With the release of V6.0.5 yesterday on the Mac App Store, I’m pleased to announce the macOS Catalina platform for Roomie Remote!
https://apps.apple.com/us/app/roomie-universal-home-remote/id1467513544
As previously mentioned in the V6 What’s New:
Note that Apple has not yet implemented a few features in Catalina. Impacted features include: HomeKit, SiriKit, Sharing, Location, and 1Password integration. We anticipate Apple adding some of those in the future. In most cases, the downside is minimal. You can configure Siri Voice on iOS, there is almost no need to configure that on macOS. You can share configurations on iOS, and that works with macOS since it’s all cloud-based and Catalina does have Cloud Synchronization. Not being able to control HomeKit is a mysterious omission given that Apple felt the Home app was so important that it was part of Mojave, but presumably some technical problem prevented actual HomeKit support for Catalina. Despite the ‘Home’ app existing in Catalina, HomeKit itself is completely absent. That issue is 100% on Apple’s side and can be flipped on for us in seconds once Apple fixes it. Other than those caveats, it is a beautiful platform that we are excited to add. For A/V control, the lack of HomeKit is irrelevant so for most users we believe this release should meet their needs. Purchasing the base macOS app is separate from the iOS app, but subscriptions are shared.
Your subscription from iOS automatically licenses the macOS product – the macOS product does not allow purchase of subscriptions. While in principle we’d like to make it possible to use the macOS product entirely independent from iOS, for now it simplifies support paths to ensure it is impossible to have essentially the same subscription from each platform.
The macOS platform provides a great way to a run a Primary Controller in an always-on configuration, and also serves as a full implementation of Roomie on macOS for AV control, or camera viewing (RTSP, Arlo, or Ring – not HomeKit).
Note that based on patterns to date, the review process is quite a bit slower on macOS. While we will submit the same versions at the same times to Apple, there may be a lag on macOS if experience to date continues. I would not expect it to be more than 1-2 weeks on a per-version basis.