Apple’s Siri-powered hub could finally be in your home soon

Apple has begun testing a Siri-powered smart home hub, internally known as J490, inside employees’ homes.

That internal testing follows years of speculation about an Apple smart display, a category Amazon’s Echo Show and Google’s Nest Hub have dominated since Apple first showed interest in 2022, according to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman.

The hub reportedly sits on a stand resembling a sliced HomePod Mini or mounts directly to a wall, and it pairs a smaller display than Amazon’s Echo Show with persistent Wi-Fi connectivity, a built-in camera and microphones, plus an interface Gurman describes as a blend of iOS, tvOS and watchOS.

Setup and certain tasks tie the hub to an iPhone, while its camera system doubles as a facial recognition tool that identifies who is looking at the screen and switches its apps, notes, calendar entries, news, music and podcasts to match that person.

The screen also supports a home screen layout, widgets and clock faces similar to the standby mode Apple introduced on the iPhone Duo, a design choice that reflects Apple’s ambition to make the hub feel like a personal device rather than a simple voice speaker with a screen.

Every function reportedly runs through Siri, the AI assistant Apple overhauled with iOS 27, and it can search across devices and accounts, play a podcast or song a contact recently shared, locate a specific photo or complete tasks inside apps such as Calendar and Notes.

Delays tied to Apple Intelligence pushed the project back from an original 2024 target, and Apple has yet to confirm a release date even as recent leaks point to a launch later this year.

Apple’s smart home ambitions appear to be getting a broader refresh alongside the renewed testing, after a slower few years for HomeKit hardware compared with rivals that have expanded their screen-equipped speaker ranges.

Pricing and a firm on-sale date remain unconfirmed, and Apple has given no indication of which regions might receive the smart display first once testing moves beyond employee homes toward a wider public rollout.

Employee testing suggests the project has moved past the concept stage, though Apple has not said whether the hub will reach shelves this year or slip into 2027 alongside its next wave of smart home hardware.