MagSafe on a Doorbell? Leaker Hints Apple’s Working On It
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Apple reportedly has some big plans for its home initiatives over the next two years that could bring products we’ve heard rumored for quite some time to fruition. One of these is a smart doorbell that could have an unusual twist.
Our sources first told us that Apple was working on a smart doorbell in 2021 that could possibly be paired with Apple’s AR/VR products and possibly even bring LiDAR and enhanced privacy features compared to other doorbell cameras.
Those rumors saw a resurgence last fall when analyst Ming-Chi Kuo revealed Apple was working on a smart home camera and Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman suggested this could be a much more ambitious project: a smart doorbell with Face ID.
While this product won’t likely materialize until sometime next year — at the earliest — a new post on X from leaker Kosutami has hinted that Apple’s doorbell may have another unexpected feature: MagSafe.
It’s a fascinating idea, considering that even Apple’s newest iPhone 16e lacks MagSafe charging. It’s also not entirely clear what the point would be to putting a ring of magnets on a doorbell.
Charging seems like too simple of a use case. Smart home doorbells can usually go for months on a single charge. If Apple’s needs to be charged more frequently, that’s going to be a big strike against it.
Another possibility is using MagSafe to attach it to a mount on your front door. Smart doorbells that replace wired versions are often powered from the existing doorbell wiring, avoiding the need to charge them at all. Most still pack a battery inside the doorbell, as the low-current doorbell power (usually between 10 and 24V) isn’t sufficient for powering Wi-Fi or camera features; instead, it keeps the battery topped up while the doorbell is in a less active low-power mode when no one is at your front door and you’re not actively monitoring the camera feed.
Using MagSafe to attach the doorbell would increase the potential for theft, although Apple would undoubtedly have some kind of technical anti-theft protections in place, rendering the doorbell useless in anyone else’s home. The very act of removing it from its MagSafe mount could render the doorbell inoperable or even alert the owner that it’s being tampered with. That would be an advantage of using MagSafe technology instead of a more traditional mounting system.
Still, it seems like over-engineering as most folks don’t need to attach and detach their doorbells that often — especially if they can draw power from existing doorbell wiring. A simple NFC chip or physical contacts could provide the same level of theft and tamper-proofing.
Even if the doorbell is installed in a fully wireless mode where recharging would occasionally be necessary, MagSafe feels like overkill. Wired charging would still be more efficient, and a doorbell is something you want to recharge quickly so you can get it back in place. Swappable MagSafe battery packs are another possibility, allowing you to ensure your doorbell is always in place and powered, but that also feels like too much for batteries that you’d only need to swap a handful of times each year.
There’s a possibility of using it to apply emergency power in the event that you come home to a dead doorbell. There are rumors Apple may finally bring reverse wireless charging to some iPhone 17 models this year, so powering up your doorbell from your iPhone is an interesting idea. However, is it really necessary?
Even if Apple goes all-in on Face ID with its new doorbell to provide access control, reports suggest the company isn’t planning to build a smart lock. At most, it may partner with another company like Schlage or August to sell a bundled package, but there’s also no reason the doorbell shouldn’t be able to unlock any HomeKit-compatible smart lock on the market. Your iPhone would also be able to do the same far more efficiently than waiting for it to recharge your doorbell so that you can use Face ID to get into your home.
Ringing AirPods Pro
As strange as MagSafe on a doorbell sounds, we can’t rule it out entirely. It’s an interesting idea, and if Apple sees fit to include it, we imagine it will be a useful feature and not merely a gimmick.
However, it also wasn’t the only thing that Kosutami had to say about Apple’s new doorbell. A later post on X hinted that the doorbell may also ring on the AirPods Pro.
HomeKit-compatible smart doorbells can already ring HomePods when someone is at your front door and even pop up a picture-in-picture view from the camera on your Apple TV. It doesn’t seem like a huge stretch for Apple to extend this to the AirPods Pro; in fact, we’d be surprised if it was limited to only Apple’s high-end AirPods, as there seems to be no reason it couldn’t work on the standard AirPods 4 or even the AirPods Max.
After all, it wouldn’t be the AirPods receiving the alert directly. Instead, that would come through whatever device they were connected to while the person is wearing them. Depending on how you have your Home app configured, this feature already exists, as your iPhone or iPad will notify you when someone is at your front door. If you’re wearing AirPods — or any headphones — you’ll hear the sound through them like any other notification, and potentially even Siri announcing who is at your door if it recognizes a face.
That makes it a bit trickier to figure out what Kosutami is getting at here. Perhaps the doorbell chime would alert the user even if they had those notifications turned off, substituting the standard announced Home notification with a simple chime.
[The information provided in this article has NOT been confirmed by Apple and may be speculation. Provided details may not be factual. Take all rumors, tech or otherwise, with a grain of salt.]
