How to Fix Roborock Room Names on Home App

by Rian

Roborock began to roll out Matter support on its latest models, and with it, HomeKit can now finally see a Roborock branded robot vacuums. So far, my experience with vacuum supports on Matter platform was it cannot completely replace the manufacturer’s official app; however, it is useful enough to automate “stop” or “pause” where it would be easier to take advantage of other IoT sensors.

On the Home app of iOS and macOS, there is, however, a problem. The way the rooms are integrated over from Roborock —or possibly all Matter-enabled vacuums— do not necessarily match with “rooms” on the Home app with what are labeled as ‘rooms’ on each vacuum’s maps. In my case, Roborock on the Home app first only showed a single room for the entire household. After few hours, I could see list of “Room” that lack any other descriptions.

The current fix for the problem is relatively simple. On Roborock app, rename a room to trigger name integration. For example, if you have a room labeled “Kitchen”, simply rename it to “Kitchen1”. The rooms seen under the robot in the Home app would have its appropriate name once the integration is complete. Once done, you can revert the name back to its original name.

Personally I don’t think Home app or any other Matter-based apps can replace the manufacturer’s official app as of yet. One of the features all users would want from the robot vacuum app is notifications: when a job was halted, when a robot is stuck somewhere, or it requires cleaning before next job, and etc. As far as I know, either Matter, as a platform, isn’t up to the task yet, or the apps, either from manufacturer or any other Matter-related apps, haven’t adopted of its entirety yet. It’s the matter of promises than what it actually delivers.