly as long as the iPhone is on the same Wi-Fi network as the HomeView, though early reviews will need to confirm how reliable that handoff is in practice.
Third-party apps: the CarPlay rule
As we reported earlier this week, there is no App Store on HomeView. Third-party apps can appear on the device only if they already ship a CarPlay version and are classified as audio or video apps. In practice, that means music and video streaming services — and Spotify is expected to be available from day one.
It is a deliberately narrow door. Navigation, productivity, smart home, and games categories are shut out entirely at launch, which means the built-in Apple lineup has to carry most of the weight of the experience on its own.
The most noticeable absence: Photos
The list’s biggest surprise may be what is not on it. There is no dedicated Photos app on HomeView at launch — a striking omission for a device with a 7-inch display that Apple clearly imagines sitting on a kitchen counter or nightstand. Photos faces and widgets do exist, so pictures will appear on the device, but there is no way to browse a Photos library. 9to5Mac flags it as a major gap, and it is hard to disagree: doubling as a photo frame is one of the canonical jobs of a smart display.
Background: a curated, voice-first platform
The app list confirms the direction Apple signaled at its October 13 “Welcome Home” event in New York City, where HomeView debuted alongside the $149 HomePod mini 2 and the $299 Apple TV 4K as the centerpiece of Apple’s most ambitious smart home push in nearly a decade.
HomeView pairs a 7-inch screen with a base speaker, and Apple plans a wall-mountable edition as well. Most of the software experience centers on the revamped Siri AI, which surfaces contextual information pulled from the user’s calendar and text messages and can distinguish up to six household members by face — dynamically shifting the home screen’s apps, widgets, and personalized content depending on who is interacting with it, so private calendars and messages stay hidden until the right person is recognized.
Privacy is part of the pitch. An isolated subsystem processes all camera and microphone feeds locally, so raw sensor data cannot be accessed by third-party apps, Apple, or even the users themselves. The interface takes cues from the Apple Watch, with customizable faces for weather, photo galleries, or schedules, and conversations with Siri sync across a user’s other Apple devices.
The launch footprint is limited. HomeView’s initial markets are Australia, Canada, India, New Zealand, Singapore, South Africa, the U.K., and the U.S. — Singapore pre-orders began October 15 at 9 a.m. local time, while South African customers order through authorized resellers. The European Union is excluded for now because Siri AI is not yet available in iOS in the EU, and Apple has not announced dates for wider availability.
What this means for buyers
For anyone considering a $299 pre-order, the app list sets expectations: day one on HomeView is an Apple-apps-first experience. Timers, alarms, weather, calendar, reminders, FaceTime, Intercom, and Home controls cover the core smart-display jobs, and Spotify fills the biggest third-party music gap. But anyone hoping for a rich third-party ecosystem — or even a full Photos app — will be waiting.
Three things are worth watching after the November 13 launch. First, whether the four iPhone-dependent apps — Audiobooks, Classical Music, News, and TV — work as seamlessly as Apple claims when the phone and display share Wi-Fi. Second, whether Apple adds a dedicated Photos app and opens more third-party categories beyond CarPlay audio and video. And third, when the EU gets a path to HomeView at all — a decision that currently rests entirely on Siri AI’s availability in iOS there.
Taken together, the list paints HomeView as a deliberately curated device rather than an open platform. Apple is betting that a tight set of household utilities, strong multi-user personalization, and Siri AI are enough to earn a permanent spot on the counter — while putting direct pressure on Amazon’s Alexa and Google’s Nest lineups in the process.